The focus of funding on STEM initiatives has long annoyed me. The visibility creates a false impression that some subject matter is more important for all learners, creates a caste system among teachers, and may discourage schools from making the same commitments in hiring for all positions.
Full disclosure: I am a college faculty member and administrator in a Department of Psychology. This experience has partially shaped my views regarding funding priorities and attitudes regarding just what a science is.. I do have an undergraduate degree in biology, was certified as a secondary biology teacher, and publish some research on the topic of science education.
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Loper OS provides an interesting analysis of why hypercard was discontinued. He acknowledges that hypercard was possibly the most loved software products of all time.
This is kind of the opposite of those stupid efforts to explain how the world has advanced by indicating you have never known a world when X was not the case implying a younger age group has not had to cope with inferior experiences.
Most of you have never known a world when most folks could kind of build their own software and get a computer to do what they wanted it to do and not what someone else thought it should do.
Dear photograph is a web site based on an interesting concept – take a photograph at the location of an earlier photograph and tell the story of what appears in the composite. It is a way to explore personal history (these would likely be based on photographs you find in family albums) and local history.
I purchased a Chromebook from Samsung some months ago and this device has become my primary writing computer (see post). I see today that the Chromebooks have been reduced to $300 for the season. If you write (Google docs) or browse a lot, I recommend the Samsung.
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I have made a serious attempt to understand copyright and what constitutes a copyright violation. Sometimes I reason by way of analogy. I know that as an academic, I can copy an article from a journal in the library for my personal use under the “fair use” provision. I also know that I am not supposed to make multiple copies of this same article and distribute them to the students in my class (wasn’t this the famous case that got much of this started – Kinkos course packs).
I have a professional interest in highlighting as a reading strategy and that generated some personal interest when I learned that I could highlight within Kindle and save the highlights. At the time it occurred to me that Amazon must build in some limits to prevent a reader from highlighting an entire book or at least major parts, download the highlights, and then sending this content to others. I would think this would be a copyright violation. Maybe not.
I have come across a new online tool that clearly allows me to take the content from a source and distribute the content. Scrible.com offers a great tool for online research. You can highlight, annotate, and save your work in a library. It also turns out that you can send this content to others. Just to test what the system would let me get away with, I have some web content that requires a login. I visited this site, entered the necessary information to gain access, highlight a few pages, and shared my work through email (to a different email address). I quit the browser, opened the email account, found the email and selected the link. This opened a browser that displayed the full page from the web site with my highlights.
If I was sharing content generated by someone else, which I can simulate by send the content to a different email address, wouldn’t this be a copyright violation? You are obviously sharing content without making use of the server on which the content owner placed this material. I would think that the basic requirement for legal use would be superimposing highlights over content that is sent from the original server. In this way, the content would be provided as intended by the author. I would also assume that doing this for personal use would be acceptable (see original analogy to academic use), but you cross the line when you send the content to someone else.
Supposedly, the National Science Foundation supported this work. I keep thinking I am missing something, but what would that be?
The last thing many folks want to hear is that there is a new social network service available for their use. Diaspora is just beginning to emerge and looking for participants. I was and continue to be interested in Diaspora because I do not like to see one tool dominate any given category. The problem with this position, I suppose, is the matter of critical mass. Most folks want to be active in services that have also enrolled their friends. It is very difficult to move away from a service even if something better is available.
I have been a member of Diaspora for a few weeks and while the membership seems to be growing it almost seems like people are curious but contribute little content. So there is a steady stream of new members but few posts.
Here is a more detailed review from Edudemic . I think we have similar first impressions.
There are some potentially interesting features – the concept of multiple nodes (host one if you have a server) is appealing to me. I checked the requirements and while I operate my own servers the set up looks to be a pain. Still – the idea of an open system as an alternative to commercial control is an idea many educators support. Here is the chance to stand behind this popular idea – join and take the time to contribute some content.
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