Blogger Andy Carvin has urged active bloggers to declare today Stop Cyberbullying Day. His declaration was prompted by the case of blogger Kathy Sierra who in some way has prompted the ire of a group that has taken pleasure in harassing and threatening her. While I agree with the sentiment, I wonder about the benefits of the reaction. A rally focused on the evils of cyberbullying seems unlikely to threaten those who engage in such behaviors and may delight those who somehow might assume they have accomplished something in generating such a reaction. I also worry that a simplistic reaction by some may discourage access to blogs in those locations I continue to hope will see personal expression as a positive thing. Easy for me to say I guess – I am hassled by spammers, but not by bullies. Do read Carvin’s post.
A certain type of guilt has been embedded within my academic personality. I credit this to my early academic training. I am tempted to compare this to religious training, but I do not want to be accused of being politically incorrect. If I become excited about something and become an advocate, there is a little voice that constantly challenges me – what evidence do you have? Sometimes I admire those who can advocate without feeling the need to justify. Taking time to establish and communicate supporting evidence slows you down and takes away some of that “cool” from presentations. Well – enough of this public examination of my personal behavior.
I encourage educators to involve their students in content-based multimedia projects. Like any activity that competes for limited classroom time, the issue of impact should be considered. As I have examined in previous posts, this perspective is typically tagged as constructivist in orientation and the efficacy of activities grouped within this category has been challenged. What about counter arguments? This is a struggle. One argument I rely on defines multimedia projects as opportunities to engage in multimedia authoring potentially allowing one to draw upon the writing to learn literature.
I must being experiencing an especially bad case of academic guilt lately because I have felt the need for further justification. From the depths of my many years of experience, I have dredged up another concept – Teaching to Learn. Multimedia authoring resembles teaching to learn – mastering a specific body of information so that you can teach it to someone else. While this argument probably resonates with anyone who teaches, cool and logical sounding ideas still do not satisfy the true test (show me the data). I remember a topic associated with Mastery Learning (a topic that intrigued me many years ago). In some mastery systems, students serve as tutors for other students and the benefits to the tutors (often in college settings) have been examined. For example, Johnson and Ruskin (1977 – note the date here – I take some satisfaction in remembering this book was on my shelf) describe a study comparing the change in GRE scores for psychology majors who did or did not serve as tutors between the occasions on which they took the GRE specialty exam in psychology. The study reported much higher gains for those who served as tutors. Processing information while or so you can help others understand it appears to be beneficial.
One caveat – your mileage many vary. More and more I am convinced that benefits come not from doing an activity, but from doing an activity well. This may speak to the limited success of many constructivist ventures and perhaps to the benefits of uninformed teaching.
Johnson, K. & Ruskin, R. (1977). Behavioral instruction: An evaluative review. Washington, DC: American Psychology Association. (Benefits to proctors is discussed on page 145.)
If you have experimented with or are seriously using web apps (e.g., Google docs and spreadsheets), you may find a post on the ReadWrite blog to be of interest. This post briefly contrasts advantages and disadvantages of browser and Internet based apps vs. offline browser apps (perhaps not a distinction you might recognize – not the same as an offline app such as MS Word). I guess offline browser apps have existed for some time (e.g., Composer), but thinking of the browser as a way to meet general productivity needs is a little different.
I think the educational benefits of online browser apps are obvious – low or no cost and access from multiple locations (if schools allow). What about offline browser apps? I guess that might depend on cost issues.
Wikipedia has clearly become a destination for those seeking information online, but this category of web resource still attracts some competitors. Perhaps concerns regarding the quality of content allow opportunities for challengers.
Some offer an alternative based on a potentially superior way of organizating and sharing information (e.g., Freebase) and others an approach that address the information quality issue by incorporating an editorial element of some form. Citizendium falls into the second category (my earlier post on a plan to addres this shortfall). Comments on the vision, the process, etc. can be found on the About page. Among the adaptations – individuals are designated to observe and guide, individuals who contribute must be identifiable (e.g., use an email address that requires a real name).
I am the treasurer for the National Consortium for Instruction and Cognition. Our organization has a web site and sometimes I am asked a question (e.g., where do I find the dues statement) that requires I provide an address for the web site. Much to my frustration I have great difficulty locating this site using search engines. I can locate those individuals who have presented at paper sessions (part of AERA) hosted by NCIC and I can locate individuals who claim on their vitae to be members of NCIC. I just can’t find the organization’s web site.
This probably one of those situations in which a site must be linked to by someone before the site becomes visible to the search engines. So this is an experiment. This post provides a link to the NCIC site and hopefully in a day or so I will be able to locate the site through Google.
I have discussed computer security and open ports in previous posts. I worry about open ports (and so do the university folks of monitor my activities) because I operate servers and must allow for interaction (port 8o for HTML, 22,23 for FTP and 25 for Email). You may have other ports open on your equipment if you do things like share iTunes. I happen to be listening to one of Leo Laport’s podcasts and he was interviewing Steve Gibson. Steve participates from time to time on this program and is a security expert. Steve has a business related to security and storage systems and offers some free resources. Try ShieldsUP! to evaluate the port security of your computers. The link I provide is from the home page and will have to navigate from this page to the ShieldsUp! page (expect some ads and product pitches). What you are looking for is a site that will evaluate the port security on your machine. This is good information.
Flickr is one of those great services that began as an independent initiative and then was purchased by one of the larger “players” (Yahoo in this case). I have always assumed this was a business model – become popular, get purchased – because how the original Flickr folks expected to cover their costs was never obvious to me.
It now appears that Yahoo is making the effort to integrate Flickr as a service. When Flickr was first purchased, the impact on users was minimal. The service you were using was simply owned by someone else. I am guessing this situation did not tie in Flickr users sufficiently to benefit Yahoo. A transition of sorts required users to obtain a Yahoo account (no cost) and this process probably brought some exposure to other Yahoo services AND the ads embedded within such services.
Yahoo now appears to want to clean up loose ends and completely integrate Flickr within Yahoo. Those of us who joined before the transition received the following message:
You’re getting this email from Flickr HQ because you decided to detach your “markdgrabe” Flickr account from its Yahoo! ID. That means you’ve got what we like to call a “dangly” Flickr account that you need to deal with.
I have been trying untangle this situation for several days without much luck. I don’t have a great investment in the images I have stored in Flickr because this is one more of those services I have used so that I have an understanding of how the service works and can discuss the service based on experience. If a “dangly” account goes away, I can upload some new sample images without much difficult. However, I do like to play with the gadgets, widgets, or whatever offered by these services and have embedded Flickr services in several of my public offerings (e.g., this blog). I may have to wait for something to break and then fix it before this Yahoo transition makes sense to me.
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