Here is a new take on the the role of social networking and the politicial process. Myspace/MTV are sponsoring a series of presidential candidate dialogues. On different scheduled dates, individual candidates respond to questions in real time – there is no debate (see YouTube debate).
An interesting feature is the opportunity to participate by agreeing/disagreeing with stated positions. In the Read/WriteWeb blog analysis, it sounds like a good idea, but those who respond tend to agree with nearly all statements. Perhaps we are only willing to watch our favorite candidates. A debate at least exposes viewers to multiple candidates.
I have long been a Ken Burns fan. I own his “jazz” series and is the type of material that I will watch every six months or so.
His new documentary, The War, examines the WWII from the perspective of 4 communities (one in Minnesota) and has been playing on PBS this week. Burns and PBS offer some great resources related to the program – one component of this site offers resources for educators.
My father was stationed in the south pacific during the war as a radar operator. When I was a kid, I found an old radio in the attic that could search the ham radio frequencies. Dad knew Morse code from his military days and he would sit in the bedroom with me and write down the morse code conversations I would find. I remember he always printed in capital letters when he did this and this was not the way he normally wrote.
The images in the Burns videos made me remember my dad. A big personal regret I have had in the last few years was that I had basically ruined a large collection of negatives my dad had brought back from the war. I became aware of the lost potential of these negatives when Cindy was working on her history project and the Burns material reminded me again. My dad was an amateur photographer and also a bit of an entrepeneur. He had a 620 camera and took black and white pictures. A 620 negative is large enough to contact print (it is about the size of a snapshot and you don’t need an enlarger). He took pictures and sold small collections to his buddies so they could send pictures home. There was a shoe box full of these pictures in the attic (I did spend a good deal of time exploring the stuff in the attic.). My dad helped me take and develop pictures and I also printed some of his pictures from the war. I was not particularly careful and he did not put a lot of personal value on the negatives. Over time the collection was kind of depleted and somehow disappeared. What a resource the collection would be now!
We worry about leaving our kids money. That was the way my dad was. You can always make more money. Once the pictures are gone, they are gone forever.
NAEP results are in and you are likely to encounter a discussion from most news outlets (see NY Times article – I knew open access to the NY Times would be useful). Really short version – math scores are up a little, reading results are mixed, various political groups interpret differently (NCLB may be good or it may be misdirected).
If you are interested in NCLB, I would offer Volume 44, No.3, American Educational Research Journal as suggested reading. This is a special issue on NCLB and there are several analyses to review. I would suggest the following (my bias is obvious in previous posts) – Hursh, D. (2007). Assessing no child left behind and the rise of neoliberal education policies. AERJ, 44, 493-518.
One short quote from the conclusion (p. 514):
…, I strongly suggest that the exams used to assess schools have increased the number of high school dropouts. They have no made curricula more rigorous, and neither have they closed the achievement gap …
The NY Times has given up trying to make money (with the exception of ad revenue) from its web site (article from the Times on decision). Perhaps of interest to history buffs, most of the archives will also be available. The NY Times site claims to be the most visited web site associated with a newspaper. The explanation for the change is unclear in the Times article, but the decision is similar to that of CNN in abandoning subscription access. I suppose the “information wants to be free” advocates will argue this move was inevitable.
I can’t claim to be a regular NY Times reading in hard copy or online. I tend to read what some of the editorial writers have to say in the books that eventually incorporate their work. Perhaps I will now make an effort to follow the education section.
I am working on the appropriate solution for a hypothetical problem. Let’s say you are searching for images for your own use and you locate an appropriate image within Flickr. The page claims the image is available under Creative Commons and the license says “attribution”.
What is the appropriate attribution? The owner of the image is Grabe (yes, that’s me), but one does not necessarily have to use a real name and Grabe is vague anyway.
The image came from the page – http://flickr.com/photos/grabe/1397669571/ – and providing this information allows me to demonstrate I am not claiming the image is mine. Still – I have not identified the provider.
If I have a Flickr account myself, there is a way to send a flickr email to another flickr person. Perhaps, the appropriate solution is to send an email and ask grabe just what type of attribution he/she would like.
Here is another suggestion from my wife. Mindmap generates an interactive “mind map” based the content of wikipedia. Enter a search term and that term becomes the starting point for the map. I am guessing what the application does is built the representation based on the embedded links (note correspondence between wikipedia entry and mind map below). I would have to think a bit to determine if I felt a “mindmap” met my definition of concept map. I assume the premise is that a mindmap captures the structure of the author(s). Perhaps it just captures the list of things they could find links to.
Anyway, it is interesting and worth a look.
From a map node, you can link to the wikipedia entry or expand the map.
It would be interesting if you could direct Mindmap at any mediawiki site, but at present the selection is limited to wikipedia versions.
Hmm – is authored hypermedia a representation of personal mental structure? Sounds like a research topic.
While much has been made of the digital native vs. immigrant distinction, there has often been little data on just how involved individuals of different ages are with specific technologies. Reuters now reports the results of a recent survey arguing that there is little age difference in cell phone use. I do understand that level of use is only one factor in what some regard as an important group difference. Supposedly having grown up with a technology results in a different perspective in contrast to having come to that technology after experiences with another way of doing things.
Perhaps I respond in defense of those of my age, but why would having one perspective be superior to having multiple perspectives? The fact that I have used a dial telephone, used a phone on a party line, and used a cell phone means I have multiple rather than a single perspective on issues (analog accent or not). Why do some continue to argue that this is a limitation?
For example, the common problem in which some say inappropriate things in social networking environments forgetting others may eventually become aware is hardly a revelation to me. Anyone who has used a party line phone system soon learned that one should never assume a discussion is private. Talk about social networking revisited.
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