[open education]

Anna Batchelder, Founder of Bon Education, has an interesting post on open education at Literacy is Priceless:

"'The advent of the Web brings the ability to disseminate high-quality materials at almost no cost, leveling the playing field…We’re changing the culture of how we think about knowledge and how it should be shared and who are the owners of knowledge.' - Cathy Casserly, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
With an increasing number of educators putting their lessons, curricula and learning objects online for others to use, customize and share, the open education movement is at a tipping point. That said, with so many educational resources available on the Internet, how does one go about finding the “perfect resource for class tomorrow” without losing too much time, money or sleep?
Before we get to the answer of this question, it is important to take a quick step back and understand “the anatomy of open education”…
What is Open Education?
Open education is a term that refers to education in which knowledge, best practices and learning objects (lessons, units, etc.) are shared freely via the Internet for others to use and under many licenses to modify and re-share.
Why Open Education?
The benefits of open education are many (customization, cost-savings, freedom to innovate, etc.), but one of the primary advantages of the open education movement is that of access. Anyone who has an Internet connection via computer or mobile phone can access millions of readings, videos, simulations, lesson plans, interactive courses and more… all for free!
Open Education and Teacher Effectiveness…
Research shows time and time again that teachers have the greatest potential to influence student achievement (North Central Regional Education LaboratoryMcKinsey 2007, Darling-Hammond 1997). Furthermore, the literature indicates that effective teachers tend to exhibit—commitment (to help every child succeed), information-seeking (intellectual curiosity), flexibilitypassion for learning (drive to support student learning) amongst several other traits (UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning 2004, Kemp & Hall, 1992). 2009, (willingness to differentiate), and
Luckily, the ethos of open education goes hand-in-hand with these findings, enabling educators endless opportunities to improve their craft. Thanks to the millions of people actively engaged in sharing their ideas and content online, teachers today have 24-7 access to continued learning opportunities, professional development, lesson planning guides and resources for differentiation. Take one look at sites like Edutopia, Discover Ed, and Connexions and you will be blown away by the number of free resources available to help educators continuously improve the content area knowledge, skills and expertise they bring to the classroom.

Where to Start—Finding the Perfect Open Education Resources for your Classroom

The following is a curated list of open education resources targeted at helping K-12 teachers find classroom and professional development resources quickly, easily and for free:

• Curriki.org—“Curriki is a social entrepreneurship organization that supports the development and free distribution of open source educational materials to improve education worldwide.  The online community gives teachers, students and parents universal access to a wealth of peer-reviewed K-12 curricula, and powerful online collaboration tools”.
• FreeReading.net—“FreeReading is a high-quality, open-source, free reading intervention program addressing literacy development for grades K-3. Schools and teachers everywhere can use the complete, research-based 40-week program for K-1 students, or use the library of lessons to supplement existing curricula in phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. The site is also filled with free, downloadable supplemental materials including flashcards, graphical organizers, illustrated readers, decodable texts, audio files, videos and more”.
• OERCommons.org—“OER Commons has forged alliances with over 120 major content partners to provide a single point of access through which educators and learners can search across collections to access over 24,000 items, find and provide descriptive information about each resource, and retrieve the ones they need. By being ‘open,’ these resources are publicly available for all to use, and principally through Creative Commons licensing, many thousands are legally available for repurposing, modifying and improving”.

To find additional open education resources of note, visit Bon Education.

The Future Cost of Education
A recent post on Mashable, titled, “In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero,” author Josh Catone shares a recent statement by VC and “Hacking Education” organizer Brad Burnham. He writes:
Knowledge is, as the economists say, a non-rival good… If I eat an apple, you cannot also eat that same apple; but if I learn something, there is no reason you cannot also learn that thing. Information goods lend themselves to being created, distributed and consumed on the web. It is not so different from music, or classified advertising, or news.

A nice notion indeed!
To the sharing of knowledge!"

[facebook listens to the public]

After suffering public outrage (including a Facebook group) when Facebook changed their terms of service, Facebook has reverted to the original rules:

So, the people do have a voice. Shame that didn't work when around 2 million people protested against the war in London.

[webology and folksonomy]

The latest issue of webology is guest edited by Louise Spiteri at the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University, Canada. This entire issue is devoted to folksonomy. We all know that folksonomy was coined by Thomas Vander Wal: "Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information and objects (anything with a URL) for one's own retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment (usually shared and open to others). Folksonomy is created from the act of tagging by the person consuming the information." From the editorial: "The papers in this special issue reflect the diversity of approaches taken to create Web resources that reflect better the needs of end users. Particular emphasis is placed on the need to manage the increasing volumes of tags and information available on the Web, particularly as more people are becoming engaged with numerous social applications. As is discussed in some of the papers in this special edition, there is certainly scope to consider ways in which to combine the more traditional controlled vocabularies with the free-flowing nature of tagging." Bruce's report on the A Million Penguins wiki-novel fits in well with this issue of webology especially when read alongside Isabella Peters and Katrin Weller's article on wiki gardening as Bruce told us about "gardners" who tend the wiki novel, rather unlike vandels who go in to mess it up. However, Peters and Weller go a step further to suggest a way to weed out mess. They suggest introducing a tag garden that matches synonyms together. Any of you who have search on flickr or delicious (just two examples) will know that search for blog doesn't always turn up results that are tagged with blogger or blogging. But, more literate users realise this and begin to craft their own vocab. controls. I know I don't tag things with blogging or blogger anymore, I just use the term blog. "For our garden this means, that we have some plants that look alike, but are not the same (homonyms), some plants which can be found in different variations and are sometimes difficult to recognize as one species (synonyms) and others which are somehow related or should be combined. Thus, we have to apply some garden design or landscape architecture to turn our savage garden. We may use labels for the homonyms, and establish flower beds as well as paths between them and pointers or sign posts to show us the way along the synonyms, hierarchies and other semantic interrelations (see Figure 2). We need some additional structure and direct accessibility to provide additional forms of (semantic) navigation (besides tag clouds, most popular tags and combinations of tags-user-document co-occurences)."

Peters, Isabella & Weller, Katrin (2008). "Tag gardening for folksonomy enrichment and maintenance." Webology, 5(3), Article 58. Available at: http://www.webology.ir/2008/v5n3/a58.html.

[employment - research positions]

Localisation is the adaptation of digital content to culture, locale and linguistic environment. The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) is a large Academia-Industry partnership, funded by Science Foundation Ireland and Industry Partners, with over 100 researchers developing novel technologies addressing the key localisation challenges of volume, access and personalisation. The major research strands within the CNGL are Integrated Language Technologies (ILT), Digital Content Management (DCM), Localisation Technologies and Processes (LOC) and Systems Framework (SF).
We are currently recruiting: Post-Doctoral Research Positions:
3 Post-Doctoral Positions in ILT (MT, NLP)
1 Post-Doctoral Position in DCM (Ontology Induction)
3 Post-Doctoral Positions in LOC (Workflow, Translation, Multilingual Content)
Post-Doctoral positions are fixed term contracts.

Salary: €38,623-45,401 per annum (depending on experience).

Starting dates: now – November 2008.

PhD Studentship Research Positions:
5 PhD Studentships in ILT (MT, NLP) 5 PhD Studentships in DCM (IR/IE, QA, Ontology Induction)
8 PhD Studentships in LOC (Workflow, Translation, Multilingual Content)
PhD positions are typically for 4 years.
Stipend: €16,000 (tax free) plus payment of registration fees.
Starting dates: now – November 2008. CNGL provides state-of-the-art research facilities and supports travel to present at conferences.

Please visit http://www.cngl.ie/vacancies.html for more detailed information on each position. The successful candidates will join well established research groups at Dublin City University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and University of Limerick, Ireland.

Deadline for applications: 31st August 2008 To apply send CV and contact details of 2 referees to info@cngl.ie quoting the appropriate reference (see http://www.cngl.ie/vacancies.html). Please also use for informal inquiries.

[identity and punctuation]

What punctuation mark are you?

You Are An Exclamation Point

You are a bundle of... well, something. You're often a bundle of joy, passion, or drama. You're loud, brash, and outgoing. If you think it, you say it. Definitely not the quiet type, you really don't keep a lot to yourself. You're lively and inspiring. People love to be around your energy. (But they do secretly worry that you'll spill their secrets without even realizing it.) You excel in: Public speaking You get along best with: the Dash

Try the quiz for yourself here.

[social networking profiles - which one are you]

This is a list compiled by Malene Charlotte Larsen who is researching a ph.d on young people and social networking at Aalborg University, Denmark. The list of 35 perspectives is published in the Social Computing Magazine. I'll copy here just a few:

"The consumer perspective
Social networking sites are money-making machines creating a need for added value among young people causing them to spend all their pocket money on extra features such as VIP profiles, widgets, gifts for friends and so on.
The youth perspective
Social networking sites are places that help young people be young and let them “practice” youth. Therefore, the sites are mainly a reflection of youth culture.
The friendship perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people can maintain and nurse their existing (offline) friendships and create new (online) friendships.
The identity perspective
Social networking sites are spaces for identity construction. Here, young people are continuously constructing, re-constructing and displaying their self-image and identity. Also, the network sites make them co-constructors of each other’s identities.
The language perspective
Social networking sites aggravate the written language of young people. They develop bad habits of misspelling on purpose, which makes them unable to write correctly. On the other hand, their online language is really creative and they do know how to tell right from wrong.
The public perspective
Social networking sites are “open diaries” of young people, but they do not think about the fact that the whole world can read their text and see their pictures online.
The social perspective
Social networking sites make young people more social and help them communicate with others. Especially, the sites help youngsters cope with shyness or loneliness.
The technological perspective
Social networking sites are part of the Web 2.0 and social software technology generation in which case focus on the technological possibilities is predominant.

[privacy policy - i think not...]

*Beware of other sites infiltrating your address book...sadly, Flixster is not the only one.* (See this article from two years ago!)


Is Flixster a Big Fat Spammer? Are They Accessing Your AOL or Hotmail Address Book? The Answer to at Least One of These is Yes!

Recently I started getting invitations to join Flixster from both friends and complete strangers. Obviously, this was spam, but why were these complete strangers sending it to me? (For that matter, why were these friends inviting me to join Flixstr, which is a social networking site geared towars movie reviews?)

Here’s what the typical spam invitation for Flixster looked like:
–
To: me@example.com
Subject: John D has sent you a private message

http://www.flixster.com/servlet/invite/619917699cmcA619918163Btlkhlp3Cm

John D

This note was sent via Flixster by John D (johndoe@hotmail.com) to me@example.com. If you prefer not to receive emails like this, tell us here: http://www.flixster.com/DoNotSend.jsp?e=me@example.com.
–
Then I noticed two curious things: 1. All the spam was coming from AOL and Hotmail accounts - real AOL and Hotmail accounts of real people, and 2. It was coming not just to me, but to role accounts at our organization - for example support@example.com. These people had really contacted us for support at one time or another, but a generic role account would hardly be a friend to whom you would send an invitation.

Then I got email from someone, a professional contact with an address at AOL, asking me (and everyone else in his address book) to please ignore the invitation to join Flixster which appeared to come from him but which, he said, had actually been sent by Flixster.

So, what is actually going on?

We decided to investigate, and here is what we found:

Once you join Flixster, Flixster commandeers your address book - your list of all of your personal contacts in your AOL (or Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail) address book - and sends out an invitation to join Flixster “from” you. Oh sure, you enable them to do it - but clearly enough people are unaware of what they are doing that it’s causing a problem.

How?

Flixster is getting their AOL (and Hotmail, and Yahoo, and Gmail) passwords!

Read on.

Using AOL as an example, when you first sign up for Flixster using an AOL email address, after you select a username and password, the very next screen prompts you for your AOL password!

Here’s that screen - look how compelling it looks that you should give them your AOL password!:



If you use a Gmail address, you can get the same screen, only with the Gmail logo. Same for Hotmail and Yahoo.

Once you give them your password, they grab everyone’s email addresses from your AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail address book, and spam them with the invitation. In your name using your email address.

And they access your AOL account before you ever get to the next step. Even though they make you feel as if you have complete control over the process by telling you “On the next page you will be able to select whom to invite”, they already have your contacts by that point. How do we know they access your account first? Watch what happens if you give them the wrong password:



How compelling does that look?

Now, who do we blame for all this? Flixster for asking for the password? The user for giving it to them? After all, the user had to take an affirmative action to send you the invitation spam. But, do they feel compelled to send it? Do they even understand what they are doing?

Do they feel that their ISP has approved this or even partnered with Flixster because Flixster has placed their ISP’s logo right next to the password prompt?

Is this phishing in plain sight?

For their part, Flixster is not only unrepentant about their tactics, but brag about them. An article in American Venture Magazine following Flixster’s getting $2million in VC funding last month, included the following:

“But the site has also grown due to its aggressive viral marketing practices that have raised the hackles of some potential users. Such practices might include the automated selection of your email account’s entire address book in order to send a Flixster invitation to all of your contacts. (Emphasis ours.)

But such practices are becoming increasingly more common as new and even established web sites look to attract visitors without expensive marketing campaigns and a hefty advertising budget.

“I attribute our success to a combination of both of those,” Greenstein said. “We make it easy to invite your friends. Other sites don’t provide good ways for people to spread the word. And, we tried to build a really compelling site.”

Flixster’s Terms of Service start out by saying: “I can’t believe you really clicked on this. What are you trying to find out? Here is our privacy policy (link to privacy policy).”

If you actually go on to read their Terms of Service, however, you’ll find that they mention nothing at all about this. Nothing. One way or the other. But they do, ironically, state that it is a violation of their Terms of Service to “Create a false or misleading identity of, including, but not limited to, a Flixster employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity, for the purpose of misleading others as to the identity of the sender or the origin of a message or to harvest or otherwise collect information about others.”

Oh, and it’s also a violation to “Disseminate any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, ‘junk mail’, ’spam’, ‘chain letters’, ‘pyramid schemes’, or any other form of such solicitation, or to “Harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of Members, including usernames, from the Flixster.com website by electronic or other means.”

But, it’s ok, because their entire TOS is governed by their privacy policy, which states very clearly:

“Our Just-Say-No-to-SPAM Policy

We do not send SPAM of any kind. The only email you will get from us is a weekly update of the latest movies and quiz questions and, of course, any personal messages sent directly to you by your friends.”

Me? I’ve now got a Just-Say-No-to-Flixster Policy.



NOTE the comment from one of Flixster's founders:

Hi Anne,

I am one of the founders of flixster. I happened upon your article via technorati.

As a social community on the web, we take issues of email privacy and permission very seriously. Obviously i am saddened by the way your article describes us. Let me clarify a couple things…

1. We do allow users to access common web-address books to select friends to invite. The whole point of flixster is sharing movie ratings with friends - so making it easy to invite people is very important for us. (This is also incredibly common practice around the web - see yelp/facebook/myspace and many others that also offer it. Plaxo actually offers a popular widget to allow any site to offer this feature).

2. We don’t do anything tricky or misleading. The invite friends screens are all clearly explained (visible even in your slightly fuzzy screenshots) and to actually send anything the user must click a button labelled “send invitations” on a screen with their friends names and a list of checkboxes.

2. We use the user’s credentials only to retrieve the contact list and then do not store them in any way. We absolutely don’t do anything malicious or affect their account in any way.

3. The user is then ALWAYS given the list of contacts and asked to select whom to invite. We do not invite anyone they do not select. Of course we want people to invite friends to come try our site - but it absolutely does not benefit us to send invites they didn’t intend and end up with angry users.

4. Once registered, users can control their settings on every single email we send - from weekly movie summaries to new friend requests. If you choose, you can receive no email from us at all.

5. We never sell, rent or buy email addresses from anyone. We are a small company. The intro to our terms of service was intended to be funny. In no way does it reflect us taking privacy issues lightly - which is exactly why we wrote our privacy policy in such clear terms.

Anyway, if you have any questions or want to discuss with me, drop me a note at the email above. i appreciate that your efforts are to help protect people from malicious or dangerous sites - a noble endeavor - i’m really sorry that you felt like our site fell into that category.

Sincerely,
Joe G

[semantic web failure?]

Two days ago I blogged about the negative reactions My Space elicits by limiting personalisation (specifically in the case of adding particular widgets to My Space profiles). Interestingly, Stephen Downes sees this kind of mentality as securing the downfall of the semantic web. "The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating."

Read on:

"And I'm saying the semantic web won't work. Can't work.But how do you explain that intuition?And I was thinking about the edgy things of Web 2.0, and where they're working, and more importantly, where they're beginning to show some cracks.A few of key things today:- Yahoo is forcing people to give up their Flickr identities and to join the mother ship, and- MySpace is blocking all the widgets that aren't supported by some sort of business deal with MySpace- the rumour that Google is turning off the search APIAnd that's when I realized:The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating.We are talking about the most conservative bunch of people in the world, people who believe in greed and cut-throat business ethics. People who would steal one another's property if it weren't nailed down. People like, well, Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch.And they're all going to play nice and create one seamless Semantic Web that will work between companies - competing entities choreographing their responses so they can work together to grant you a seamless experience?Not a chance.Now - there are many technical reasons why I think the Semantic Web is a loser, along with some cultural and philosophical reasons. Namely: the people who designed the Semantic Web never read their epistemology texts.But the big problem is they believed everyone would work together:- would agree on web standards (hah!)- would adopt a common vocabulary (you don't say)- would reliably expose their APIs so anyone could use them (as if)Shall I go on?So...Maybe we won't be building clusters in Moncton, maybe we will. I don't know - I'd like to keep trying. Maybe people will listen to us or maybe (more likely) they won't.The future is not in the Semantic Web (or in Java, or in enterprise computing - all for the same reason). Careers based on that premise will founder. Because the people saying all the semantic-webbish things - speak the same language, standardize your work, orchestrate the services - are the people who will shut down the pipes, change the standards, and look out for their own interests (at the expense of yours)."