Banning Google?

I've just read the Guardian's interview with Tara Brabazon, Professor of Media Studies at Brighton University. She describes how she has banned the use of google by her first year students, by refusing to grade anything based on material she has not prescribed for them. From the article: "I give my first-years a good curriculum based on 200 extracts from refereed journals and books," she says, "and I'm happy for them to use those as sources exclusively."

At first this seems a little bizarre. Shouldn't the students be looking for reference material themselves? Emma Duke-Williams, on her blog, remarks "I'm assuming that she would allow them to use Google to locate other academics websites, to use Google Scholar to find new references..."

On one hand, I'm quite persuaded by Prof. Brabazon's explanation: "I'm not asking them to be independent scholars at this stage. Rather, I'm building what I call an information scaffold. I'm guiding them through complicated ideas, and getting them to read high-quality materials. Young minds are like diamonds. They need sharpening and polishing. Too many assumptions are made about their ability to manage the transition from school to university."

So, her first year students are not yet mature enough in their scholarship to make judgements about sources of information. I tend to agree with that. But I have to ask, when and how do we expect them to learn this skill?

The 1.3 kilogram computer vs the 3 ton computer?

With the launch of Apple's new MacBook Air this week, "the world's thinnest notebook", it might be worth reminding ourselves of how far technology has come since, say 1935?

The MacBook Air weighs a tiny 1.3 kilograms compared to the 1935 ballistic computer which weighed 3 tons!

Boing Boing published an interesting post citing part of an article published in the 1935 Science and Mechanics magazine, about the "Ballistic computer of 1935: the 3-ton "Big Brain" that could give a "not necessarily physical picture of the movement of one of the heavenly bodies, but a mathematical picture of it", in (eventual!) answer to the following problem: "... three or more heavenly bodies (like Earth, Sun, and Moon) are moving in their orbits at different rates of speed and varying distances, attracting each other. What will be the combined result of their forces, in changing the positions of each, in a given period?"

The Library of Congress Pilot Project on Flickr

Announced yesterday, The Library of Congress has uploaded more than 3,000 historical photographs to Flickr, the online photo sharing website. These are shared under a new No known Copyright Restrictions category, which means that the library is not the intellectual property owner. There are two possibilities:

1. There was a copyright and it was not renewed
2. The image is from a late 19th or early 20th century collection for which there is no evidence of any rights holder

The aim of the project is to invite us, the public, to tag the photographs, thus categorising them and making them searchable. Clever, eh?

There are two collections: 1930s-40s in Color; and News in the 1910s.

David Gallo: Underwater astonishments

Another great video from TED talks. This 6-minute presentation shows some incredible underwater creatures. I especially like the disappearing octopus at the end.

Digital Libraries & JeromeDL

Digitial Libraries have been growing in number and strength since the term was originally popularised in the early 1990s. There is something intrinsically human about our desire to catalog and organise our intellectual work into meaningful and sharable collections. More recently, many universities and indeed countries are building academic repositories of books, papers, theses and teaching materials.

Sebastian Kruk has been working on a semantic digital library within DERI for the past while, and recently has put together an evaluation version of their JeromeDL system. If you wish to check out what this system is all about he also has an introductory presenation that outlines how library resources can be enhanced for browsing and retrieval with various semantic empowered services inclucing social annotations.

There is also a guided evaluation available on http://q.digime.name/ which steps you through some tasks, prompting you to provide feedback at various stages. This is probably the best place to start, and will give you an opportunity to reflect on what you think of digital repositories and to contribute some thoughts on how they might be improved, along with getting to play with the system using the accompanying guided instructions.

Facebook and neocon libertarianism

Tom Hogkinson, writer of "How to be Idle" and "How to be free", comments on the ownership of Facebook in the Guardian yesterday. He provides details of the political/philosophical outlook of the three major funders/owners, painting a somewhat disturbing picture for those who are keen to upload their lives onto Facebook's server farm. Of course, two of the owners are major players in new technology investment and Facebook isnt their ownly 'finger in the pie'. The question of whether their attitudes matter or not, is a valid one, since many of us buy products and services from other companies without questioning their political standpoint. One of the main differences, though, with technologies such as Facebook is the gathering and harvesting of personal data and information and to make this point, Tom summarises some interesting paragraphs from the Facebook use agreement.

PS(3) I pod you

So, you've just installed your new flat-screen digital TV and Santa brought you an iPod, but all of that is, I'm afraid, so "last year". The must have technologies for the home of the future (remember the Jetsons?) are listed on the BBC's website today.

The Future of Learning in a Networked World

This is an unusual and open event, taking place from the 16th to the 28th of January, in various locations (Thailand, Sydney, New Zealand, etc.), but accessible via Skypecasts, Second Life and asynchronous discussions. It is called the Future of Learning in a Networked World, 2008. Topics are on a range of themes relating to networked learning.

I missed the first of these events in 2006, much to my regret. It seems such a novel and participative way of sharing ideas and experiences. To cite from the 2006 conference, this "...was variously referred to as an unconference, an open space conference, a bar camp, or even a travelling elearning circus or roadshow. Invited participants mostly referred to it as an unconference - the prefix ‘un’ denoted a definitive contrast from the typical style of ‘stand and deliver’ professional development event that we were all familiar with."

If you wish to participate in this years unfolding events, check out the itinerary, and subscribe to the blog to find out how to collaborate in the exchanges.

Have a mathemagical new year!

This from TED talks is worth a look for those of us whose brains are still groggy from the New Year celebrations.

Intel withdraws from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme

Intel has withdrawn from the OLPC programme following a 'philosophical impasse' (Chuck Molloy, Intel spokesman) between the two organisations.

The programme was founded in 2005 by Nicholas Negroponte, former Media Lab director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original concept was to offer a $US100 laptop to consumers. A prototype design of an OLPC laptop (using an Intel chip) was due to be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 7-10.

Intel have been developing their own inexpensive laptop, called 'the Classmate', and are targeting some of the same markets as the OLPC laptops. For further information click here.

Mobius Transformations Revealed

Following a link from the Chronicle blog, I have to recommend this video which explains Mobius transformations in a most beautiful way. It was released on YouTube in June and has been watched more than a million times. You can also download a high resolution version from the creators, Douglas Arnold and Jonathan Rogness, of the University of Minnesota.

EduSpaces shutting down

On Sunday (16th December) users of EduSpaces, the social website for the education community, received an email announcing that it was closing down on January 10th. This came as quite a surprise to the community of users and a lot of discussion followed, speculating on the reasons for the closure and wondering about alternative platforms for their content.

Yesterday evening an explanation was posted. In a nutshell:

When we launched the site three years ago, we were embraced by some members of the community and have enjoyed positive support and coverage overall. Contrary to popular opinion, we have never been affiliated with an institution or other backer; we personally funded it because we believed in it. We still believe in the underlying ideals we started with. However, we need to pay our bills, and it has become clear that the educational community is not the best way for us to do that; correspondingly, that is no longer our core focus. Running a community takes a lot of time and hard work, which we have no longer been able to give EduSpaces, and in that light, it seems both unfair and unwise to keep the site going.

Ben and Dave take care to highlight the distinction between EduSpaces and Elgg, which is still (according to them) going strong.