Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Tantalizing hints of the Knowledge Navigator. Most web presentations of data are designed for passive viewing, not active analysis. For an example of what things could and should be like, check out episode 10 of The Screening Room. At the six-minute mark in that screencast about Dabble DB, a web database, Smallthought's Avi Bryant -- who is analyzing a set of data about investments -- wants to look at investments by U.S. state as a function of population. The current dataset includes states but not their populations. To add population data, Avi visits a website that lists states and populations, activates a JavaScript bookmarklet, and imports two columns from the HTML table on that web page. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] ... [Jon's Radio] 11:07:05 PM      Google It!.

e-Assessment Lit Review. I saw this literature review on e-assessment pointed to by Jeremy Williams (The Authentic Assessment Website), and thought I'd better mark this one down. I love Jeremy's description; he calls it "... little UK-centric, but a jolly good read all the same." Literature Review of E-assessment (A Report for NESTA Futurelab, Jim Ridgway and Sean McCusker, School of Education, University... [Michelle's Online Learning Freakout Party Zone] 11:02:33 PM      Google It!.

Design ideas from social networking sites?. Rick West makes some great points in this posting concerning the appeal of social networking sites, especially for young adults in contrast to the struggles that are often inherent in cultivating engaging and constructive asynchronous discussion. The major difference that I see between social networking sites utilizing Web 2.0 technology and traditional asynchronous discussion boards in closed learning management system (LMS) is the where the locus of control lies. Rick asks, [base "]Can we engineer better educational online communities by copying ideas from informal and commercial communities?[per thou] I think the answer is obviously yes[sigma].by placing the control for the creation of learning communities on the students. In the typical learning management system, the instructor has control over the creation of communication environments and the students contribute on the terms of the instructor. Rather, social networking software puts the author in total control. Secondly, I see ease of access as another powerful component of all popular social networking software today. Communication isn[base ']t restricted to only the members of the learning community but rather the author can decide who s/he wants to have access to their thoughts and ideas. Solutions like Elgg allow for students to not only control who has access to their ideas but also the ability to invite others to subscribe to their ideas, forming organic communities of inquiry. Again[sigma]the control lies with the students rather than the instructor. Rick cited a couple of articles (below) that I[base ']m looking forward to taking a closer peek at. References: Hewitt, J. (2005). Toward an understanding of how threads die in asynchronous computer conferences. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 14(4), 567-589. McPherson, K. (2006). Whose space is it, anyway? Mercury News. Accessed 13 Mar 2006 from m.... Van der Meijden, H. & Veenman, S. (2005). Face-to-face versus computer-mediated communication in a primary school setting. Computers in Human Behavior, 21(5), 831-859. [EDUCAUSE CONNECT blogs] -- If one were to push further in the suggested direction then the "instructor" becomes only an evaluator who enable grade credit - like the ancient Chinese education system -- the learning in at the initiative of the learner and the testing is rigourously standardized.  Minimizing the intellectual guidance of the instructor in the form of open social networks assumes graduate level students and may work well in that venue, but for the aspiring high school graduate the prospect of managing the time spent getting a degree without insturctor guidance seems overly daunting at this stage of the game.  Perhaps with the development of educational agents to filter and organize the content of educational opportunities into a personally meaninful flow of concepts and interactions there there would be a better situtation for self-directed learning at the undergraduate level. -- BL 10:20:39 AM      Google It!.

Planes to Use Apple iPods. Airline passengers will soon be able to connect their iPods to in-flight entertainment systems and watch their favorite videos. By REUTERS. [NYT > Technology] 10:18:01 AM      Google It!.

Transec, a Secure Authentication Tag Library. Lado Kumsiashvili writes, "Micromata has placed Transec, a secure authentication JSP tag library, under the GPL. While developing the Polyas (German) online voting system, Micromata invented a component for secure PIN/password input via untrusted, insecure browsers. Transec is freely embeddable and redistributable for non-commercial projects; a commercial license is also available. Spyware in the form of Browser Helper Objects and keyloggers can capture user keyboard input even if it is encrypted. Transec enables user authentication using a 100% server-side control [~] only images and coordinates are transferred to the untrusted browser. The browser sends coordinate information of each click on this imagemap directly back to the server, and the server responds with a new image. If the browser is infected by malware, it can't give up the PIN/password since the browser doesn't know this information. The Java code and a demo application are available at the Transec homepage." I have heard tales of malware that can grab a screen capture in the vicinity of the cursor at any mouse-click. Does anyone know if such a threat actually exists?[Slashdot] 10:15:43 AM      Google It!.

Corporate Propaganda Still On the News. mofomojo writes, "Democracy Now! reports that a new study by the Center for Media and Democracy says Americans are still being shown corporate public relations videos disguised as news reports on newscasts across the country. In April, the Center identified 77 stations using Video News Releases in their newscasts; the findings led to an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission. A followup study has found that 10 of those stations are still airing VNRs today, for a new total of 46 stations in 22 states." From the article: "Most of the VNRs have aired on stations owned by large media conglomerates such as News Corp., Tribune, and Disney. They've also been sponsored by some of the country's biggest corporations including General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, and Allstate Insurance."[Slashdot] 10:13:43 AM      Google It!.

Physicists Promise Wireless Power. StrongGlad writes "The tangle of cables and plugs needed to recharge today's electronic gadgets could soon be a thing of the past. Researchers at MIT have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power wirelessly to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players. In a nutshell, their solution entails installing special 'non-radiative' antennae with identical resonant frequencies on both the power transmitter and the receiving device. Any energy not diverted into a gadget or appliance is simply reabsorbed. The system currently under development is designed to operate at distances of 3 to 5 meters, but the researchers claim that it could be adapted to factory-scale applications, or miniaturized for use in the 'microscopic world.'"[Slashdot] 10:12:05 AM      Google It!.

Google Sponsors the LinuxBIOS project. Rockgod noted that "The LinuxBIOS project aims to take down the last barrier in Open Source systems by providing a free firmware (BIOS) implementation. LinuxBIOS celebrates its Sixth anniversary this year, and has an installed base of over 1 million LinuxBIOS systems. With the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, that number is expected to exceed 10 million users in 2007. LinuxBIOS supports 65 mainboards from 31 vendors in v1 and another 56 mainboards from 27 vendors in v2"[Slashdot] 10:10:43 AM      Google It!.

Wikipedia Explodes in China. eldavojohn writes "The Chinese have recently been allowed to enjoy the Chinese version of Wikipedia now that the ban has been lifted. And the result is an explosion in use after being banned for a year. From the article, "Activity on nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation's Chinese Wikipedia site has skyrocketed since its release, which Internet users in China first started reporting on Nov. 10. Since then, the number of new users registering to contribute to the site has exceeded 1,200 a day, up from an average of 300 to 400 prior to the unblocking. The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before, with the total now surpassing 100,000, according to the foundation." No one's sure how long this will be available to the People's Republic of China but hopefully the government will recognize that at least a significant part of the populace enjoys a Wikipedia community."[Slashdot] 10:09:21 AM      Google It!.

Monitor a Linux box With Machine Generated Music. mcappel writes "Linux and Unix admins are familiar with vmstat and top, which are visual tools displaying the health of a computer. chordStats adds a new interface to a system monitoring setup [~] information passed through tone, timbre, and harmony. IBM's Nathan Harrington, who wrote Knock Some Commands Into Your Laptop, created a simple Perl script to send note events to FluidSynth that forces various system events to be interpreted as a part of a harmonious interval, and looks at options for enhancing a musical system monitor."[Slashdot] 10:08:04 AM      Google It!.