Virtual World toolkit for educators – a project in development
November 29, 2007
New Nexus project would allow educators to use virtual world technologies in their teaching practice, still keeping in mind the challenges that such a project presents, writes Tripp Robbins, for a Terra Nova blog.
“We are not naive about the challenge that this project poses; we are inspired by the potential it shows.” he writes. The project would give the educators a linchpin to create Virtual Learning Modules, either freely available on the web for public sharing, or reserved to some commercial-use organization, or both. “The possibilities are staggering,” Robbins writes.
Robbins sees two possibilities of developing such a “Dream Kit.” One is to use Open Source, volunteer approach, and the other would be to rely on charity organization to hire the best programmers and artists in the industry. Robbins wonders whether using one or the other would be best, or, yet, having a hybrid approach would move things forward faster and more efficiently.
On literacy level in the UK young: reeding riting and ranting
November 29, 2007
Chris Meade pleads, on the if:book blog, for timely placement of books into “children’s hands and homes at key moments in their early lives,” while backing the benefits of the digital.
As Meade mentions, currently the
Meade advocates that the use of electronic resources does not necessarily mean evil. It can actually help the kids, in his opinion, to “grow into creative readers and writers of the world they inhabit.”
Picture: Flickr
The p2p future of Philanthropy, Fundraising, and Advertising
November 28, 2007
Peer-to-peer techniques can be equally effective in all three: advertising, fundraising and philanthropy, writes Peter Deitz on his micro-philanthropy blog. Real, ordinary people can sell, fundraise and recruit votes better and more effectively than some professionals, Deitz suggests.
“Foundations are asking non-specialists to “crowd source” their grant recipients,” Deitz writes. “Development teams are using “wired fundraisers” to increase online donations. Companies are relying on “fansumers” to promote their latest products.”
The earlier non-profits, phylantropists, business and politicians start combining the effectiveness of person-to-person means and still keep the privacy ethics high, the higher the benefits, to all the parties.
“The pioneers who balance privacy and fraud concerns with the opportunity for greater sales, donations, and grants will reap rewards for their early adoption,” Deitz concludes and calls for an open discussion on the topic in the “Tactical Philanthropy community and the larger world of emerging philanthropy bloggers.”
Socializing proves to stand behind brain evolution
November 28, 2007
Peter Pirolli raises an interesting question, on his Augmented Social Cognition blog, of what the social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Wikidashboard “buy us” as a mankind, directly relating the size of mankind’s social circle to the size of the human brain.
He builds on the findings that “neocortext ratio for various species is strongly correlated with the average size of the social group for members of that species (and for humans that number is 150 at the limit).”
“Recent evidence suggests that [the neocortex ratio] is more specifically correlated with pairbonding,” Pirolli writes on the blog. “But even more importantly, it appears that increasing sociality increases reproductive success. So social cognition increases fitness.” Which translates into the more social connections one has, and the closer one keeps up with their acquaintances and their relations, and the in-between relations, the wiser one becomes.
Pirolli quotes the findings of comparative biologists, who claim that “our ability to maintain awareness and reason about complex social relations buys us something important.”
“So, assuming that things like Twitter and Facebook (or the Wikidashboard) and the rest give us greater social awareness and reasoning—what exactly does it buy us?” Pirolli concludes.
Photo: Flickr
Libel lawsuit against citizen journalism blog owners
November 28, 2007
This libel lawsuit against blog-site owners, where their responsibility is allegedly equaled to that of a traditional publisher, “is wrong as a matter of law,” writes David Ardia on Citizen Media Law Project blog. The suit, brought against the co-founders and owners of iBrattleboro.com, a citizen journalism website, refers to a comment posted by one of the website’s visitors. The plaintiff’s lawyer claims the publishers of the site failed to “edit out or e-mail [the commenter] and say ‘we can’t publish it as it stands’.”
According to section 230 of Communications Decency Act (”CDA 230″) the blog owners are exempt of liability for the visitors’ comments, Ardia writes. The owners of the site, Chris Grotke and Lise LePage, expressed willingness to comment on the case, but only after they are legally allowed to. “What we can say is that we believe the suit to be without merit and will be taking appropriate legal action,” they said.
Still, the lawsuit is out, and Citizen Media Law Project promises to follow the case as it goes.
Photo: Flickr
In-game advertising data playing double-edged design role
November 26, 2007
Tony Walsh notes in his post on Clickable culture that claims of in-game advertising analysis helping the game developers design better levels can prove offhand and precipitous.
The idea builds on the analysis of the player behavior in the game. The amount of time the player spends idle, or gazing, or observing, in certain 3D environments – according to the in-game advertising analysis tools – could be taken into consideration when planning and designing new game levels.
Walsh wrinkles over the danger of having standardized – instead of “more interesting or artistic” – game levels that would rather benefit the advertiser than satisfy the increasing demands of a gamer.
What if carbon can’t be captured until 2025?
November 25, 2007
As James Kanter writes on his International Herald Tribune blog, the prospect of halting the peak of greenhouse gas emissions within next 8 years seems slim, if the assertions of CO2 panel experts prove true.
Shell’s Future Fuels and CO2 department general manager, Gijs van Breda Vriesman, said the 2020 deadline for a widely commercially available technology, called Carbon Capture and Sequestration, was unreachable.
He gave a better estimate – 2025. Yet, in the world’s situation of having to significantly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to prevent dreadful effects of global warming, 10 years later seems too late.
Bloggers versus Journalists - a rerun on free speech
November 25, 2007
Questioning bloggers’ judgment when expressing an opinion, based on facts, might strike as an ugly self-defense measure of journalism, full of itself. A debate, powered by Offstumped, sparks the reaction of bloggers to journalists’ attacks against the credibility of opinions, posted in blogosphere. This seems to be a bit hypocritical, as the argument of journalists can be two-fold, firing back at them: aren’t reporters supposed to deliver enough facts, to let the reader form their own conclusions and opinions? The bloggers use the argument of free speech, which is based on facts delivered with accuracy by the journalists themselves, and the very nature of an opinion, which cannot be right or wrong. What seems to be a yet another wave of war between journalists and bloggers, receives a round of well-grounded, analytical replies from the representatives of blogosphere.
Have microstocks hurt stock photography?
November 25, 2007
Professional stock photographers faced a dangerous prospect of being served by amateurs, when the concept of microstock had developed about a year and a half ago. Yet, although the opinions vary, some professionals see both the microstock and the traditional Rights-Managed or Royalty-Free photography stocks as profitable and rightful-to-live offers that satisfy existing demands on the imagery market.
One year and a half down the road, the microstock business seems to be successful and at the same time fails to usurp the market share from traditional photography. Although some traditional stock websites have suffered a decline they still serve the clients they had been selling picture to before the microstock. That microstock seems to boom exceptionally may be a simple question of a well-satisfied demand for low-cost, instantly available images.
A light-powered, toothpaste-free toothbrush
November 25, 2007
The new light-powered toothbrush, currently undergoing tests among 120 students in