An article in The Atlantic describes Christina Dunbar-Hester’s PhD course at Rutger’s. It sounds absolutely fascinating, delving into media theory, technological determinism and change, politics, etc…
>In order to answer these questions (or at least deeply consider them), the course starts with an introduction to theories of technology and technological change, drawn primarily from the scholarly field of Science & Technology Studies. From these readings, we gain a nuanced sense of how social relations get “inside” technology, including the assumptions about society that may come to be embodied in technical artifacts and knowledge. So for the first half or so of the course, we are mainly just getting our feet wet with these theories of technology. > >However, I teach in Rutgers’ School of Communication & Information, and this course is for our Ph.D. students. So the challenge is to make these general theories about technology, culture and change relevant for thinking about media and information technologies specifically. Fortunately, this is becoming easier to do: more work that forges links between these areas of scholarship is coming out all the time, which is exciting and makes now a great time to offer this course.
I’ve grown to feel completely disenfranchised as a Canadian citizen, at all levels of government. I’ve tried voting with my head. I’ve tried voting with my heart. Every election, I feel as though my vote is wasted. So, now I’m trying something different.
With the civic election next month, and with what will hopefully be a federal election in the next few months, I’ve decided to base my vote on a single issue.
The full comic is worth a read as well. It’s possibly true that the puppetmaster has no evil intentions, but that doesn’t mean that we should continue to give anyone power over all of our online presences.
GMail’s new Priority Inbox sounds interesting - a special inbox with just the messages that are important to you, likely from people you care about. There’s likely some magic special sauce in the Priority algorithm, but a simple facsimile can be created using a Smart Mailbox in a standard email app.
I have a group in my address book:
It currently has 96 people in it. People that I would stop what I’m doing to read a message from.
> George Siemens, along with colleague Stephen Downes, tried out the open course concept in fall 2008 through the University of Manitoba in a course called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, or CCK08 for short. The course would allow 25 students to register, pay and receive credit for the course. All of the course content, including discussion boards, course readings, podcasts and any other teaching materials, was open to anyone who had an internet connection and created a user profile.
Google is not ours. Which feels confusing, because we are its unpaid content-providers, in one way or another. We generate product for Google, our every search a minuscule contribution. Google is made of us, a sort of coral reef of human minds and their products. And still we balk at Mr. Schmidt’s claim that we want Google to tell us what to do next. Is he saying that when we search for dinner recommendations, Google might recommend a movie instead? If our genie recommended the movie, I imagine we’d go, intrigued. If Google did that, I imagine, we’d bridle, then begin our next search.
I just found this introduction to eLearning and blended learning video, produced by the United Nations University Vice Rectorate in Europe (UNU-ViE). It’s very basic, but that’s the point of the video. Could come in handy in talking with faculty members - sometimes they have interesting concepts of what eLearning is (and isn’t)…
I recently signed up for a cell phone plan. The cheapest deal I could manage was $50/month, plus taxes and fees, and involved a 3 year contract commitment. That’s $1800 over the term of the contract. And I got to pay a substantial chunk of the price of the phone, as well.
If I let myself be talked into the various bells and whistles offered as add-ons to the monthly plan, I’d be paying nearly $100/month. For a phone.
George posted a quick note about how an interview he gave for an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education was published. Behind a paywall. The Chronicle took an interview, freely given by everyone (except, I assume, for the paid interviewer and editor?), on the topic of openness in education, and decided to lock it behind a mechanism constructed to block access to it.
I’m not going to link to The Chronicle article (or, more accurately, anything on The Chronicle, ever), so here’s a screenshot of the short snippet of the article that they publish “openly” - I love how they cut it off in mid-sentence… Taking the what? I must know! Here’s my credit card number! Please! Take it!
