Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Should voters decide who serves as leaders on local school boards? A Florida state Senate bill would ensure that voters could elect school board chairs to four-year terms, “providing accountability and a consistent leadership,” reads a supportive editorial in the Orlando Sentinel:

This proposal is much better than an idea floated in past years that would have given a chairman far too much power. This version would not replace the appointed superintendent in the day-to-day running of districts, but would provide voters a strong voice to shape the agenda of the school board — someone to be accountable to all voters.

The state House has passed a similar measure.

Also in Florida, 44 out of 67 counties elect their school superintendents. One county in that state is considering changing that. The Palatka Daily News reports that in addition to Florida, some school districts in Alabama and Mississippi elect superintendents. Good idea? What do you think?

14 in-depth studies of works by various artists represented in the National Gallery of Art. The studies include information on the artist, technique, and history behind each painting. (National Gallery of Art)

McGill University has shut down the Web site of a professor who posted pictures of McGill students culled from Playboy’s current “Girls of the Top Ten Party Schools” issue.

The professor, Luc Devroye, posted the racy photos alongside a story noting that McGill had made Playboy’s list of North America’s most bacchanalian places to get a baccalaureate. (Evidently McGill’s ratio of women to men — and the prevalence of French-Canadians, whom the magazine describes as “famously open about sex” — pushed the university into the top ten.)

But campus officials didn’t think the images were appropriate for a Web site hosted by the university. Now Mr. Devroye’s site stores only a message expressing the professor’s displeasure with McGill administrators:

Luc Devroye’s site is now closed. He is still alive and kicking, but on April 24, 2006, censorship and political correctness won against academic freedom. To the students who are counting on my course notes: sorry. To the researchers who are trying to download my work: sorry…. We may be up again one day after purgatory. (CTV)

By sending data using different colors of light, operators of the ultra high-speed Internet2 network are hoping to boost the research and education network’s capacity by as much as 80-fold–better enabling researchers an…

Here’s yet another cool product from Google. It seems that they recently purchased SketchUp, an easy-to-use 3D modeling tool that I played with a bit a few months ago. The new product, Google SketchUp, is now free for personal use and integrated with Google Earth. Unfortunately for me, like Google Earth, Google SketchUp is only […]

The Chronicle of Higher Education actually has a good column on fair use entitled Digital Dissertation Dustup that looks at a dissertation which heavily uses traditionally copyrighted images and film clips as well as hypertext. I’ve cross-posted a longer entry on this at my blog, Techsophist. The situation in short was that Virginia Kuhn of University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee’s dissertation was in multimedia form, with generous use of clips and snips of different media, sometimes enbedded in other clips:

Although Ms. Kuhn lists detailed citations for all multimedia works in her thesis, she refused to ask permission to include them, because she insists that she should be able to cite them in the same way that print sources have long been cited. She says: “If you ask for permission, you’re screwed because you imply that you legally need it.”

Yes. Unfortunately there were some at the university that held up her dissertation’s approval fearing lawsuits from copyright holders. Later in the column (too much later) legal experts on copyright point out that what she did was clearly fair use and if challenged she would easily win. I concur with Kuhn’s stance and want to add that if we don’t avail ourselves of the fair use rights we have in academia, fair use will no longer be common use and research of any kind will become even more difficult and expensive than it already is.

The Chronicle of Higher Education actually has a good column on fair use entitled Digital Dissertation Dustup that looks at a dissertation which heavily uses traditionally copyrighted images and film clips as well as hypertext. I’ve cross-posted a longer entry on this at my blog, Techsophist. The situation in short was that Virginia Kuhn of University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee’s dissertation was in multimedia form, with generous use of clips and snips of different media, sometimes enbedded in other clips:

Although Ms. Kuhn lists detailed citations for all multimedia works in her thesis, she refused to ask permission to include them, because she insists that she should be able to cite them in the same way that print sources have long been cited. She says: “If you ask for permission, you’re screwed because you imply that you legally need it.”

Yes. Unfortunately there were some at the university that held up her dissertation’s approval fearing lawsuits from copyright holders. Later in the column (too much later) legal experts on copyright point out that what she did was clearly fair use and if challenged she would easily win. I concur with Kuhn’s stance and want to add that if we don’t avail ourselves of the fair use rights we have in academia, fair use will no longer be common use and research of any kind will become even more difficult and expensive than it already is.

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I can really identify with this on Barbara Ganley’s bgblogging:
As I have mentioned here several times, I am not a techie—I am a teacher of writing, all kinds of writing, and of Irish literature (when I get the chance).
I am not a techie either—like Barbara, I, too, am a teacher. I’ve taught mainly in […]

Okay, I made up the part about illegal aliens. But, here’s a report that claims “Wal-mart lobbyists have successfully waged a war against a fair viewpoint on Wikipedia’s Wal-mart page.” Apparently, hundreds of anonymous users are taking it upon themselves to keep the Wal-Mart Wikipedia page free from those leftist wackos who try to smear Wal-Mart’s plutonium image of dedicated public service. (What are they thinking?) Anyway, it’s a really interesting dilemma here that I think cleary demarcates the point where it’s difficult (if not impossible) for Wikipedia to maintain a neutral point of view. My prediction is that in a few years (or months?) all pages with a strong corporate interest will suffer the “Propagandistic Wal-Mart Wiki Mis-Editing Syndrome,” (or “I buy everything I need from gas stations and garage sales” for short).

Okay, I made up the part about illegal aliens. But, here’s a report that claims “Wal-mart lobbyists have successfully waged a war against a fair viewpoint on Wikipedia’s Wal-mart page.” Apparently, hundreds of anonymous users are taking it upon themselves to keep the Wal-Mart Wikipedia page free from those leftist wackos who try to smear Wal-Mart’s plutonium image of dedicated public service. (What are they thinking?) Anyway, it’s a really interesting dilemma here that I think cleary demarcates the point where it’s difficult (if not impossible) for Wikipedia to maintain a neutral point of view. My prediction is that in a few years (or months?) all pages with a strong corporate interest will suffer the “Propagandistic Wal-Mart Wiki Mis-Editing Syndrome,” (or “I buy everything I need from gas stations and garage sales” for short).

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Well, looks like everyone’s second favorite social software is opening its pages to people who, like aren’t in school anymore. Seems like the Facebook crew is getting restless and looking to expand beyond the tower. Just think–pretty soon facebook junkies could get their fix in their cubicle, reliving those glory days of facebooking in the computer classroom (like OMG, why can’t that stupid prof buzz off??). And this will no doubt spur productivity. Oops–sorry, I’m shaky. Been ten minutes since I last facebooked. If you want your name written in the facebook of life, you gotta stay active and try to get random people to be friends with you and stuff.

Peter Ford’s post, Coming of Age: An Introduction to the NEW worldwide web , led me to this wonderful book. The list of contributors is so exciting ….Peter, Ewan, Josie…..just to name a few. Peter explains how Terry Freedman was the force behind this project. Peter says:
From the outset, Terry’s view was that this should […]

Well, looks like everyone’s second favorite social software is opening its pages to people who, like aren’t in school anymore. Seems like the Facebook crew is getting restless and looking to expand beyond the tower. Just think–pretty soon facebook junkies could get their fix in their cubicle, reliving those glory days of facebooking in the computer classroom (like OMG, why can’t that stupid prof buzz off??). And this will no doubt spur productivity. Oops–sorry, I’m shaky. Been ten minutes since I last facebooked. If you want your name written in the facebook of life, you gotta stay active and try to get random people to be friends with you and stuff.

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