Sunday, 6 October 2013

Learning 2030

This is part of a series of Canadian videos which I found posted on the google plus group
Education Revolution to which I belong:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104214480154015052148

I also belong to the google plus community groups:

Technology and Innovation in Education
Gamification in Education

and have just been accepted as a member of
MOOC and Online Education (learning together)

I can be found in pearltrees as hyperscope where you will find well over 300 pearls and numerous groups connected with education and English as a foreign or second language.

Sugata Mitra: Build a school in the cloud, on Ted talks, is another excellent example of educational vision:

as is this video of Ken Robinson: How schools kill creativity

Here is a link to KnowledgeWorks summary of the five disruptions that will be involved in the shaping of future education in the coming decade:

http://knowledgeworks.org/future-of-learning

As an overview of where we have arrived and how we got there this article is well worth reading:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/05/14/how-the-internet-is-revolutionizing-education/

Rebecca Mackinnon video: Let's Take back the Internet!

Viral meme propagation

Sarah Boxer clarifies the term meme in her succinct 2004 New York times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/arts/26meme.html

I quote:

Buzzing the Web on a Meme Machine

By SARAH BOXER

Published: October 26, 2004

The Web is obsessed with anything that spreads, whether it's a virus, a blog or a rumor. And so the Internet loves memes.

Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene." Memes (the word rhymes with dreams and is short for mimemes, from the word mimetic) are infectious ideas or any other things that spread by imitation from person to person - a jingle, a joke, a fashion, the smiley face or the concept of hell. Memes propagate from brain to brain much as genes spread from body to body. Thus, Mr. Dawkins wrote, they really "should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically."

The World Wide Web is the perfect Petri dish for memes. Wikipedia, the free collaborative online encyclopedia, calls the Internet "the ultimate meme vector."

Citizen journalism

Quote from Wikipedia with my boldfacing:

'The concept of citizen journalism is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information." Similarly, Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of newsgathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a repose to shortcoming in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism." Jay Rosen proposes a simpler definition: "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another." Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists. Collaborative journalism is also a separate concept and is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together. Citizen journalism is a specific form of both citizen media and user generated content. By juxtaposing the term “citizen,” with its attendant qualities of civic mindedness and social responsibility, with that of “journalism,” which refers to a particular profession, Courtney C. Radsch argues that this term best describes this particular form of online and digital journalism conducted by amateurs, because it underscores the link between the practice of journalism and its relation to the political and public sphere.'

So are the following good examples: weblogs (blogs), facebook, twitter etc. What about the huffington post? Is that somewhere between or is it too professional now?

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-28/aol-waits-for-a-huffington-post-payoff

Most facebook and twitter comment seems to me to lack depth and reflection - I doubt that I would classify it as citizen journalism - more like citizen reaction I think. Blogs are much more often signposts to or reflections on opinion which is informed and relevant to the topic (s) in hand, in my opinion.

Internet Regulations

In advance of the Dubai conference the US position was made clear:

'U.S. tech companies warn of threat to Internet from foreign governments

By Cecilia Kang, Published: May 31, 2012 E-mail the writer

U.S. officials and high-tech business giants have launched an assault against what they view as a massive threat to the Internet and to Silicon Valley’s bottom lines: foreign governments.
In a congressional hearing Thursday, they will warn lawmakers of a growing movement led by China, Russia and some Arab states to hand more control of the Web to the United Nations and place rules on the Internet that the U.S. companies say would empower governments to clamp down on civil rights and free speech.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/us-lawmakers-push-to-prevent-global-internet-regulation/2012/05/31/gJQA7FpI4U_blog.html

As the Economist put it about the conference:

'But the internet seems to be an even more divisive than cold-war ideology. The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, where the ITU met to renegotiate the ITR, ended in failure in the early hours of December 14th. After a majority of countries approved the new treaty, Terry Kramer, the head of the American delegation, announced that his country is “not able to sign the document in its current form.” Shortly thereafter, at least a dozen countries—including Britain, Sweden and Japan—signalled that they would not support the new treaty either. (Update (December 14th, 3.20pm): Of the 144 countries which had the right to sign the new treaty in Dubai, only 89 have done so.)

The main issue was to what extent the internet should feature in the treaty. America and its allies wanted to keep it from being so much as mentioned—mainly out of fear that any reference to it whatsoever would embolden governments to censor the internet and meddle with its infrastructure.'

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/12/internet-regulation

The view that internet regulation can become increasingly intrusive is well made by Tommy Creegan:

'In addition, Congress is working on a renewed version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which gives a broad scope for various government agencies to obtain Internet users’ private browsing information. CISPA will be voted on this month.

Internet regulations come in different forms with different purposes. One: we see the government is interested in enforcing intellectual property laws. Two: government sees in the Internet untapped economic activity, from which taxes can be collected. Three: government wants the ability to collect data on citizens for “security” purposes, as demonstrated by the Patriot Act. TrapWire is another example of this that collects mass data and searches for potential terrorist threats.

Furthermore, the IRS has claimed agents do not need a warrant to read people’s private electronic communication. A recently released 2009 IRS handbook says the Fourth Amendment does not protect emails from IRS surveillance because Internet users “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.”

IRS: I am right here, and I have reasonable expectations for privacy in my online communication. I think it’s reasonable that agencies need a warrant to obtain and search my private messages. I think it’s unreasonable for me to pay taxes in another state for an online purchase. And I think it’s unreasonable that free speech and freedom of information are placed on the back burner to “intellectual property” protections.'

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/opinion/article_3503a1b6-a572-11e2-9cc7-0019bb30f31a.html

At present it seems to me that the concept of regulating the internet seems, on the surface, to be a sensible security measure to protect against malign influences (however we may define them). Yet at the deep structure level it can and will open the door to misuse of powers economically and politically, especially in the sphere of human rights and persecution.

The trick will be to find a method of regulation that guards against misuse but protects democratic rights. At the time of writing I feel that crating a watertight method of doing so is unrealistic.