That data is misleading since it doesn't bother to state that Obama's campaign contribution page specifically requests that people not make donations from PAC or other funds, that the money come directly from an individual. Besides, it's obvious. Many, many people contributing to campaign funds have jobs and belong to organizations. It's always going to be possible to milk the data of a candidate who receives that much individual funding to show that there are some group trends in funding.
As long as an individual can freely chooses to contribute funds, if it happens that it is along the same lines as the other people in the company she works for or the organization she belongs to--even if the choice is influenced by other peoples' opinions in that organization--so be it. That kind of influence is how we function as social creatures. If a person is pressured by potential job loss or other kinds of unethical or immoral pressure, then there needs to be some kind of legislation in the same way that I am certain there is already regarding voting. But I don't think we can blame the candidate for this if it happens.
I'm afraid the video is simply a collection of statements that aren't backed up. I wouldn't let a student drop claim after claim without some evidence and call it good, and I can't do that here either. What does that say about Mike Gravel's integrity? Nothing good I'd say.
By the way, I'm looking at my cat sleep on the couch. I'm not seeing corruption everywhere I look, especially as I watch him sleep. When I look in the mirror, well, that's another story. Rotten to the core.
I have just finished sending audio comments to my online students using drop.io. Worked great. I have not tried the commenting and collaboration features yet.
If we enact the National Initiative for Democracy then the RIAA would go out of business. Not only that, but the having a national initiative system would be a permanent and long-term solution to prevent legislation from favoring corporate lobbies.
While not immediately addressing the intellectual property situation, that sort of reform would work here. If the lobbyists weren't telling and paying Congress to pass more restrictive copyright legislation, it's certainly doubtful that Congress would come up with it on their own.
It's really mind-boggling how non-progressive the MPAA, RIAA, SPA, etc, have been regarding this stuff. I guess they think the "more money = good" argument ought to shut up any resistance instantly. What other industry tries to make those claims? We'd be outraged if suddenly farmers decided to let half the population starve to death so that they could make more money selling wheat.
You'd think these guys could come up with something a bit more compelling by now. Heck, even I could come up with better reasons to support copyright protection than I've seen from them. They're being really crude and crass, and while their money still talks, I've noticed a few prominent musicians trying not to stand too close to them at parties.
I guess it's pretty clear that we're dealing with an embarrassingly corrupt political administration, and that has to be lowering morale and eroding faith in our government, especially with teens. Unfortunately, I've heard ZILCH from any of the presidential hopefuls about reforming the system, though I'd love to know Ron Paul, Nader, or even Edwards (yeah, he's gone) would say about it.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
It's tough getting away from textbooks for a lot of classes. Sometimes, though, it's possible. Relying on primary texts and using my brain and web-based materials, I kept keep my costs down this term. I'm having my fyc students read UnSpun by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson of factcheck.org. It only cost them $7.95. For a handbook, the rhet/comp wiki handbook facilitated by Matt Barton. My Shakespeare class, on the other hand, the text, used, was over $60, $100 or so new.
I think we can do more as individuals in this sense, than in a collective manner, though I'll be happy to be proved wrong. I think the state of Washington may have passed, or at least recently introduced, a law along these lines.
That feeling is a convention of the medium, like cheat codes and walkthroughs.
It's not a bug, it's a feature, like the intermission in a musical (and the show-stopping solo that ends the first act, and the rip-roaring ensemble number that starts the second act).
I agree that if gamers have to think too hard about what they're supposed to do next, they haven't fully entered the game, but most action games provide some sort of fictional overlay that gives context to the initial missions, just as most musicals provide that rip-roaring community number at the start of Act II in order to ramp the energy back up closer to where it was before the intermission.
Thank God this has been extended. It totally blew past me this time around. Does anyone have any exciting plans for a panel? I'm not sure at this point. Thinking about retooling my Google Office presentation that 4C's decided wasn't important enough. :-P
Then again, I did just write that book about computer role-playing games. Be easy enough to whip up something on that topic.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
I think you're right, cel4145. There seems to be a kneejerk reaction to "p2p": it's what the kids are using to hijack the campus servers to download terrabytes of mp3s and movies. Nevermind that it's probably used more for pr0n, but so it goes.
I'm a bit curious about how exactly you see p2p being used, though. Also, what's the issue with uploading this bib stuff into a database? I'm just not clear on the issues here.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
... or whatever style system a particular university chooses, I do see a lot of value in writing research papers (and, by extension, in teaching students to do it well).
Consider, for example, the case of a student who began with this as a guiding question for a research paper in a history class: "What is the long-term significance of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588?" By the time she narrowed the question sufficiently, read enough material to be able to formulate a supportable thesis, found the facts necessary to support that thesis, and pulled all of that together into a persuasive piece of writing, she would know a lot more than if she had simply read the textbook and listened to a lecture. (Not to imply that textbooks and lectures are the only other options, but they do seem to be the most common ones in an academic environment.)
Are history professors--and their peers in many other departments--wrong for giving assignments like this?
I apologize if I seem to be assuming. At USF we specifically teach MLA since a majority of the instructors (probably 90% and up) are already familiar with MLA. I do not assume that other universities follow the same guidelines.
Many people will accept the restrictions that come with the Kindle, but, they should know that their decision won't only affect just themselves. If enough people accept the DRM on ebooks, there will be no incentive in the future for Amazon, or anybody else to offer non-DRM ebooks. We are threatened by the market establishing a new cultural precedence in which books become bound to our devices, unable to be shared, and unable to be moved over to a new device or competing system. We must reject DRM on ebooks and we must reject the Kindle.
DONE!
This reminds me very much of a short story by Richard Stallman--Right to Read.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
A wiki is a collection of user-editable web document. If you think you can explain something better, you can change it.
Several of my freshmen seemed surprised when they learned that Wikipedia -- the most famous of all wikis -- is user-editable, and that anyone in the world can work on it. Wikipedia has a devoted community of amateur fact-checkers, so that any deliberate vandalism is quickly spotted and reversed. I tell my students that Wikipedia is an acceptable resource for an informal in-class oral presentation, or if they want to consult it to inform their written responses to assigned readings.
For cutting-edge topics that involve online culture, or that require the sorting out of huge amounts of information (such as ongoing coverage of natural disasters), Wikipedia is an excellent source. If the article has been edited recently, and has been edited numerous times, its probably a fairly good representation of the common understanding of a topic. From time to time I find inaccuracies and omissions, but I try to fix them.
Below, please find links to interesting assessment websites in education that may be of interest to you. If you know of other sites that would make good additions to this list, please contact Dr. Susan Platt. Send an E-mail to platt@csulb.edu.
nces.ed.gov
The website of the National Center for Education Statistics, which includes numerous statistics and sources pertaining to educational research.
aera.net
The website of the American Educational Research Association, which includes numerous divisions devoted to educational concerns at all levels.
crede.org
The website of the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence. A national institute of the Department of Education.
eric.ed.gov
The website of the Education Resources Information Center, sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education.
edtrust.org/edtrust/etw
The website of the Education Trust West, devoted to K-16 intiatives, state educational policy, and more.
cde.ca.gov/index.asp
The website of the California Department of Education.
The website of Education Week and Teacher Magazine, a source for K-12 news and analysis, research, teacher resources.
gseis.ucla.edu/heri/cirp.html
The website of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, a national program for collecting assessment data in higher education.
ahe.cqu.edu.au
The Assessment in Higher Education website of Central Queensland University; provides links to online articles, books, journals, and other relevant information pertaining to assessment in higher education.
acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/assmt/resource.htm
Internet Resources for Higher Education Outcomes Assessment from NC State University.
That's more or less how I feel about the matter. I don't teach any long research papers unless I'm forced. Thankfully, that isn't the case here. The only thing worse than reading 1,000 words of crapola is 12,000 words of it. Heck, I think I could teach a FYC just having them work on sentences. "The first project will be a simple, then a compound..."
Seriously, though, the MLA stuff is awful. I am so glad that it's built-into the new Word. I just tell students to use that; if it doesn't look 100% right, what does that tell you about MLA? That squadrons of professional engineers couldn't get it right, either? That should really tell you something.
Most people and many journals (at least in C&W) I know are switching to APA or some variation thereof.
BTW, there's an MLA template you can download from the MS Office site that works with the old Word. It's basic, but should serve in a pinch. 2007, though, is much nicer with the built-in bib tools, though you do have to monkey with the settings to do certain things (such as suppressing the author's name if it's been mentioned in the text.) Still, it's all worth it when you can generate a bib with one key press.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
That data is misleading since it doesn't bother to state that Obama's campaign contribution page specifically requests that people not make donations from PAC or other funds, that the money come directly from an individual. Besides, it's obvious. Many, many people contributing to campaign funds have jobs and belong to organizations. It's always going to be possible to milk the data of a candidate who receives that much individual funding to show that there are some group trends in funding.
As long as an individual can freely chooses to contribute funds, if it happens that it is along the same lines as the other people in the company she works for or the organization she belongs to--even if the choice is influenced by other peoples' opinions in that organization--so be it. That kind of influence is how we function as social creatures. If a person is pressured by potential job loss or other kinds of unethical or immoral pressure, then there needs to be some kind of legislation in the same way that I am certain there is already regarding voting. But I don't think we can blame the candidate for this if it happens.
-----
Charlie | cyberdash
The site is a little bit confusing to navigate. There is the data for Obama.
Well, you can always look it up. This is all public data. Open Secrets
I'm afraid the video is simply a collection of statements that aren't backed up. I wouldn't let a student drop claim after claim without some evidence and call it good, and I can't do that here either. What does that say about Mike Gravel's integrity? Nothing good I'd say.
By the way, I'm looking at my cat sleep on the couch. I'm not seeing corruption everywhere I look, especially as I watch him sleep. When I look in the mirror, well, that's another story. Rotten to the core.
bradley || bleckblog.org
cel4145, I am sorry to say that I have doubts about Obama's integrity. Check out Mike Gravel's recent video: Corruption
Just glancing at ijigg.com. Wondering--how do the artists make money with this? Or is this strictly a freebie type deal?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
may all the artists publish their own music on the internet with tools like ijigg.com
Michael P. Staton
www.edumorphology.com
I have just finished sending audio comments to my online students using drop.io. Worked great. I have not tried the commenting and collaboration features yet.
If we enact the National Initiative for Democracy then the RIAA would go out of business. Not only that, but the having a national initiative system would be a permanent and long-term solution to prevent legislation from favoring corporate lobbies.
Both Edwards and Obama have talked extensively about eliminating lobbyist influence from Congressional decision making. In fact, Lawrence Lessig has long been a big supporter of Obama because of his positions on corruption. Check out Obama's website and you'll see that the donations page specifically forbids campaign money from lobbyists, political action groups, or corporate funds.
While not immediately addressing the intellectual property situation, that sort of reform would work here. If the lobbyists weren't telling and paying Congress to pass more restrictive copyright legislation, it's certainly doubtful that Congress would come up with it on their own.
-----
Charlie | cyberdash
It's really mind-boggling how non-progressive the MPAA, RIAA, SPA, etc, have been regarding this stuff. I guess they think the "more money = good" argument ought to shut up any resistance instantly. What other industry tries to make those claims? We'd be outraged if suddenly farmers decided to let half the population starve to death so that they could make more money selling wheat.
You'd think these guys could come up with something a bit more compelling by now. Heck, even I could come up with better reasons to support copyright protection than I've seen from them. They're being really crude and crass, and while their money still talks, I've noticed a few prominent musicians trying not to stand too close to them at parties.
I guess it's pretty clear that we're dealing with an embarrassingly corrupt political administration, and that has to be lowering morale and eroding faith in our government, especially with teens. Unfortunately, I've heard ZILCH from any of the presidential hopefuls about reforming the system, though I'd love to know Ron Paul, Nader, or even Edwards (yeah, he's gone) would say about it.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
It's a poor joke at best--one in bad taste--but the entire RIAA/MPAA persecution of college students is no better than that.
Good article. Everyone ought to read it.
-----
Charlie | cyberdash
It's tough getting away from textbooks for a lot of classes. Sometimes, though, it's possible. Relying on primary texts and using my brain and web-based materials, I kept keep my costs down this term. I'm having my fyc students read UnSpun by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson of factcheck.org. It only cost them $7.95. For a handbook, the rhet/comp wiki handbook facilitated by Matt Barton. My Shakespeare class, on the other hand, the text, used, was over $60, $100 or so new.
I think we can do more as individuals in this sense, than in a collective manner, though I'll be happy to be proved wrong. I think the state of Washington may have passed, or at least recently introduced, a law along these lines.
bradley || bleckblog.org
That feeling is a convention of the medium, like cheat codes and walkthroughs.
It's not a bug, it's a feature, like the intermission in a musical (and the show-stopping solo that ends the first act, and the rip-roaring ensemble number that starts the second act).
I agree that if gamers have to think too hard about what they're supposed to do next, they haven't fully entered the game, but most action games provide some sort of fictional overlay that gives context to the initial missions, just as most musicals provide that rip-roaring community number at the start of Act II in order to ramp the energy back up closer to where it was before the intermission.
Dennis G. Jerz
Jerz's Literacy Weblog
Thank God this has been extended. It totally blew past me this time around. Does anyone have any exciting plans for a panel? I'm not sure at this point. Thinking about retooling my Google Office presentation that 4C's decided wasn't important enough. :-P
Then again, I did just write that book about computer role-playing games. Be easy enough to whip up something on that topic.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
Why upload files when you could share a drive folder with P2P? Why not just use Gnutella to create a scholarly p2p network?
-----
Charlie | cyberdash
I think you're right, cel4145. There seems to be a kneejerk reaction to "p2p": it's what the kids are using to hijack the campus servers to download terrabytes of mp3s and movies. Nevermind that it's probably used more for pr0n, but so it goes.
I'm a bit curious about how exactly you see p2p being used, though. Also, what's the issue with uploading this bib stuff into a database? I'm just not clear on the issues here.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
... or whatever style system a particular university chooses, I do see a lot of value in writing research papers (and, by extension, in teaching students to do it well).
Consider, for example, the case of a student who began with this as a guiding question for a research paper in a history class: "What is the long-term significance of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588?" By the time she narrowed the question sufficiently, read enough material to be able to formulate a supportable thesis, found the facts necessary to support that thesis, and pulled all of that together into a persuasive piece of writing, she would know a lot more than if she had simply read the textbook and listened to a lecture. (Not to imply that textbooks and lectures are the only other options, but they do seem to be the most common ones in an academic environment.)
Are history professors--and their peers in many other departments--wrong for giving assignments like this?
I apologize if I seem to be assuming. At USF we specifically teach MLA since a majority of the instructors (probably 90% and up) are already familiar with MLA. I do not assume that other universities follow the same guidelines.
Why are we assuming that teaching a research paper = teaching MLA style?
Well, it looks like the kindle might be kindling after all:
Kindle Swindle.
Here's a quote:
DONE!
This reminds me very much of a short story by Richard Stallman--Right to Read.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
Bill Thompson of the BBC has written a response to Dvorak's criticism of OLPC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7138061.stm
A wiki is a collection of user-editable web document. If you think you can explain something better, you can change it.
Several of my freshmen seemed surprised when they learned that Wikipedia -- the most famous of all wikis -- is user-editable, and that anyone in the world can work on it. Wikipedia has a devoted community of amateur fact-checkers, so that any deliberate vandalism is quickly spotted and reversed. I tell my students that Wikipedia is an acceptable resource for an informal in-class oral presentation, or if they want to consult it to inform their written responses to assigned readings.
For cutting-edge topics that involve online culture, or that require the sorting out of huge amounts of information (such as ongoing coverage of natural disasters), Wikipedia is an excellent source. If the article has been edited recently, and has been edited numerous times, its probably a fairly good representation of the common understanding of a topic. From time to time I find inaccuracies and omissions, but I try to fix them.
___________________
Submited by : Dietas
Below, please find links to interesting assessment websites in education that may be of interest to you. If you know of other sites that would make good additions to this list, please contact Dr. Susan Platt. Send an E-mail to platt@csulb.edu.
nces.ed.gov
The website of the National Center for Education Statistics, which includes numerous statistics and sources pertaining to educational research.
aera.net
The website of the American Educational Research Association, which includes numerous divisions devoted to educational concerns at all levels.
crede.org
The website of the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence. A national institute of the Department of Education.
eric.ed.gov
The website of the Education Resources Information Center, sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education.
edtrust.org/edtrust/etw
The website of the Education Trust West, devoted to K-16 intiatives, state educational policy, and more.
cde.ca.gov/index.asp
The website of the California Department of Education.
ed.gov/index.jhtml
The website of the U.S. Department of Education.
http://www.edweek.org/
The website of Education Week and Teacher Magazine, a source for K-12 news and analysis, research, teacher resources.
gseis.ucla.edu/heri/cirp.html
The website of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, a national program for collecting assessment data in higher education.
ahe.cqu.edu.au
The Assessment in Higher Education website of Central Queensland University; provides links to online articles, books, journals, and other relevant information pertaining to assessment in higher education.
acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/assmt/resource.htm
Internet Resources for Higher Education Outcomes Assessment from NC State University.
___________________
Submited by : Libros Gratis
That's more or less how I feel about the matter. I don't teach any long research papers unless I'm forced. Thankfully, that isn't the case here. The only thing worse than reading 1,000 words of crapola is 12,000 words of it. Heck, I think I could teach a FYC just having them work on sentences. "The first project will be a simple, then a compound..."
Seriously, though, the MLA stuff is awful. I am so glad that it's built-into the new Word. I just tell students to use that; if it doesn't look 100% right, what does that tell you about MLA? That squadrons of professional engineers couldn't get it right, either? That should really tell you something.
Most people and many journals (at least in C&W) I know are switching to APA or some variation thereof.
BTW, there's an MLA template you can download from the MS Office site that works with the old Word. It's basic, but should serve in a pinch. 2007, though, is much nicer with the built-in bib tools, though you do have to monkey with the settings to do certain things (such as suppressing the author's name if it's been mentioned in the text.) Still, it's all worth it when you can generate a bib with one key press.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.