Digital Ether

Things will quite down for a few months until orientation for next year, Year 11 students.

I’m also thinking of reorganising this blog

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/concentration/old-school-new-school.html

With the advent of introducing new technology in to the classroom there is a coresponding shift in what is taught.  The risk is that as teachers we may “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, lossing the good with the bad.

It seams to me that there is now a push to develop critical thinking in our students, where before it was assumed.  Two changes that have happened during that time is the Computer has been introduced into school and has become more common place at home.  TV, & the Internet are all piped into our homes and this is leading to information overload in many people including students.

We now seam to live in a world of constant distraction, unable to focus our attention on a single object for any length of time.  Although Computers are an extremely powerful tool for processing and creating information and media.  What is the effect of using them in the long term?

I’ve recently been told about some excellent website for Science.

The Periodic Table of Videos from Nottingham University, which covers each element from the periodic table in a 4 – 8 minute video.  Good stuff with some explosions.

Sixty Symbols by Nottingham University’s Physics Department, which has a similar format to the above but focusing on physic.

Also see Test Tube, another UK initiative about science.

At the moment, there is a push by the Australian Government to control the Internet information into Australia with the Clean feed.  This is been opposed by the Electronic Frontiers Australia with the No Clean Feed.  This is a matter where you need to become informed before you are not allowed to any-more!

“Information wants to be free“

Having just started to read Orwell’s 1984, I find this article on Slashdot.org interesting to say the least;

Amazon Offers To Return Pulled Orwell Ebooks

But I do wonder if people would notice the editing for their histories?

In recent news (Amazon: Google Books deal an ‘unprecedented’ copyright hack) Google is trying to publish out-of-print (or orphaned) books online without the explicit say so of the author or the publisher.   The Google Book Settlement gives details of what Google is offering to publishers and authors.

And to make things more interesting the Open Book Alliance whose members include Amazon, Yahoo and Microsoft (Microsoft, Yahoo Join Google Books Opposition), is opposing Open Book Alliance to oppose Google Book deal. But this battle has been going on for some time Who Owns Online Books? Google captures an entire industry?

The Wall Street Journal, Google’s Book Settlement Is a Ripoff for Authors (Why allow a single publisher to throw out a functioning copyright system?), which points out the breaking of the current Copyright System.

But slashdot, has a somewhat more level view of what’s going on;

What does it mean if Google succeeds?

• What happens is an out-of-print book comes back into print?
• Is it theft if the book only exists in Google’s eBook service, but does not have the permission of the author to publish?
• What about censored book, or books against the public good?
• Is it safe to let Google have that much control over the information we use?

There are a million other questions that are dying to be asked, but I’ll leave that up to you.

There is a mental state coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called Flow.  From the definition is appears to be an intense focus on the activity at hand, much like what I’ve read on meditation. It  is talked about by Martin Seligman in his talk on positive psychology, as a way of achieving happiness.

Statistics has never been this much fun of this informative. http://www.gapminder.org/
OK. Stats was never fun, but at least this looks good.

The Creative commons now has a search engine (http://search.creativecommons.org/)

Here’s a talk on TED by Daniel Goleman an expert on Emotional & Social Intelligence.

In brief Daniel Goleman’s work has focused on the idea of Emotional Intelligence (EQ).  Covering things like Self-Awareness, Impulse Control, empathy, social deftness, etc.  Basically, how it is used by people to be active members of a collective society. In later books he examines, how you would work with EQ, Destructive Emotions, and Social Intelligence.

As our society becomes more technologically dependent and the channels of communication becoming narrower the area of Emotional Intelligence is becoming more critical to our society as a collective.