Take Control Ebooks is having a sale!
]]>Academic paper-writing services, or "paper mills," will no longer be able to buy search terms in the Google AdWords program, and thus their ads will no longer pop up in the "sponsored links" sections of a Google search-results page.
You can read the article here, if you're a subscriber, anyway. They know they'll have to hand-check sites, but they do seem to have an idea of what a mill is, and does, and how they work, which means they might even spot the more clever ones.
If I see a Google press release, or a more public article about Google's policy, I'll link it here.
]]>The core issues are neatly summarized by Ross Mayfield here:
Mayfield provides four assertions that pretty much anyone will agree with. There is, however, a need to juggle possibly conflicting goals—like preserving the right of anonymity, but not when anonymity is used to perpetuate hate speech, as it was in the attacks on Kathy Sierra. There's potential conflict between speaking frankly, and the necessity of free speech, and not allowing hate speech.
We do have methods of controlling hate speech, methods that aren't matters of censorship. There are the less than effective technical methods—banning, and moderating and deleting comments; even, disemvowelling the truly idiotic rabid hate-monger, but primarily, online communities need to enforce community standards. As MacAllister Stone puts it:
I think we have to self-police. I think, when someone says something that's clearly horrible and inflammatory, we stuff 'em in a box. Embarrass them. Shame them into either adhering to community standards, or exile them by deletion and/or blocking.With that context extablished, I want to look at two short quotations from Chris Locke and Kathy Sierra regarding online attacks and hate speech specifically directed towards women.
Kathy Sierra asks:
But if we dismiss every cruel, vile, sexually threatening comment as simply the work of an anonymous troll, we will no longer be able to recognize a real threat. Are we willing to stake our mother/sister/daughter's life on a sexually and physically threatening photo or comment, simply because it appeared on the internet and therefore must be harmless?Chris Locke observes
Misogyny is real -- and vile. Violence against women is wrong. It must not be tolerated. This issue should be explored and discussed, not swept under the rug, not rationalized away.
There's something else going on here, besides ordinary hate speech and Internet trolls. Kathy Sierra was specifically and carefully targeted. She was attacked for no real reason—but the attacks, and the language and images used in the attacks are overtly sexualized and exceedingly misogynistic. Like many other women with online presences, Sierra was attacked because she is female. There's a culture of harassment online, directed towards women in general, over and above the usual 'net obsessed trolls and nutters. It's almost impossible to find a woman who blogs or participates in discussion forums who hasn't been subjected to sexualized attacks and unwelcome sexually explicit comments, innuendos and email.
Bill Humphries linked to these posts from Min Jung Kim an Asian woman blogger, and Gin Mar, a woman and veteran of the Iraq war. I think Liz Henry, like MacAllister Stone, has the right response:
I'd like to make a call to action. When this kind of shit happens, we'll call it out and document it in public. Call it in the moment. Call it in front of your coworkers. Call it if it's major or if it's minor, it's all part of the same spectrum of misogynist behavior. How about just saying, once in a while, right in the moment if you can, "That's not funny," when it's really not. Say it crosses your boundaries. Say it's not acceptable to you. This takes practice, but with time, we can all do it and find strength in numbers.
We need to be very clear that this kind of attack is not accepted, and that the community, and the 'net as a whole, object to it. At the same time, I also want to acknowledge that there's a rise in equally sexually-directed attacks against men on the net, and more often than not, overtly sexualized comments from women that very much qualify as hate speech; that's not cool either, nor should it be acceptable.
In a subsequent post, I want to talk about the particular difficulties faced by women in technology, on and off the net; the underlying misogny in technology by a loud minority is very much part of the reason Kathy Sierra was attacked.
]]>I've had problem with the concepts behind Turnitin right from the start; I blogged about my concerns regarding violating student's rights some time ago. Now, students are suing Turnitin for copyright violation because their papers are databased and used for subsequent comparisons without their permission; I suspect we'll see a privacy violation, particularly in the context of FERPA soon.
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Take Control Ebooks is having a sale!
]]>Chuck Joiner of MacVoices has an interview with Michael Cohen on syncing in general, and the new update here.
]]>This comment came from Lisa Spangenberg, a self-proclaimed digital medievalist:
Frequently faculty who would like to use technology are bewildered by the jargon and by the unfortunate arrogance of the technical experts they must work with, who, for all their technical expertise are, not surprisingly, sometimes woefully ignorant about pedagogy, and have no interest or understanding of the humanities.
You'll note, if you looked at the full article via the link, that this is from their section on "Skepticism About IT Staff."
They counter my quotation with the following paragraph:We address such skepticism by demonstrating our experience with, knowledge of, and ongoing commitment to pedagogy. UMD and the ITSS department encourage and support the pursuit of coursework, degrees, and professional development in the pedagogical use of technology. Moreover, our work on campus with faculty members from all disciplines provides access to campus best practices on a regular basis. We publicly share with the campus community our credentials and experience in campus publications, meetings, workshops, and so forth, and in our workshops we model effective uses of the technology tools we are teaching others to use. These activities give us the opportunity to establish and maintain credibility with the faculty.
In other words, they missed my point almost entirely.
There's a repellent but effective expression in commercial software development, one that was generally associated with the dot com frenzy, when executives, marketing folk, and PR departments referred to "eating their own dog food," meaning that they used the same tools and products that they wanted their customers to buy.
When I talk about IT folk who "for all their technical expertise are, not surprisingly, sometimes woefully ignorant about pedagogy, and have no interest or understanding of the humanities," I'm essentially saying "they don't eat their own dog food."
It's not enough to know how to use the software and hardware to produce content. It's not even enough to know how to teach faculty and others how to use them without engaging in technical double-speak. I expect anyone encouraging faculty to teach with technology, digital or other, to be prepared to use that technology to practice what they preach; they have to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Modeling doesn't cut it.
I expect someone who is going to discuss pedagogy with faculty to have experience actually teaching academic content with a live class using the same technology they expect teachers to use.
Frankly, I don't really have a lot of faith in instructional technology professionals' discussion of pedagogic theory when they don't use the technology they're expecting teachers and students to use, and use it in the same environment that the teachers and students use, under the same conditions. If you don't use technology to teach English literature, or Japanese or medieval history or music, to use examples from the humanities, how much value does your pedagogical advice have? How much credibility do you have?
Oh, and by the way, the "self-proclaimed digital medievalist" was a bit disingenuous. If it was meant as humorous, it fails since it was presented without context, suggesting that I'm a technology-opposed Luddite, which, in fact is the way readers have taken the reference. If it was meant as meiosis, it fails as well; I've got solid technical credentials, including seventeen years of experience developing software for higher education, for publishers, and for consumers. I've supported users, and supported and evangelized digital technology use with faculty and students. As a medievalist, I have more than six years experience teaching college English literature and compositions classes, where I ate my own dog food, even while working to support faculty using instructional technology.
]]>Missing Sync 5.1 is a free upgrade for registered users of version 5.0, but note that you should perform a final synch with the current version before upgrading. You should also, as a precaution, backup your computer and your Palm data, before upgrading. There's a helpful Mark / Space article on creating backups here.
]]>Speaker(s): MaryAnn Johanson, Phil Plait, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Kevin Drum, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Cory Doctorow (Moderator).
H.L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, I.F. Stone, Germaine Greer, Gertrude Stein, Hannah Arendt all gained prominence as American public intellectuals through newspaper columns and books of collected essays. Is the Blogosphere spawning a contemporary generation of important public thinkers? Who are the ones you can't afford to miss? What are they saying?
The panelists introduced themselves, and spoke a little bit about their reactions to being described as "public intellectuals," and their impressions about the intellectuals they were associated with. Kevin Drum referred to a recent article in Mother Jones News which compared bloggers and nineteenth century pamphlet writers. This idea is not new. Patrick Nielsen Hayden suggested that I. F. Stone, particularly with respect to Stone's I. F. Stone Weekly, might be considered a proto-blogger. MaryAnn Johanson described one of the virtues of blogging as "no corporate gate keepers telling us what we can and can not say" (this is unfortunately increasingly not the case).
Cory Doctorow discussed the idea of blogging as "terse," with respect to BoingBoing, because the content is driven by the constraints of RSS. Readers of BoingBoing increasingly read it via an RSS reader, so that terse content is more effective. Doctorow is essentially talking about the Economics of Attention. BoingBoing might be competing for a reader's attention along side a thousand or three other blogs; terse, specific, effective subjects and descriptions are thus more effective at grabbing attention. This is much like the idea behind much journalism; that the shape of the column or article is like an inverted pyramid; the basic information is neatly, effectively, presented at the base of the pyramid, preferably in an attention-grabbing way, and increasingly, the information is increasingly less important so that the tip of the pyramid, and the end of the post, has unimportant details.
MaryAnn Johanson spoke about "blogs as conversations," and about the fact that the underlying software tools, the blogging systems, ease writing because "the software takes care of it for me."
Teresa Nielsen Hayden picked up on the idea of the blog as conversation and observed that "if you [blog] using the classic, closed, essay form, you leave your reader no place or point to comment." This led to a discussion of post length, which, again, relates to an economics of attention. Several panelists commented on the importance of voice, and the idea that blogs are personality driven. Phil Plait mentioned PZ Myer's Pharyngula, an an example, and Cory Doctorow mentioned Fafblog.
MaryAnn Johanson closed by observing that Cory Doctorow had recently finished an 80K word book by using pieces he'd previously posted on BoingBoing as his research fodder; this is an instance of the blog as commonplace book. Patrick Nielsen Hayden closed by observing that "The uses to which people put your writing is not necessarily what you had in your mind" when you wrote it.
]]>Podcasting Science Fiction Speaker(s): Stephen Eley, Evo Terra, John O'Halloran, Paul Fischer (Moderator)
Is there a market for science fiction and fantasy via podcast? Is there even an audience? Can you make money directly or is it just a way to get your material known? If you're a reader/consumer, is this a good way to find science fiction and just how do you find what you want?
The panel began with an overview of what podcasting is, with some discussion of its virtues. John O'Halloran likes the fact that podcasts are available on demand; the data is available when you want it, primarily because of the use of RSS and other Web services to distribute podcasts. Fischer agreed, emphasizing that it's what you want, when you want it, and if you decide you don't want it, you simply stop downloading it. Evo Terra added that if you don't find what you want in terms of a podcast, then you can create it. He also mentioned the importance of receiving a response from listeners via email or blog comments.
Since many of the audience weren't yet making or downloading podcasts, a fair amount of time was spent on basic information in terms of locating, listening to, and creating podcasts. You don't need an iPod to download or play podcasts; the normal file format for a podcast is an MP3 file, playable in iPods and hosts of other MP3 players, on computers, a number of CD-ROM and audio CD players, and of course, MP3s can easily be converted to other audio formats and even burned to an audio CD.
Apple's free iTunes player, for Mac and Windows is an easy way to locate and play podcasts. Some people prefer the free Mac or Windows application MyPodder from PodCastReady.com, which allows you to find and download podcasts to a variety of media and devices. Other ways of finding podcasts, aside from the usual 'net sources like word of mouth, or positive mentions on Web logs and Web pages, are dedicated services, like SFFAudio.com, which offers reviews of SF and Fantasy audio in a variety of formats, both online and off. PodcastPickle.com is a searchable directory of podcasts, organized by name, by genre, by language and by popularity.
The following are suggestions, and pointers, for the beginning podcaster, culled from the panel participants and not necessarily attributed: