education & tech

Last week, you read a a post on Wired (Science) on "internet searching for scientific articles is bad for researchers" in reference to an article published in Science by University of Chicago sociologist James Evans ([not yet available online). What are the aspects touching educational researchers? What have you gained -or lost , from the internet's rise? asked Bradom Kein, the author of Wired's article.

Researchers and investigators are against Evan's conclusions and we've collected the most significant from the thread of comments in Is Internet Bad for Science?

"Science is self correcting when properly practiced. Plagiarized or improperly conducted research will lead to improperly formed and incorrect conclusions. The internet is no worse for science than the calculator is bad for math."

"There are some old articles which are referenced and cannot be found online and one must make the occasional trip to the musty section of the library - usually the dank basement - something to be done on those rainy Sunday afternoons when one can indulge in reading about the exploits of those who did the gritty pioneering work.. But it is not that much of an annoyance, as one can use the time to ponder in a different mental gear - a faculty often underused these days. Also, there's something to be said for the value of "classic" papers that aren't yet available online. My grad adviser could find insights that we would never have thought of in work published in the 1940's or earlier."


"The way that google structures its listing makes it difficult to find the more obscure texts. Couple that with the laziness of users who no longer wish to browse further than the top 10 in the listing, and it makes for very bland academic readings." In other words "Separate the wheat from the chaff."

And speaking of Educational Sciences: "The knowledge is general, but encourages people to pursue certain topics in depth."

Now, how will researchers will be affected with the outsourcing editing and translation of research database papers?. I was touched by a post written today by Roy Peter Clark, taking to copy editors: "I need copy editors to know that Eva Longoria is not the wife of Tampa Bay Rays baseball phenom Evan Longoria. I need them to know that a Florida cracker is not something you eat, and that it may or may not be offensive to some readers. I need a Rhode Island copy editor to know that you don't dig for clams; you dig for quahogs, a word of Indian origin -- American Indian. I need copy editors who know that Jim Morrison of The Doors went to St. Pete Junior College, that beat writer Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Fla., but is buried in Lowell, Mass. I want them to know that Lakewood High School is different from Lakewood Ranch High School. I want them to know that 54th Avenue North in St. Petersburg is 108 blocks north of 54th Avenue South."

Do we still have language barriers to talk about science? How research gets influenced with those resources re-elaborated by people, others than native speakers?

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Technology has changed the way we used to perceive the notion of science. Before, everyone was reverent to this concept and mathematicians invented ideas, notions and axioms to explain their science, thus it became the scientific method and asked to demonstrate what mathematicians can hardly show.

It's been a long way until everyone accepted what should be called science. In this century although, kids and youngsters don't want to read (a premise to comprehend science), they are more interested in the solutions more than in the problems. In other words they bypass something that is a requirement to build science, the object.

Humble postdoc, Duncan Rilley has brouht up a very trivial question, Who owns the science? If nobody wants to hear about science now, except those who started their research before 80's or went to college as babyboomers, then we are not developing science. Funds to scientifical research are not being poured and the government is the only one to fund national security researching. Is it estrange we cannot solve yet the highest cause of mortality, a cure for cancer?

Is there anyone reading this post who thinks, science still is ahead of technology as it used to be or is it that we are making research only to serve technology and in its only direction. As for me, it's necessary to reinvent the concept of science, first of all, and secondly, put investigation up front as top priority. Science was made to solve the object of a problem, not just to built the most infinitesimal silicon's chip or alter the DNA, which by the way has been the most revolutionary finding of the last century.

I will close calling Riley again, he closed his post diligently, "If you would like to join the debate, and you are anywhere near Manchester, UK, you might be interested in Who Owns Science?, a public lecture and debate. Join Anna Ford chair a discussion lead by Nobel laureates John Sulston and Joseph Stiglitz on just who the hell is it who owns this crazy little thing called Science?"

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This video is about Wesch's Web 2.0 wisdom presented at the University of Manitoba on June 17th. 'It is all about media literacy and how he engages his students at Kansas State University. This 66 minute video is well worth the time in order to get a glimpse of how he tries to make students knowledge-able' says Stephen Downes

During his presentation, Michael Wesch, an cultural anthropologist, explains his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future.

'It’s basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my students to work online,' he's explained. “We tried every social media application you can think of. Some worked, some didn’t.”

If you are not yet familiar with professor Wesch work, consider subscribing to his YouTube channel.

Update:

Jack Chorowski also says, 'Web 2.0 shows that everyone is better than anyone; a large group working together can create information rivaling the content of experts.'

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Now that all students and most teachers are on Summer break, it's a good time to make some reflexions on what's going on with the so mentioned social networks, particularly Facebook and MySpace. Forget about photo or music networks.

Society cannot stand and watch what's happening in their neighborhoods when students are being assaulted or bullied because of what they wrote in any of those online boards pertaining to either Facebook or MySpace. Officials are taking steps, but it's necessary the family intervention, which by the way it's difficult, now that the average family income is too low and parents have to spent more hours working to take food home.

I've heard some are commanding: "Shut down the computer!". But that is not a practical solution. I've also witnessed the prohibition of be involved in social networks while at home. Wrong step. Why all these practices are wrongly addressed?
Michelle Davis has the answer: Students are using social-networking sites more and more Despite the fact that most schools and families block access to such sites, 9- to 17-year-old spend about nine hours a week in the Internet, according to a 2007 study by the NSBA -Alexandria (National School Boards Association). The study found that 96 percent of those with online access had used social-networking technology—including text messaging—and 81 percent said they had visited a social-networking Web site at least once within the three months before the study of among 1200 students, was conducted. See pdf study report here.


With such high percentage, it shows clearly that neither officials, nor parents, can just block by verbal decisions the access to these social sites. We cannot afford a new incident like Megan Meier case, but at the same time we all have to be prepared to not to get way off as the incident at Canadian Ryerson University.

"To recap what happened: 16-year-old Megan Meier of suburban St. Louis thought she was befriending a local boy over MySpace. They formed an online friendship and corresponded frequently. As it turned out, the boy was actually a fake MySpace account created by a local woman named Lori Drew and a friend of hers, to see what they could learn about Meier’s friendship with her daughter. Eventually, they used the account to break up the online relationship, dismissing Meier in an extremely cruel way. Soon afterwards, Meier hanged herself." -Source: Andy Carvin

In the other case, "study groups may be a virtual trademark of the Ivory Tower – but a virtual study group has been slammed as cheating by Ryerson University. First-year student Chris Avenir is fighting charges of academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group via Facebook last term, where 146 classmates swapped tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark." -Quoted by MGuhlin.

Students, teachers and parents have to make clear decisions and guidelines as how the behaviour of the younsgter will be carried out at school, at home and publicly at sites like the popular Facebook and MySpace. Keep educating students about online-safety matters and how to use sites such as those mentioned, responsibly. If you fellow teachers are using social-networking sites for such educational purposes, you should establish clear guidelines for how you intend to communicate with students via those sites. A good example for teachers, as MGuhlin likes to call it, is this Twitter post, 'encouraging more respectful and productive interaction between students by turning the class into a community.'

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During this weekend where they also congregated for the II CREAD Andes Congress and Virtual EDUCA Summit, the Loja Technical University (UTPL - Ecuador), dozens of doctors and candidates to PhD attended the First Summit on Collaboartive Doctorate Programs and Research Incubators and the event was patronized by the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (OUI)


Claude Olivier, ETS PhD attending the meeting. Watch the proposals I, II & III [es]

I've missed her post lately for some reason but today I went to check my feed reader and what I've found is Jenny D. ( that's all I know) already made her Thesis's defense and she's being kind to share some of the pictures of this event. We've following her experiences while she wrote the thesis and want to congratulate for the hard work involved in her career as a researcher now.

It pays the effort and sharing experiences online using blogs. Congratulations again and good luck on your career. Read her latets post on Robert F. Kennedy about the hearings during 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Beginning today, June 4th through Tuesday, June 10th edweek.org is hosting an Open House for an entire week so you can check out its new issue for free. The press release promotes this Report, The Diplomas Count 2008: School to College. This is the third annual report published by edweek. org, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"The report explores the rapid growth of state-level P-16 councils and how they seek to create a more seamless schooling continuum that prepares students from preschool through college and beyond for life, work, and further education."




Results for the class of 2005, the most recent year available according to the Report, show a national graduation rate of 70.6 percent, an increase of about half a percentage point over the prior year. The EPE Research Center that made this study, estimates that 1.23 million high school students will fail to graduate in the class of 2008.

We should ask, why too many students drop out earlier than expected. Is it happening a the same peace among racial groups?

A group of aerospace engineering and computer science students gathers once a week in Atkinson Hall of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) to learn designing technology for the developing world. But their lecturer Derek Lomas never quite shows up in the classroom, at least not in person. He prefers to take classes of the popular ‘Design for Development’ course from his desktop in Mumbai — through videoconferencing that is.

They are using what sciencedaily.com calls  instructional technology.  "University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance researcher finds that students in a "hybrid class" that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter-grade higher on average than their counterparts who took the same class in a more traditional format"  they wrote in its Science News column, today.

Practice of hybrid classes are growing so quickly and practicality for students and professors, at UH  and on campuses across the U.S., because of the advantages for students , in presentation of material as accessibility and flexibility. Brian McFarlin, was the researcher at UH and he can testify for example that an upper-level business law and ethics class in the UH Bauer College of Business reaches more than 1,000 students each academic year because of its flexible, hybrid offerings.

But what is the linking between those students at California Institute and the University of Houston?  No secrets. It's technology applied to the education. Same as Mumbai or Australia, students and teacher are able to learn or re-learn at the same time, even being so far away. In this case the use of the videoconferencing is vital and the good handling of PowerPoint files helps these students to obtain grades, on average a letter grade higher than those in the traditional format

Houston students attend class in classrooms, but students as far away as Australia also take and participate in classes. To date, there has been limited literature addressing the effectiveness of such classes.  McFarlin has comments on the advantages in timing of hybrid class: "That means two courses could be taught in a classroom that would normally be dedicated to one traditional lecture course [and] The key to success with instructional technology is to keep the focus on student-related outcomes and learning. This was my objective."

Findings were published in the journal "Advances in Physiology Education."

We've quoted more than once Stephen Downes, and today after reading over one hundred post that come from his feed, we are able to share with you the five most useful under our blog Philosophy. He's one of the most prominent bloggers among those writing on education and he deserves to be followed:

1. He wrote a post over The Teacher Appreciation Day, but he's thrown a big question.
Does Steve counts as a teacher? Michael Larsen, Mary M,and Anymouse had posted answers on this one. Our appreciation is Steve should be considered as a teacher and should say a Teacher's teacher. Reasoning my answer with the introduction I've just made on top.

2. Just yesterday my wife's daughter was being called her attention for posting some of her personal pictures on Hi5. On this post he questions what is most dangerous posting information on blogs Hi5, Facebook or whatever or send your teenage kids to work evenings and weekends at McDonalds. Predators are everywhere, caution is always advisable.

3. Quoting Judy O'Conell, he raise concerns about what it'll be the roll of Yahoo for Teachers. How this new beta (look for invitations) will solve some problems for schools, or just create new ones. Education has a lot to be with theory, so as far as I am concerned, this will be another place for this business.

4. He abides by the Scientific Method and really, really calls for an stop of 'multiple choice surveys' being called research or worst scientific! I would like (same as the Stephen's link suggests) all educators (not only researchers read, Robert Nola & Howard Sankey's book Theories of Scientific Method
for a better understanding of what we talking about.

And the last one as for today and for myself,

5. A new issue (at least for me) is brought to the bench. Steve Downes says we shouldn't be paying much attention to the 'syndication' word, but (and this is news to me, again) the difference between (open) syndication networks, and (closed) federations. No comments here, I have to read more and deeper to understand more about what Jon Udell is into. Help my teacher!

Technorati: stephen+downes, netiquette, scientific+method, federations

Consequences of being involved in a hoax like the Psystar one, are events that must be avoid at all costs by bloggers and professional writers. We think that's one of the reason why the life of the professional blogger isn't as easy as much may be suspecting.

And now that we are talking about professionals, do you remember you've been told many times the Gen X. are all literate about the Internets? Well, don't fall for everything you hear, particularly on the Internet. A recent study shows that this same generation are only capable of viewing but not technically reading, they rely too much on search machines and don't exercise what in the American schools is called critical thinking.

...Research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors.

I am ashamed how these conclusions can be applied to big cities where broad band is accessible. My question is, what about those other cities where they don't even have dial-up. Latin America, for example has a very low Internet coverage and I don't want to quote what's happening on other regions where this service is still a luxury and they have to spotlight through radio waves.

Technorati: CIBER, bl, google, google+generation

Now the politics are in its most hot waters we should pay attention to what McCain, Clinton and Obama are talking about Education. None. However, we shouldn't forget our compromise as citizen and educators. Please allow us to requote what D. Warlick quoted from ETAN's page, about his support on Ed Tech Funding:

Did you know that the Bush Administration is intent on eliminating education technology funding? I find it so surprising that elected officials would want to do such a thing when we’re at a critical place as a Nation in terms of how we match up with others in a global economy. I personally don’t want to see our country fall behind when it comes to technology and innovation in the classroom – America needs to stay competitive! That’s why I went to www.EdTechActionNetwork.org to send a letter to my Members of Congress. It was really easy – just one click and I made my voice heard! I encourage you to do the same and join me to spread the word!

The Washington Post selected some opinions from experts about what courses should be required for every U.S. college student. Everyone has a different idea of what students need to know to be competitive in the 21st century. But let's hear Jack D. Dale, public's school chief of Fairfax County:

I majored in math and minored in physics, but it was an astronomy course I took that has stayed with me. In that course, the theory of math and physics came together in an applied science where I learned about black holes, event horizons, expanding vs. contracting universes and parallel universes, to name a few. In short, I learned about the creative side of science and still today enjoy the creative side of my career. As many current futurists will tell us our future is in creativity, whether that be in business, science, education or the arts.

The Web 2.0 is os differenciated that educators see it from another point of view that techies but at the end we all expect the Web 2.0 to impact the future of education and want to be appreciative of Steve Hargadon for writing a lenghty post on this new concept.(Note: Internal link quoted is ours):

You may think that you don't have anything to teach the generation of students who seem so tech-savvy, but they really, really need you. For centuries we have had to teach students how to seek out information – now we have to teach them how to sort from an overabundance of information. We've spent the last ten years teaching students how to protect themselves from inappropriate content – now we have to teach them to create appropriate content. They may be "digital natives," but their knowledge is surface level, and they desperately need training in real thinking skills. More than any other generation, they live lives that are largely separated from the adults around them, talking and texting on cell phones, and connecting online. We may be afraid to enter that world, but enter it we must, for they often swim in uncharted waters without the benefit of adult guidance. To do so we may need to change our conceptions of teaching, and better now than later

In other aspect of the so diverse field, the Education. Can you please try to answer this question? Is it pedagogically legit to separate schools for boys and girls? Scott Elliot elucubrates his answer around this gender differences who quotes Leonard Sax an advocate for single sex education:

...There is a biological reason for the similarities of those drawings within gender and the differences across it. It’s all about the way they process information in their brains. Boys and girls, Sax argues, develop at different paces when they are very young. By the time they are teenagers, those difference virtually disappear. But in elementary school, he says, they are pronounced enough that educators should be accounting for them.

So, before you go dear reader please stop for a while and keep America competitive, write your congressmen and support ed tech funding now!

Technorati: warlick, fairfax+county, web 2.0, leonard+sax, education+genders

After a long period of not being reading important info and motivated by 7 Habits of Highly Successful Bloggers I've moved back to read the more than one thousand education posts I have to read in Education from our subscriptions. One of those highly qualified educators is George Siemens, who just had to give a speech at the iTForum and he even let his pdf document used for such presentation, free for us to read it online.

This paper explores the shifting role of educators in networked learning environments, with particular emphasis on "curatorial, atelier, concierge, and networked roles" of educators, to offer learners in forming wide personal learning networks for complete understanding of these fields.

In his document called, Learning and Knowing in Networks: Changing roles for Educators and Designers he explains what are those challenges educators confront today:

Social software (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, instant messaging, Skype, Ning) provide opportunities for learners to create, dialogue about, and disseminate information. But what becomes of the teacher? How do the practices of the educator change in networked environments, where information is readily accessible? How do we design learning when learners may adopt multiple paths and approaches to content and curriculum? How can we achieve centralized learning aims in decentralized environments?

In other of his posts George Siemens concede the advantages of work in an Open Source environment and congratulates his page it's been translated into another languages such as the Chinese. How great is it to present your work under Creative Commons that under different circumstances will be a copycat. Edu2do.com is the portal translating the contents of Elearnspace and other well recognized advocators of a change in Education. They are, OLDaily, Infinite Thinking Machine and Weblogg-ed, of course.

Technorati: george+siemens, education, itforum, chinese, creative+commons, social+networks

After quick search what I've learned is that genetically modified food is the same as genetically engineered food. It's the very same term for the very same thing, just this term doesn't scare away consumers.

Just today, The Washington Post says that FDA reports no evidence of risks while eating cloned foods. Way back in 1990, first President Bush started with the Four Principles of Regulatory Review for Biotechnology where using legal terminology it was written no regulatory word for such production. Many people protested countrywide and specially when the BIO's had its summit.

The war is not only about cows and sheeps. Despite what other people in other countries think, not all corn grown in the US is genetically modified. Do we consume this corn? No word on this. The only think do we know is that for every biotech corn we grow, we also grow a non biotech corn!!

Rick Weiss, writes an extensive document on this 'milk and meat' cloned safe food to eat. And he quotes the Director of The Center for Food Safety, "One of the amazing things about this, is that at a time when we have a readily acknowledged crisis in our food safety system, the FDA is spending its resources and energy and political capital on releasing a safety assessment for something that no one but a handful of companies wants" has said Joseph Mendelson.

Not much surprises here. Remember that so many people in DC are lawyers. For scientists it will take longer to decide something is safe, let's say five years. The first level of science has been performed, the cloned animals worked out what it was 'designed' for. But as for the impact on humans and why not the environment, that's another level of science. Contrary to the law, in science we don't have an 'innocent until proven guilty' . Should we say something like 'safe, until it's proven unsafe'?. The FDA has made its decision, what about USDA, and EPA?

The "final risk assessment," not yet released but obtained by The Washington Post, according to Weiss, concludes that foods from healthy cloned animals and their offspring are as safe as those from ordinary animals. Yes! Welcome to the engineered food not right now but in the years to come...

Related:
USDA Recommends That Food From Clones Stay Off the Market.

In a study released yesterday and conducted by MIT researchers among which is John Gabrieli, a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, together with Trey Hedden, lead author of the paper and a research scientist at McGovern; Sarah Ketay and Arthur Aron of State University of New York at Stony Brook; and Hazel Rose Markus of Stanford University; people from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks. American culture, which values the individual, emphasizes the independence of objects from their contexts, while East Asian societies emphasize the collective and the contextual interdependence of objects. Behavioral studies have shown that these cultural differences can influence memory and even perception.

They asked 10 East Asians recently arrived in the United States and 10 Americans to make quick perceptual judgments while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner--a technology that maps blood flow changes in the brain that correspond to mental operations.

The researchers went on to show that the effect was greater in those individuals who identified more closely with their culture. They used questionnaires of preferences and values in social relations, such as whether an individual is responsible for the failure of a family member, to gauge cultural identification. Within both groups, stronger identification with their respective cultures was associated with a stronger culture-specific pattern of brain-activation.

Gabrieli, had pointed out:

Everyone uses the same attention machinery for more difficult cognitive tasks, but they are trained to use it in different ways, and it's the culture that does the training,[...]It's fascinating that the way in which the brain responds to these simple drawings reflects, in a predictable way, how the individual thinks about independent or interdependent social relationships.”

I wonder whether Moira Gunn might have as guests to this select group from Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Source

This is an issue all teachers and administrative have to deal with these days. By one side is the students that argue they really need to be in touch with the outside world while they're in class and by the other, the teachers that think they are being violated in their privacy. Nobody is unaware of the bullying among students and of course the mocked teachers what what we have here is a new generation of grow ups and teen who had been born in techie environment. Most of schools are banning the use of cell phone while in its grounds, some other have strict rules for such devices.

The problem is some of our students are tapping teachers activities for very short period of time which creates a (distortioned) image of the classroom teacher. Let's look at the experiment conducted by Kevin Metcalf who happens to be teaching at North Rockland High School in Thiells, N.Y. He tries an experiment with his students. He asks them to whip out their cellphones —whose use is otherwise forbidden in the classroom under school rules— while he puts his head down on his desk for a second and acts as though he’s doing nothing. He then asks them that if they were to take a picture and put it on YouTube, what would people think of his teaching?

He'd got answers like ‘lazy,’ and ‘doesn’t care.’ He tries to explain his students he would be judged by their peers on one second of a 45-minute class. The experiment, he says, brings home to the students how such an action could misrepresent the truth and have serious consequences for someone. And this is not a threatening situation. Imagine how distorted might become an issue inside the classroom if an student just tapes seconds of a disruptive class?

Now, I am not against use of technology because we already are way ahead of the counterculture of the 6O's where the youngsters were thinking the computers were about to replace men. I am part and I am living the cyberculture generation (G-gen) and of course we have to learn and teach how to use technology in classrooms, we've moved beyond projectors and VHS. Now we have very small and reliable devices to register any kind of information. We do have to allow our kids to use their cell phones but we have to teach them no how to operate them because they might the teachers in that particular situation but, show them the consequences of not using it properly. How their very own safety is involved, their families, their loved ones and even their friends.

Once they learn the consequences it will be up to them. We all know (they too) the consequences of violating safety regulation, the secrecy of our personal acts and the power involved in having a device emitting short waves to highest frequencies. Unfortunately, according to Vaishali Honawar and his post Cellphones in Classrooms Land Teachers on Online Video Sites points to two cases in Court: Evens v. L.A. Unified School District; and, Roberts v. Houston Independent School District.

From those two cases we can conclude that only whether students refer to threatening comments, a Judge will pay attention to a teacher's complain. Legislation vary according to each state but the variety of issues with cellphones in schools, the United States, legal experts say, school districts tend to ignore videos that are simply embarrassing to a teacher, but do act when they find that the taping is a threat to the school or teacher or is disruptive to learning. The court holds that a teacher must always expect public dissemination of his or her classroom
communications and activities.

A have a kid in 5th grade and he's not using a cellphone yet but I am about to give him one for Christmas and he knows how to use the lap top and links perfectly with YouTube. My question is: Will a fellow teacher feel ashamed if my kid shoots a photo and posts it on YouTube, modified or unmodified? It will be hard for the school to show disruption just because of it. We are talking about First Amendment speech here.

For more contributions read: [http://education.ning.com] or [http://dww.ed.gov]

The problems comes reflected of what's going on in society. Minorities for example can be heard throughout Radio or TV because big companies own such channels of distribution and then only people with those very same interest can use the waves to transmit messages to the consumers. Univision es a very large hispanic network but is the only one and it doesn't cover more than the 37 millions of hispanics in the US. How an black or Hispanic person can own a radio or channel of TV if they don't have the money to compete with big networks as MSNBC or any of the only six proprietors of the american opinion?

That's what happening in schools. A recent analysis of 93,845 public school enrollment data by the Pew Hispanic Center revealed some interesting findings. The Center examined ethnic make up in public schools between 1993-94 and 2005-06 and discovered that while non Hispanic white students were less isolated from minority students black and Hispanic students became a little more isolated from non Hispanic white students.

I would like to hear for example how many students from hispanic roots and studying in public school are trained in how to run a blog as an academic tool and what willbe the benefits of having a blogroll in one side of such a page. I would also like to get information of what will the impact on academic development if those same students learn how to optimize the observation and analysis of educational videos produced in YouTube but through the Firefox extention called, Better YouTube.

I have to say that in some cases from my very own experiences the parents had deep responsability on this matter. If kids spent more time with parents, if they were able to help them with homework, if they spend quality time with their family; hispanic students will outerperform those insolated ones in a very short time. Let us know your opinions.

A few days a ago I've seen a post from Library Clips where he tries to explain the importance and usability of the social filtering. "When I research a social web topic, I don’t surf the web I consult the blogs on my Reading List, I search these blogs, and I get lots of useful insight and pointers to other blog posts…I check out the blogs on the blogroll and search these blogs, etc…I save so much time searching my social filter and social graph (dare I say it), and I get fresh, quality content." Library clips even is tagging other bloggers to do it so.

It might help to take advantage of Yahoo! openness and start using for example a combined feed throughout Pipes. Once you've selected your prefered sources you can have them in one shot and it will save a lot of time browsing around or jumping from one page to another.

Rubel shows you how to data mine with Google reader but do not sell yourself out. If you downloaded Google Toolbar, enabled PageRank or have Web History on, then Google is spying on you! You know, nothing comes free!

Is then a good time to filter the Internet (not as Google is doing it, thought) but in a smart way that will work only for yourself. Million and millions of sources everyday show up, content is duplicated, garbage still is collected and you have to deal with it, is time to start off with the science of blog reading.

It comes as a subject in Wesley Fryer' page. And it has to be with the approach Mr Obama just had to the popular Flickr. How do we know whether Obama is really behind that account? Yes, we know he's many people to help him out but as Fryer says, we can go to his page and verify effectively there is a link to his Flick account. So, no spoof at this point. However, in school how these kids and students can learn to validate this kind of info?

If one or more of your current or past students created a “spoof page” purportedly made by you on any social networking website, how would others be able to verify whether or not it was truly yours? Do you have a personal website where you link to other websites you maintain and have actually made? I know most teachers don’t, but should they? It’s an interesting question to consider.

Until then follow Wesley suggestion: check back with The Quality Information Checklist.

I've been reading Catherine Gewertz' post in Education Week and reminds of my Doctoral thesis I'd written a few years ago precisely about the impact of the family income in the learning process. The conclusions were almost the same but the difference is that our study was conducted in our mother country and now this study has been made in the United States.

The study conducted by Joshua S. Wyner, John M. Br idgeland & John J. Di Iulio, Jr. under the title of Achieventrap (pdf) analyses data of 3.4 million k-12 children in American schools. They've found that children who come from households with incomes below the national median had score in the top quartile on nationally normed tests. They start school with weaker academic skills and are less likely to flourish over the years in school than their peers from better income families.

Civic Enterprises LLC, a Washington-based research and public-policy group, and the Lansdowne, Va.-based Jack Kent Cooke Foundation establishes that higher-achieving children from lower-income families enter school with a disadvantage that shows up in their national test scores. More than 70 percent of 1st graders who score in the top quartile are from higher-income families, and fewer than three in 10 are from lower-income families.

In the ensuing years Catherine writes, the higher-achieving lower-income children are more likely to lose ground, 44 percent fall out of the top quartile in reading between the 1st and 5th grades, compared with 31 percent of high achievers whose family income is above the national median ($48,200 in 2006). They are also more likely to drop out of high school or not graduate on time than those from economically better economically positioned families. The difference persists through college and graduate school, with lower-income students less likely to attend the most selective colleges or to graduate.

However, the report does offer some optimistic notes. "Of the higher-achieving students, it says, 93 percent of those from lower-income families, and 97 percent of those from higher-income families, graduate from high school in four years. Those rates are much better than the 70 percent of all students on average that researchers estimate get their diplomas on time. But the data still show too many 'unrelenting inequities' that harm the prospects of capable children from lower-income families."

They -the authors, even say that Asian students perform better than Africa-American kids (not mention of Hispanic students) but Hewertz brings into discussion to Michelle M. Fine, a professor of social psychology and urban education at the City University of New York who says: "Something is clearly working for those lower-income Asian kids that isn’t working for the lower-income black kids".

Now a days is hard to catch up with all technological developments and get to the level where fluency is a plus in this digital world. Karin Dalziel, starts a first draft of what all would like to call types of information literacy.

Literacy, the ability to read and write.
Information Literacy, the ability to find, evaluate and use information
Media Literacy, the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms.
Digital Literacy, the ability to use digital technology, communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and create information.

Frank Baker has suggested to add the word 'comprehend' as part of the Primary Activity in the chart built up to characterize this typology.

And Jenny, The Shifted Librarian thinks the chart should be completed with the category 'evaluating' in the first Information Literacy box (talking about the very same chart Dalziel has been working on).

So, after disclosing this interesting work I would like to ask you dear readers. What's you level of information literacy in scale 1 to 5?