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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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

Chances are, your children use the Internet to play online games and/or socialize with peers. While both of those activities have their time and place, you'd probably be relieved to find your child learning while they are having fun. There are many educational sites that are so entertaining they will almost trick your child into learning. Below are seven of the best:

1. Ask Dr. Universe – Does your child have a propensity for asking hard questions about the universe? Perhaps they should "Ask Dr. Universe," the world's most curious cat. This fun site allows children to write in with questions about anything and Dr. Universe answers with authority.
2. National Geographic Kids – All kids love to read about dinosaurs and the wild side of nature. This massive site is full of fun facts and educational games.
3. Discovery Kids – This is the children's online companion to the Discovery Channel. It is similar to National Geographic Kids in content, but is worth its own merit.
4. NASA Kids' Club – Space is the final frontier and is a topic that children find endlessly fascinating. From online flight simulators to amazing high-res pictures of space, this is a great place for your little science expert to visit.
5. How Stuff Works – While this site is targeted toward people of all ages, children should be interested in learning how everything we take for granted in this world really works.
6. Cool Science for Curious Kids – This site is produced by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Here, children will get up close and personal with nature under a microscope, not to mention other creepy crawly things.
7. The Atoms Family – Learn all about "mad" science with appearances by Universal Monsters. For example, "The Mummy's Tomb" covers topics about kinetic energy and energy conservation. This site was designed by the Miami Museum of Science.

Trust me when I say that your children are more interested in nature and science than their video game addiction might indicate. Once a child starts surfing around the above-mentioned sites, they won't look back. In fact, it may teach them a newfound respect for their daily school routine.

(*)Heather Johnson is a freelance writer, as well as a monthly contributor for OEDb, a site to help students select among accredited online schools. Heather invites your comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address email address.

Technorati: education, kids, 7 best, heather+johnson, freelance+writing

Once in a while mass media echoes science, applications and derived tools from its core knowledge. Wired, brought in its attention to this topic and Brandom Kein asks, why science is so poorly covered by cable television and would say all mass media?

The extract he mentions cane from The State of the News Media 2008 and a sythesis is quoted from Wired:

The Project for Excellence in Journalism just released The State of the News Media 2008, its annual analysis of cable television news. The mediascape proved barren: On average, five hours of viewing would yield 71 minutes of politics, 26 minutes of crime, 12 minutes of disasters and 10 minutes of celebrities. Science, technology, health and the environment received just six minutes of coverage (with health and health care accounting for half of that.)

Are we educators taking science to level it should be? Or are we forgetting to favor technology?

Technorati: science, wired, news+media, journalism

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

One thing almost all parents lack, is the great oportunity parents have to visit their son's schools and what a better opportunity to go and have meeting and chats with the teachers during the American Educacion Week scheduled to beging on November, 12th.

You should pay attention to this report: Childrens, Family, and Media: A Benchmark where the awarded Michael Cohen Group(Research & Consulting) arrive to interesting conclusions related to the Digital Divide in American Schools. A round of questions were answered during a chat-interview conducted by Janelle Callahan, associate of the EPE Research Center. What would it be you best answer for the following question:

Far too often teachers and school leaders assume that students have access to computers and the internet at home. Typically, homework and projects now require easy access to computers and the internet (even in the primary grades). Without it, low income students are "left behind." Not only do they earn poorer grades, they become "marginalized" early on...because they recognize that they are different. Can you suggest some realistic solutions, given the reality that income still dictates whether or not resources are available in homes and communities. -Annette Clayton, Lead School Social Worker, Newport News Public Schools

Everyone outside US thinks we here don't have poverty or social issues, that everything seen and taught in the American society should be imitated. Far from the real thing! The Cohen Group points: "this study serves as a benchmark, allowing us to measure change over time for years to come. Identifying change in dynamics such as media ownership, media use, and preferred content provides an invaluable tool for researchers, policy makers,educators, and others."

The results as they say, confirm mine/ours collective sense that media is increasingly integral to family and personal life. These are the five outstanding research conclusions:

1) A wide range of media and media technologies are owned and utilized by families
and young children.
2) Families and individuals at every economic level participate in media and
technology ownership and use.
3) There are differences in the incidence of ownership by income level for some
media, particularly in more expensive and emerging media technologies that are
less commonly found at lower income levels. Other technologies enjoy near
universal penetration.
4) Ownership and involvement in media and technology is about both affordability
and perceived value(s); not everyone necessarily wants all media.
5) The use of media—or the functions that media technologies serve—is similar
across the income spectrum. Once owned, there is little variation in how these
technologies are used.

Wanting To See Vaginas Is A Crime,Your Honor, Am Guilty!

But please do not do it in your job place or even near to your office. Follow through. See also these statistics.

Ricardo Perez presents an excerpt of the Backbone of American Compettiveness and Innovation. Here the agenda to strengthen U.S competitiveness and innovation through a renewed commitment to graduate education:

.Develop a highly skilled workforce by fostering collaboration among leaders in higher education, business and government.

.Expand participation of underrepresented groups in all fields, especially those essential to America’s competitiveness and national security.

.Create a vision for all US students that portrays careers in the STEM fields as engaging, compelling, transparent and remunerative.

.Produce highly educated workforce with advanced skills and the flexibility to compete in an interdiciplinary environment at the frontier of knowledge creation.

.Attract and retain the best and brightest students from around the world, and

.Enhance the quality of graduate education through ongoing evaluation and research.

All around what is called STEM= Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. "With a high percentage of doctorates in these fields being from outside the US, and the increasing problems to get the necesary permissions to go there or stay there, plus the fact that the country wants to focus on those areas and get more interest from young students in the research fields, marks clearly the transition to, what everybody has been preaching for years, to a knowledge-based economy. This new big reality will take most countries by surprise if they are not ready to have a lot of young people ready to innovate and take risks."

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Mark in Anecdote makes a list of generic knowledge strategy objectives that includes:

1. Attract and retain the best people
2. Minimise the impact of people leaving – or better retain our knowledge
3. Build better relationships
4. Enhance collaboration
5. Build skills and know-how
6. Improve innovation
7. Improve how we learn from mistakes and successes
8. Improve ability to find relevant expertise
9. Better deal with complex situations
10. Improve ability to search for and find information
11. Avoiding reinventing the wheel
12. Finding and applying good practice
13. Encouraging people to call for help.

I am experiencing some changes in my place of work and I've found these objective quite useful. What about you? Do you think it will help in focusing your knowledge strategies?

I've spotted three post from Ken Smith who is writing about The Role of the Public Intellectual where Alan Lightman speaks about the style of writing and communicating of scientists in order to get understood for the average citizen.

'There is no need for this public writing to take place on blogs, but blogs do greatly increase the number of places for academics to practice communicating with a general audience, and they may also help us learn how to do so -- which may largely have to do with unlearning some of the ways of writing and speaking we've been rewarded for in our fields.'
Now these aren't news but must be considered. Parents with the highest literacy levels are more likely than other parents to be involved in their children's education, according to a report on adult literacy by the National Center for Education Statistics.

I am not sure if this will define Web 3.0 but again I have good reasons to rethink the mathematical equation: Web 3.0 =(4C + P + BV) [ES].

This has nothing to do with the Imus scandal but the Blogging Code of Conduct should come from bloggers themselves. I don't like to told what I have to do so when I am perfectly able to decide what is good and healthy for me better than nobody else. O'Reilly has a point but I will subscribe for the Anything goes. 'I do find disquieting the social pressure to get on board with this program.'

Statement: There are200 million Americans out there who cannot read a simple story in, say, Technology Review or the New York Times science section and understand even the basics of DNA or microchips or global warming.

Conclusion: "This level of science illiteracy may explain why over 40 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution and about 20 percent, when asked if the earth orbits the sun or vice versa, say it’s the sun that does the orbiting--placing these people in the same camp as the Inquisition that punished Galileo almost 400 years ago. It also explains the extraordinary disconnect between scientists and much of the public over issues the scientists think were settled long ago--never mind newer discoveries and research on topics such as the use of chimeras to study cancer, or pills that may extend life span by 30 or 40 percent."

Under Why we should aim for universal technical literacy, not more Ph.D.s. Edweek (registration required) publishes this interesting article:

We have framed the problem almost exclusively in terms of producing more scientists and engineers, practitioners at the highest levels. This raises, for me, two main fears: that we will return to Sputnik-era solutions and fail to take advantage of the accumulated wisdom of the past 50 years, and that we will focus on immediate but short-lived solutions. If our goals are to avoid job losses to other countries and produce the largest number of Ph.D.s, we are entering an impossible race. Simple mathematics tells us that we won’t win by the numbers when our population is one-third that of India and one-fourth that of China. And economic theory tells us that wage pressures on international corporations are simply too great.

The country’s primary goal should be to train the majority of its citizens to be technically competent. Technical competency—being familiar with and able to use the critical analytical skills of mathematics and science—is the key to the creation of jobs. These are not jobs that require terminal degrees; they are for the entrepreneurs, biotechnology-lab technicians, plant engineers, medical workers, traders, and even politicians of the future. Our most powerful asset as a nation is that we have tried for many years to educate every student in mathematics and science, and have learned much from that experience—even in our failures.

Forget Ph.D.s, concludes science educator Dennis M. Bartels. The country's primary goal should be universal technical literacy.

No matter your not being paid enough, if your a teacher (not a professor, in US. a professor makes enough money and do research) in US or anywhere around the world you're going to feel like Greece first school, slave's career. In case you didn't know the first instructors were picked among slaves to start transmitting knowledge to the 'Patricios'. However, pay attention to this report, 28% of Internet users tag. Taggers with broadband outnumber those without almost 2:1, and the higher your income and the better your education, the more you tag. The race/ethnicity with the highest percentage of taggers is black, followed by Hispanic.

The roll of teachers had changed during the last century, now we need to speak of Teacherly Scholarly Service Teachers are professionals that continue their career development, their membership in an academic fields, with its body of traditions, its dialogue, and its evolving practices. Is through service they reconnect their teaching practice with the traditions and new developments of such field. The have moved from establishing the dosage of knowledge students should get to a new way of redefine the school through uses of new technologies.

You don't have to convince nobody. Facts are out there to be watched and analyzed. You have plenty of tools to get the level you want, the topic you need to investigate, the circle to wish to belong. Citizendium is a good example of collaboration and service not precisely for teachers but professionals and experts in different fields. Results can be covered under the popular concept of Creative Commons.

The results will be widely spread by the media, such as sugar in the gas tank or the webby uploading services. May be we are still on time to pursue this Presidential Awards.

Tag, get in touch with colleagues, offer service and be a teacher!

Now that tags had been accepted worldwide almost nobody is asking about the real meaning or its taxonomy anymore. Fortunately, in the Sapienza Roma's University, a group of physicists had taken seriously the issue about the Semiotic Dynamics and collaborative tagging very seriously.

The report is presented by Nikhil Swaminathan from the Scientific American and the head of all this statistical method known as Power Law is Ciro Catuto, Vittorio Loreto and Luciano Pietronero.

The problem was to study the behaviors of tags (other people prefer to refer to them as folksonomies and categories)on the social bookmarking/collaborative tagging sites like del.icio.us , Connotea or Flickr. After studying the manner in which certain tags were associated with a pair of selected ones this group of researchers found that user behavior in collaborative tagging schemes followed a Power Law in which certain words were highly associated with the chosen tags.

Being the first time we've got quantitative procedures to determined the tag's behaviour, not matter what's the coolest term but what the fundamental structures within the system are. Normally, according with the results of this new structure, information stays fresh on the Web for only about 36-48 hours, they also found that users on collaborative tagging sites would likely prefer recently added tags to older ones. Be careful with all those memes and tagging systems dear bloggers.

Catuto, writes:

Our simple modelling is able to account quantitatively for the measured frequency-rank properties of tag association, with a surprisingly high accuracy. This is a clear indication that collaborative tagging is able to recruit the uncoordinated actions of web users to create a predictable and coherent semiotic dynamics at the emergent level.

And he tries to put it simple, with an example:

[...] linking to a photo or article about New York City. The person posting the link can tag the item in several ways, a few of which are "nyc," "newyork_city," or newyork. The choices of previous del.icio.us users, however, are likely to influence the next group of users. "There is pressure, in essence," [...] "because if you use tags that are already widespread within the system, people are able to find your entries—so, using popular tags makes your content findable and makes you more visible.

Carl Sagan fue quien me inspiró en mi primera juventud a la búsqueda, la lectura y la imaginación; cuando ni siquiera soniaba con venir a los EE.UU y lo poco que caía a mis manos de sus escritos los devoraba como si se tratase de golosinas para el espíritu. Carlos García está invitando a todos quienes hayan tenido contacto con el proyecto SET o les haya gustado Cosmos, dos de sus obras magistarles; ha escribir un post en sus blogs como una manera de rendir homenaje a tan grande divulgador científico. Nos unimos a la idea y les recordamos que su muerte ocurrió el 20 de Diciembre!

Citando un artículo de Wired, Enrique Edans dice que no necesitamos realmente Windows Vista, que para quienes gustan lo nuevo, deben esperarse al menos un anio o dos para solventar el problema de la pérdida de algunos periféricos y la incompatibilidad con software clásico. No se apure, que en eso Bruce Gain tiene mucha razón. Acaso se ha olvidado lo que pasó con el XP?

En un post anterior nuestro dilecto Avatar (aunque todavía no ha contestado su Invox: Por qué Avatar?) nos coregía el dato del número de servicio hosting para videos. Hoy vamos a agregar uno mas: Viddler. Lea la presentación de Vanesa.

Update: Otros blogs en lengua hispana uniéndose al homenaje a Carl Sagan.
Update 1: El seguimiento oficial de la celebración está en Celebrating Sagan.

Global Voces Online nos muestra una muestra sumaria de lo que acontece en la blogósfera argentina. Por nuestra parte tambien pescamos un blog interesante y que contiene algunos templates para blogger, el es dEEPARK'S. Cuando vaya por su blog dele nuestro respetuoso saludo.

Todavía no tiene todos sus regalos de Navidad. Si vive en una sociedad de cosumo como la norteamericana, entonces es casi segurio que usted haya comprado o se encuetre desesperadamente tratando de encontrar el regalo ideal para cualesquiera de sus personas queridas. No se quiebre la cabeza y trate de ayudarse en This Next.