Economic Growth Without Copyright, Ebook Numbers, Hypothesis Analysis Tool, Who Pays for Open Data?
by Nat Torkington
| @gnat
| 26 August 2010
- Germany's Industrial Expansion Fueled by Absence of Copyright Law? (Der Spiegel) -- fascinating article about the extraordinary publishing output in 1800s Germany vs other nations, all with no effective and enforceable copyright laws. Sigismund Hermbstädt, for example, a chemistry and pharmacy professor in Berlin, who has long since disappeared into the oblivion of history, earned more royalties for his "Principles of Leather Tanning" published in 1806 than British author Mary Shelley did for her horror novel "Frankenstein," which is still famous today. Books were released in high-quality high-price format and low-quality low-price format, and Germans bought them in record numbers. When copyright law became established, publishers did away with the low-quality low-price version and authors complained about the drop in revenue.
- Cheap Ebooks Give Second Life to Backlist -- it can't be said enough that dead material in print can have a second life online. Here are numbers to make the story plain. (via Hacker News)
- Competing Hypotheses -- a free, open source tool for complex research problems. A software companion to a 30+ year-old CIA research methodology, Open Source Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) will help you think objectively and logically about overwhelming amounts of data and hypotheses. It can also guide research teams toward more productive discussions by identifying the exact points of contention. (via johnmscott on Twitter)
- Economics of Scholarly Production: Supplemental Materials -- scholarly publications include data and documentation that's not in the official peer-reviewed article. Storing and distributing this has been the publication's responsibility, but they're spitting the dummy. Now the researcher's organisation will have to house these supplemental materials. If data is as critical to science as the article it generates, yet small articles can come from terabytes of data, what's the Right Thing To Do that scales across all academia? (via Cameron Neylon)
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by Dale Dougherty
| @dalepd
| 25 August 2010
Elliot Washor of Big Picture Learning organized an educational symposium during Maker Faire Detroit. The symposium brought together educators and practitioners who explored engaging the hands and minds of students, sometimes called thinkering. As a group, they experienced Maker Faire and then met to discuss "how making can be an integral part of how young people figure out who they are in the world." This is a really key idea, I think: what we can learn by making is a process of discovering what we can do, and we begin to participate in making and changing the world around us.
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A school finds success moving drills to software. Is there a model here?
by Marie Bjerede
| 5 August 2010
San Diego's High Tech High has found success with ALEKS, a software package that uses simple feedback to reinforce fundamental math skills. This example hints at a revised teacher-tech relationship, where the technology handles drills while teachers coach and offer guidance. Toss in additions like mobile access and 24/7 connectivity, and new possibilities -- and new questions -- arise. In this post, Marie Bjerede examines all these angles.
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The Henry Ford is one of the world's great museums, and the world it chronicles is our own.
by Tim O'Reilly
| @timoreilly
| 30 July 2010
I would never in a hundred years have thought of making a visit to Detroit just to visit The Henry Ford museum, but knowing what I know now, I will tell you confidently that it is as worth your while as a visit to Paris just to see the Louvre, to Rome for the Vatican Museum, or to Florence for the Uffizi Gallery. This is truly one of the world's great museums, and the world that it chronicles is our own.
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Critical Thinking, Impulse Buys, Cell Tower in a Handset, and American Jobs
by Nat Torkington
| @gnat
| 6 July 2010
- Critical Thinking -- a world-class resource for teaching critical thinking and Internet literacies. The ability to separate bullshit from truth (to find the gold nuggets in the butt nuggets, as it were), is how people can get the good effects of the Internet while avoiding most of the bad. (via Clay Johnson)
- Economist Direct is a Fabulous Idea -- on the Economist's offer to let you buy a single-issue subscription: it's not a subscription; it's more casual than that. It's an impulscription. (via BERG London)
- OpenBTS on Droid -- run a GSM network from a CDMA handset, with the help of Asterisk. Cute hack!
- How to Make an American Job, Before It's Too Late (Andy Grove) -- former head of Intel talks about the nature of jobs and industries. A new industry needs an effective ecosystem in which technology knowhow accumulates, experience builds on experience, and close relationships develop between supplier and customer. (via timoreilly on Twitter)
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How Zoho's internal program finds talent outside universities.
by Dale Dougherty
| @dalepd
| 28 June 2010
Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu discusses his company's internal "university," which brings in kids unlikely to attend college and uses self-learning to prep them for IT careers. Could the U.S. benefit from a similar model?
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