Beth Harris and Steve Zucker’s smarthistory is an exciting effort to re-imagine expensive Art History textbooks as open (as in free) web-based resources—with a Creative Commons share-alike license to boot. From what I understand from the original site designer, Joe Ugoretz, the first iteration of this project was built as a WordPress site under the IT radar of these instructors original institution as a way to start experimenting with the open web as a primary resource for their classes. Over the course of a number of years it has morphed into a pretty impressive site that is very much premised on small pieces of media from around the web loosely joined to create an open, web-based “textbook” (although I think that term does it no justice).
I love this project’s focus upon web-based multimedia, a reality that most of today’s textbook publishers have shunned. And on the rare occasions these publishers do go online, they spend all their time and money on locking stuff down rather than designing resources that are useful. Who needs ArtStor when we have Flickr? And this is where this site excels, not only is it a series of amazing resources that are linked through third-party sites like Flickr, Vimeo, and YouTube, but it has also spent a lot of time and energy designing a very elegant site—I guess as any good Art History site must. And in recognition of this fact they have been nominated for a People’s Webbie Award, so if you’re into that kinda thing you can go and throw them a vote by April, 30th here. Congratulations on raising the profile of educational sites that don’t suck (both aesthetically and monetarily)!
You can’t keep the best damn educational blogging platform from Timbuktu to Portland Maine (or Portland Oregon, for that matter) down, and here’s the proof: UMW’s student-run newspaper The Bullet is now running it’s web-based version on UMW Blogs! (Notice the mapped domain, my new obsession.) It took a while, but when the ball got rolling it was surprisingly quick. They moved over to their modest new digs for the last run of this school year, and they plan on spending the Summer re-imagining and re-designing the site as they settle into the easy living and expansive comfort of WordPress.
I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about this, and a huge shout out to Mike McCarthy, a visiting professor of Journalism, who made this all happen (he’s 24 karat gold!), as well as Aaron Richardson who will be the new web-editor for the Bullet—a cat I imagine will have had more than enough of me by Summer’s end. And, as an added bonus, Claudia Emerson’s Literary Journals course had an article in this week’s paper highlighting the students’ journals, and the title is nothing less than “Students Tweet for Class Credit.” And while the headline is a bit misleading, it’s about time the amazing work by the faculty and students at UMW got a little love from the school paper. Nobody can stop UMW Blogs, baby, NOBODY!
I couldn’t help but pause over a recent headline I came across in my RSS reader, and while I can’t find the original post I scanned yesterday, a quick search brought this one up first from startuparabia, “Google, AT&T, Automattic and Twitter Executives Visit Iraq.” And they link their sources as Tech Generation Daily and Reuters. The TG Daily blurb reads like this:
Washington, D.C. – Bet you didn’t think of Google, YouTube, AT&T and Twitter as humanitarian campaigners, tirelessly fighting corruption and helping to build a more accountable society. But this week, executives from the companies, along with other high-tech firms, are visiting Iraq in a trip organised by the US State Department. The idea, said spokesman Robert Wood, is for them to offer “ideas on how new technologies can be used to build local capacity, foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, scale-up civil society, and further empower local entities and individuals by providing the tools for network building.”
I don’t know about you, but the idea of Web 2.0 executives going into Iraq after a pretty blatant imperial occupation to rebuild the nation with these tools of liberation and control is not necessarily heart-warming or humanitarian in my mind. In suggests a new face of media, capital, and controlling the message, and I have to say that if Google were so humanitarian on premised on openness and the general good of society, than why the hell are they fighting the Internet Archive (which is the real deal) request for copyright indemnity? Why not help re-build this nation on terms of equity, access, and transparency? How does the US State Department feel about this issue?
Like Google Book Search, the Open Library’s collection consists of public-domain works, copyrighted books scanned with the permission of the rights-holder, and orphan works. It’s the orphan works that have the Internet Archive concerned. The terms of the settlement between Google and The Authors Guild indemnifies Google should the copyright holder for an orphan work turn up and sue the search giant for infringement. The Internet Archive wants this same protection.
“The Archive’s text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google,” argues the Internet Alliance in a letter to Judge Chin. “Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books.”
Although the Internet Archive isn’t seeking to derail the settlement, which is supposed to be finalized in June, the parties involved have informed the group that they oppose its attempts to intervene in the case. The Archive promises to abide by the court’s May deadline for filing its objections, but believes strongly that it should be allowed to intervene as an affected party so as not to be put at a competitive disadvantage.
Nation-building always starts at home, and erecting a culture built in the image of an executive Web 2.0 is frightening in many ways, we are not free! And the consolidation of power, communication, and copyright into the image and hands of a few must be resisted.
After the recent release of The Simpsons stamps, we all knew it was just a matter of time before the bava got one. So I’m proud to introduce the first proofs for the bava stamps designed by our own Serena Epstein. I think they’re beautiful!
I’ll be giving a presentation this Friday at Duke University’s Instructional Technology Showcase titled “Fragmented Identities: A Domain of One’s Own” (the title is kind of a tribute to Duke’s Literature department in the heady days of theory in the late 80s and 90s). But to counteract any pretense of being an academic, I’ve decided to modify Levine’s Law of presenting a bit and rather than starting with the demo, I’m gonna start with a magic trick. That’s right, I will be donning a cape, fake moustache, and a top hat for this one, but there will be no scantily clad assistant sawed in two, in fact my assistants will be anyone out there crazy enough to participate! In other words, I need your help, but it will be painless, I promise.
Here’s the deal, I’ve set up a UMW Blog for this presentation here and come presentation time I plan on showing them this blank slate, and then asking anyone from the audience who is interested to share their feed. After about a minute or so, I will pull the switch and update the site via FeedWordPress, and whammo!–I’d like the site to be overflowing with posts, images, videos, etc., from a wide range of sites and services to re-enforce the power of blogs as aggregation points of our fragmented identities. I’m also hoping it might act as an immediate way to demonstrate in real time the logic behind UMW’s syndication bus and the importance of RSS.
So, if you got a second, do me a favor and add a feed (or several) to the presentation blog here. There’s a big “Add feed” here field in the top-right corner, you can’t miss it. Also, it would be great to see feeds from a wide range of services like Flickr, YouTube, delicious, Blip.tv, Twitter, or whatever else you got.
I’m truly enjoying the 1967 Spider-man series, and it struck me this evening that no other superhero is a better metaphor for the internet than Spider-man given his dependence on the web for power—although one could make a compelling case for The Vision given he can virtualize himself. So, when I heard the following bit from episode 3, I knew I had to post it because this is the stuff presentations about the end of the web are made of 🙂
Well, because the “Crossing the Chasm” theme for this year’s Open Education Conference was a bit too hippie for my liking (especially the image), I decided to offer up an alternative theme/movie trailer for this event based on Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece Rome, Open City, appropriately re-titled Vancouver, OpenEd City. I kinda think of this little ditty as a neo-neo-realist take on the struggle for open education.
And if you haven’t heard already, WFMU’s Station Manager Ken Freedman will be one of the three keynotes at this year’s event, a treat in and of itself. I have a feeling this year’s event might have a bit different tenor given the organizers, I imagine something along the lines of the above video. So kudos to Brian, David, Scott and Chris for putting together what promises to be an awesome event, and even making it far cheaper than it was just two years ago. How did you manage that? So, if you don’t go to the Open Education Conference this year, well, then, I guess you really don’t love freedom 🙂
As you can see the bava keeps only the best of company 🙂 More seriously, I’m really not sure how or why the hell this happened, but I find it pretty crazy—there isn’t even mention of EDUPUNK. So, in the words of Jello Biaffra, “Rick Wakeman eat your heart out.” Looks like it’s bava big time now, bitches, let the hating commence—I’m ready for all y’all!
Yet another episode of the 1967 Spider-man series, this week’s villain is none other than Mysterio. In fact, he has the best quote of the series yet, “Don’t ya know, you can’t keep a good menace down.” Enjoy!
Mike Bogle has been basically crawling out of his skin while faced with the prospects an LMS offers the future of thinking creatively about teaching and learning technologies—and rightfully so. It’s a mess, so in solidarity—and thanks to Luke Waltzer who was Rick Rolling me with 3rd Bass videos yesterday—I offer a song from quite possibly the weakest rappers ever, ie. 3rd Bass (thank god Eminem eventually came along to save all white people from this travesty 🙂 ), as a way to give the LMS, and in particular BlackBoard, the Gas Face!
is an ongoing conversation about media of all kinds ...
Testimonials:
Generations from now, they won't call it the Internet anymore. They'll just say, "I logged on to the Jim Groom this morning.
-Joe McMahon
Everything Jim Groom touches is gold. He's like King Midas, but with the Internet.
-Serena Epstein
My understanding is that an essential requirement of the internet is to do whatever Jim Groom asks of you while you're online.
-James D. Calder
@jimgroom is the Billy Martin of edtech.
-Luke Waltzer
My 3yr old son is VERY intrigued by @jimgroom's avatar. "Is he a superhero?" "Well, yes, son, to many he is."
-Clint Lalonde
Jim Groom is a fiery man.
-Antonella Dalla Torre
“Reverend” Jim “The Bava” Groom, alias “Snake Pliskin” is a charlatan and a fraud, a self-confessed “used car salesman” clawing his way into the glamour of the education technology keynote circuit via the efforts of his oppressed minions at the University of Mary Washington’s DTLT and beyond. The monster behind educational time-sink ds106 and still recovering from his bid for hipster stardom with “Edupunk”, Jim spends his days using his dwindling credibility to sell cheap webhosting to gullible undergraduates and getting banned from YouTube for gross piracy.
