Seb's Open Research
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Saturday, March 08, 2003
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Microblogosphere search
A few weeks ago I wrote about Ming and Michael's ideas on personalized collaborative filtering in a post called Recommender systems and the microblogosphere. The idea being that there are blogospheres around each weblog reader, and that my "sphere of trust" - the set of people I'm likely to take seriously - roughly corresponds to people who are a few degrees of separation from me. And that I might be interested in knowing what those people think of a certain idea/thing/person in addition to knowing what Google thinks.
Now (via Alex) I found Micah Alpern's microblogosphere search tool, which implements the case N=1. I haven't had time to try it yet but it looks like it might be very useful.
 10:44:30 PM
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Tuesday, March 04, 2003
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Humility, usefulness, and blogs
Joi's party of 150.
Had a great time at Joi's party in Palo Alto last night. The buzz was certainly reminiscient of the days of yore. The difference is humility, an interest in making things people actually use and that nametags have blogs behind them.
There are some bloggers who have already written about the party: Chris Pirillo, Gnome Girl, Jason Defillippo, Dave Winer, Marc Canter, Kazuya Minami [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
Humility, usefulness, and blogs. A revolutionary combination. Image might still be everything, but the images have gotten much richer. I really like that.
6:08:00 PM
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School and meaninglessness
Serious senioritis? Fewer students say courses are meaningful. [Christian Science Monitor | Learning]
This is an interesting finding.
While 40 percent of high school seniors reported that their schoolwork was "often or always meaningful" in 1983, a mere 28 percent offered that response in 2000.
Meanwhile, the percentage of students who reported that their courses were "quite or very interesting" dropped to 21 in 2000 from 35 percent in 1983.
Even among A-students, fewer and fewer forecast that their schoolwork will be very important later in life.
These declines, noted across the board, were largely independent of the type of high school program - academic, vocational, or technical - the students were enrolled in.
Very well, so based on this you'd expect students to detach a little bit from school and invest in other, more fulfilling activities, right? Wrong! Here's the punchline:
Notably, the Michigan study found that declining interest does not equate with declining effort. Over the decades studied, students reported putting a consistent level of work into their assignments.
Students are willing to put up with more and more stuff that is meaningless to them.
Why is it so?
My best guess is that we are generally conditioned to seek extrinsic rewards, and that in that context the meaning of tasks (or lack thereof) is immaterial.
5:57:14 PM
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Pied Pipers wanted
Yesterday Donna Wentworth linked to a Stanford project to help people in their community start weblogs. Right on. [...] Also note that it's important to have a Pied Piper. It's not enough to put up a server, you'll wait a long time before the weblogs start. Someone has to make it look interesting and fun and point to the cool stuff. That's what Jenny does for librarians, and Denise and Ernie for the attorneys. I always keep an eye open for a Pied Piper. I of couse am a PP myself. [Scripting News]
If you're reading this, if your area isn't well covered in blogspace, and if you don't run a weblog yet, please consider becoming a Pied Piper. We'll all learn so much.
4:56:06 PM
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How lucky we are
A task as large as Africa itself. An academic struggles to tell the story of higher education on his continent. [Christian Science Monitor | Learning]
Unsurprisingly, things are pretty bad almost everywhere in Africa.
The entire continent has only 300 institutions that could even be classified as universities, making Africa the world's least developed region in terms of both institutions and enrollments.
While Nigeria and Sudan top the list with 45 and 26 universities respectively, at least six African nations, including Djibouti, Cape Verde, and Gambia, have no universities at all.
In some nations, such as Somalia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, many postsecondary institutions have been completely or partially destroyed by political unrest and war.
On a more encouraging note, check out Collaborative Development of Open Content: A Process Model to Unlock the Potential For African Universities (via Stephen).
4:43:01 PM
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George Siemens rocks (part II)
I've said it once but it bears repeating. George really does kick-ass syntheses.
Article: Free and Open Source Movements. I've posted a new article on elearnspace: Free and Open Source Movements - Part 1. [elearnspace blog]
Here's the summary:
This article reviews the development and need for Free and Open Source movements in software development. Part 1 provides a global overview of climates and conditions that fostered the revolution. The climate in software development in 1984 is being mimicked in education today - closing doors, content as individual property, proprietary offerings, and for-profit challenges to the education environment. Part 2 (to be released March 8) calls for a similar revolution in the field of educational content and will announce the formation of an organization committed to fostering Open Source content development.
3:33:11 PM
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"My Comments" as a sideblog
Michael Fagan:
I added a new feature to [my blog] Puzzlepieces today: Comments I’ve Made. You’ll find it on the right hand side after my links and such. Whenever I post a comment on someone else’s blog or a forum, I will post a link to it there. Actually, this “sideblog” is another blogger-powered blog, included on this page using SSI.
This simultaneously resolves two issues I have with comments:
1) Authentication. It becomes possible to verify that comments with my name on them were indeed penned by me.
2) Return on investment. The comments I leave elsewhere are given a second chance to be read and reflected upon, presumably by a different set of people.
I don't know to what extent Michael has automated this process, but it sure would be cool to have an intermediate commenting software layer that posts to both places with a single click...
2:55:27 PM
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Copyleft
2006
Sebastien Paquet.
Last update:
4/22/2006; 12:12:32 PM.
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