(iverson's) currentbuzz

Our students are already appropriating information from the Web and turning it into new knowledge. They are already learning from each other and participating in the learning of their peers. They already connect, create, collaborate, and circulate information through new media. The goal for us, as educators, is to find new ways to harness and leverage their interests and social competencies to establish a participatory learning environment. Teachers and administrators must learn to leverage this new learning paradigm to engage our students, and we encourage you to use the Learning Library and see if it works for your context.

via Confessions of an Aca/Fan: What Is Learning in a Participatory Culture? (Part Two).

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The danger of drugs … and data | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Elsevier, a formerly reputable scientific and medical publisher has been outed in a law suit from Australia for publishing what purported to be medical journals, but were in reality marketing pieces paid for by Big Pharma.

This kind of lack of transparency, and also attempts to establish a false but trustworthy reputation for publications or speakers on the Internet will be one of the information literacy challenges of our time.

How do we know if something we read is believeable? The fake medical journals call into question the physicians who served on their editorial boards, and the way we make important policy decisions which ought to be based on facts.

It has been estimated it would take 700 hours a month to read the thousands of academic articles relevant to a GP; doctors skim, they take shortcuts, they rely on summaries, or worse. We could perform better when giving them information, but for now, it will often be “actually, I think I’ve seen at least two studies on that, and in different journals”.

The real tragedy is that the cost of distorted information, and irrational prescribing, is far greater than the cost of the research that could prevent it. Health systems pay for these drugs – state-funded in almost every single developed country – and they largely pay for the journals, too. In a sensible world, countries would band together and pay for comparative research themselves, and the free, open distribution of the results, to prevent all this nonsense.

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Elizabeth Losh of UC Irvine is giving a Berkman lunchtime talk called “From the Crowd to the Cloud: Social Media and the Obama Administration.” She looks at “institutions as digital content creators.”

via Joho the Blog » [berkman] Elizabeth Losh on Obama’s use of social media.

This is Dave Winer’s blog and he adds a disclaimer noting he is liveblogging, but I’d say this talked answered a couple of questions, but brought up some we need to be asking.

And it’s a very simple post that any journalist can do. It doesn’t take much time, can drive serious traffic and provides additional content and insight for readers. With sites/tools like Publish2, link journalism has become incredibly easy.

Most journalists and bloggers eventually call it a day (except, it seems, for a few tech bloggers). But people don’t stop consuming content just because content producers have gone home for the day. A daily roundup post can give a blog hours more of quality content.

And, as Cramer pointed out, if a blog wants to be a one-stop shop for everything about a beat, the only sensible way to do that if with a mixture of good original reporting and quality link journalism to fill in the gaps.

via The daily roundup: a second dose of link journalism from bloggers | BeatBlogging.Org.

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Okay, I have been known to write about the “big ass table” in sarcastic posts. I was set to let loose on it again, but here is an elementary teacher who has used the device in a literacy project. When the table is used with thought and appropriately, it demonstrates that the media is the message. The process of working with the archival materials is transformed into a new kind of learning experience because of the interaction of content with medium.

Students viewed and organized archival videos and images of Victorian England on the SMART table, and Tom Barrett, the teacher who is blogging about using the table observes, “It is the blurring of that physical and digital space that I am intrigued with. The children passed each other video footage.”

via SMART Table in my Classroom – Pass Me That Video | Space for me to explore.

He continues, “It is the heightened sense of access and of sharing the digital imagery, combined with the fluid resize, rotate and placement controls you have that makes it a powerful learning tool.”

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