Wiki for "Wealth of Networks"

I set up our team wiki, we base our teamwork on "Wealth of Networks" by Yochai Benkler.
You can find it on a PBworks page named "Wealth of Networks."

The task itself is the following:

1. Write a wiki-based team paper

The paper should be about 10-15 pages in volume and cover any subject within the general limits of the course. The title should be approved by the supervisor before starting to write (not meant as censorship but rather to prevent too wide or too narrow treatises) - so please inform about your team lineup, the location of the wiki and the title your work before starting (you may include some of this information in your profile). The paper will give up to 40 points to the authors (the supervisor reserves the right to distribute points unevenly if there is evidence of greatly different rates of contribution). The number of team members depends on the overall number of participants, but is generally 3-4 people - enough to facilitate some teamwork.
Note: although presented as a wiki, the paper should retain most qualities of academic writing - source list, references, writing style etc. Talk pages and other means may be used for informal discussion of the paper.

Ethics and Law in New Media, week seven

Read Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property" of the Brian Martin's book. Write a blog review (especially, comment on his strategies for change).

I totally agree with the author. While reading the story I automatically remembered a case where a cat owner wanted to dry her cat (or was it hamster?) in a microwave and sued the company for not having information about drying hamsters in a microwave oven after the animal had died

There is an illustrative joke about hamsters:

Q: Why shouldn't I dry my hamster in a microwave?
A: Because the dryer is the proper place to dry a hamster. Toss him in with a dryer sheet and he'll come out all fluffy and warm. Hell, he'll even smell good for a day or two. 
I think in this case the owner should be sued, not the microwave oven company.

The next trivial example is how a woman burnt her mouth with hot coffee in MacDonald's.

Perhaps this is somehow connected to my previous Law and Ethics post's death test example?


I gave the two examples to show just how greedy people can be. I think patents are a metaphor of greed, because these people who patent things (that may not originally be theirs) for malicious purposes (e.g. taking the rights of growing and using some kind of tea away from people who have grown tea for ages), and those people simply seem to be afraid.

I agree that when the new ideas concern direct help to underprivileged, they should be available the sooner the better. While reading the text about the part I just mentioned, I could not help but think of this year's fuss about swine flu. Is it a case of pharmaceutical companies trying to sell their medicines? Why does not anyone talk about the usual flu which also kills people when left untreated? Maybe a company who has produced and patented the medicines wants the fuss to be around in order to gain profit from the medicines... maybe, we do not know.

When I read about the strategies for change, I found some controversies. Changing of thought can initially be a noble idea, but it takes a lot of time to change the understanding of masses. Not all of us can and will change their idea of proprietary work, ideas, etc. This takes a whole lot of time when this takes place. The idea itself is of course positive, I agree that people should change their way of thinking about different ideas. 

The author somehow leads people to protest against copyright, not to go with the flow but try to act differently. As I have read before, Linus Torvalds was among the first to show the benefit of open source, which led to a powerful operation system with the help of the ideas of other people. He is a good example of letting other ideas become a profit to his initial work. I think for wise people copyright is not a restriction, they still find a way to obtain the works and read/use/develop them.

I would like to finish the topic with a small example of my view of piracy and copyright/patents.  I really like listening to music. Getting it online is much faster and easier than buying it from a music shop/internet music shop. After obtaining the the pieces of music, I decide whether I like them or not, and based on my opinion, I will go and buy my favourite CD-s, because then I will have their songs even when my computer hard disk dies. The ones I do not like are not listened to anyway, so I do not see any harm in such action. I have lots of CD-s of my favourite band at home, because I like to support them by showing my appreciation and contributing to their songwriting.

I recommend a Youtube channel.

Today I looked up Thea's blog updates and discovered my topic there, which led me to the videos I had watched already and discovered much much more interesting content on mwesch's channel.
Right now I am watching a video about YouTube, content creation pros and cons. Although it is almost an hour long, I totally recommend it!



The rest of the vids are on mwesch's channel.

Ethics and Law in New Media, week six

Find and blog about an illustrative case of hacktivism.


Hacktivism is a form of social activism with online solutions. While googling for Hacktivism, I found this document. It says that not any kind of attack is considered hacktivism, but only the websites that have connection to the issue of protest.
I think there have been many different hacktivism attempts to illustrate, but I started to think while reading the Hacktivism Declaration that a form of hacktivism could be such that a whole lot of people would post interesting content about some important event on a black background with a neon or white text. It is extremely difficult to read, and I think that at first you even will not figure out that it is possible to copy-paste the text to a more suitable background, because the content would be so interesting that people's minds are concentrating on reading more than replacing the text onto a more suitable surface. I think this kind of action could be a mild form of hacktivism, what do you think?

Blog about a good case of social engineering

The case of Gazzag with Jenny seems to me her own failure, because she had read the notice that all of her contacts would be invited to the network. I just do not understand her disappointment. I have got similar invites from Hi5, but haven't subscribed, because there are really many social networks that do not work for me or other people. Hi5 and Netlog still send me reminders that my friends have invited me to join their networks. It is the same case when you order a cool ring tone and you will get a whole lot more (even if you do not want to get them), because you have unwillingly (or having not read the terms of condition) subscribed a whole service of ring tones which will be sent to you if you do not send an SMS saying "STOP " (for extra cost, of course).
I once wanted to experiment on such a service, and I really do not remember if there was a teeny-tiny notice on a TV screen saying that if you order this ring tone you will be dragged into a bombardment of ring tones for which you have to pay extra monthly sums. The better for the scammers if you do not read your SMSes, because you will definitely be surprised by an ugly phone bill. I stopped the service paying extra money, but I was at least aware of such a scam for future reference. I believe that there was a warning (which you cannot see anyway, because it is written in a teeny-weeny size and moves away fast). 
Another such case is with cool Internet ads. Like "test your IQ" or "Do you want to know the time of your death?" which are cool quizzes. They get the victims interested and when they have finished their quiz, it wouls be fair that the result comes out, but these clever people trick the victims into giving their phone numbers with an excuse to see the quiz result. They have put a small text at the bottom of the page with all terms of conditions, but they know that usually people do not read small texts at the bottom of the pages, thus it is a great possibility for them to take money out of people. Again, stopping the service also needs payment. 
Take a look at SURMATEST (death test), where you have little text: "Tegu on perioodilise teenusega. Teile saadetakse iga nädal 1 dieedinipp, 1 taustapilt ja 1 polühelin (nädalatasu on 27EEK).Teenuse peatamiseks saatke: "STOP TIPS" lühinumbrile 1818. Polüfooniliste helinate puhul on artistide nimed esitatud üksnes selleks, et tellijatel oleks kergem leida soovitud lugu, ning ei viita mingil moel sellele, et nimetatud artistid oleksid helinad esitanud või välja andnud. Meie helinad töötavad kõikide müügil olevate mudelitega, etc.© 2008 TIMWE S.p.A"
Similar links: IQ test pahandab kasutajaid (Tarbija24.ee) 



Formulate some measures which can reduce the effectiveness of social engineering attempts



Measures have been taken already to avoid such actions.
Estonian publicity tries to educate young people already in order to avoid such attacks. 
First it is absolutely necessary to use an anti-anything software, and a legitimate one.
Second, it is wise for the parents to teach themselves and their kids the basic truths about Internet and other gadget security, one could use links like:
Veebivend
Veebivend 1

Materials connected to the campaign
Materials 1
Internet security, etc.

The wisest thing would be not to befriend with strangers in social networking places and not to give out too much information about yourself, but this is often ignored. 
I cannot think of something new that has not already been said. The best possibility to avoid such cases is not to use any electronic devices, nor bank cards, nothing that can be used maliciously, of course.

Learning by Sharing - the essay

Before starting to do any essay I have to note that I was quite taken aback by Mark Prensky and I have a lot of his articles open to read later. First I am trying to design a sketch or a mind map for my essay which I am basing on the article with the same name - Learning by Sharing and add some of the other notions I got from different sources. Especially Prensky.

Learning by sharing

Introduction

More and more information and communication technologies (ICT) are used in order to make learning more interesting. According to an internationally acclaimed speaker and education designer Mark Prensky, a traditional “tell-test“ school model is less than three hundred years old and is still in use today with the current Digital Native (2001b, p. 1) generation that was born into a society where computers and other technology have always been a part of their lives. These learners have developed new kinds of study skills and do not feel the excitement in the traditional classroom, because they are used to fast speed information processing and arbitrary thinking  (Prensky, 2001a, p. 2) compared to the current school model that originates from the 1800-s and was meant for preparing the workforce (Toffler, 2008).  One of the possible learning methods for this generation, besides games (as Prensky suggests) (Prensky, 2001a, p. 10), could be learning by sharing or collaborative learning.  

The thirteenth article: Marc Prensky. Digital Game Based Learning.

Marc Prensky. Digital Game Based Learning.

I like Prensky's articles because he is so radical. Go and tell something like that to our teachers and they will certainly throw you with rotten tomatoes. By all means, this is only figurative, because teachers are intellectual by all means.
But now to go on with the article, Prensky does not feel ashamed to declare that it is the educators' fault that pupils feel bored at school. School does not provide them with a brand new content that they are used to, and he draws a good parallel that a doctor will not blame the patient for falling ill (p. 2). He adds that "people live in the world into which they are born, and do things of their time that appeal to them." He puts his thoughts into a very interesting context.

The twelfth article: Marc Prensky. Open Collaboration.

 Marc Prensky. Open Collaboration.

Marc Prensky elaborates on Game Based Learning in this article. He suggests that games are good for Digital Natives because they put them in the middle of the story and give them intellectual fun. He also insists on putting this kind of learning materials online without any fee so that everybody could contribute to the game or other learning materials in order to make for example a tiny game into something much bigger. Prensky gives examples of different cases which have managed to evolve to various bigger concepts.
He also explains why it is necessary to leave the game or other source's source code open - it is because education needs innovation (because current e-sources are according to him "pathetic" (p. 5)), and collaboration with different teachers, because innovation needs to be encouraged.
He brings about the idea of open content where people like to give their input. He notes that Tim Berners Lee has already said that important is not what you take out from the Internet, but what you put in it. This system is self-organising, thus no need to worry about the appropriateness.
He also raises the question of money. Prensky thinks that making something payable prevents innovation growth, and that it is not allowed by educators. He says that such money does not make anyone particularly rich (p. 6).
He says that there is no point in keeping to one's page, people must make content that is engaging and possible through open collaboration.

This article raised a few thoughts of how to develop such games if you are not a programmer. There are computer specialists at school, but everybody nowadays demands money for extra work. In Estonia we are still learning to teach the Web 2.0 devices, when the web itself is moving on. I think that only enthusiasts agree with Prensky, but majority who do not want to hear anything about extra work, are not contributors. Then there is the money issue, which could still become a problem in this consuming society.
Certainly teachers like Kim Casper can easily develop content (but still with money issues in mind), because they have a few lessons per week compared to lots of teachers from Estonia who have neither time nor the stamina to create such online content. But there are still more teachers than Estonian teachers who would be able to add to such initiative. It is a great concept, but needs enthusiasts to contribute to it.

The eleventh article: Marc Prensky. Make Those You Tubes! More Sharing = Faster Learning.

Marc Prensky. Make Those You Tubes! More Sharing = Faster Learning.

I read the article where Marc Prensky suggests that all teachers and students should use YouTube or similar video sharing communities for learning. According to Prensky, it is important to use the means because many of the world's most important people (politicians, teachers, thought leaders, etc) have posted their thoughts on such websites. He also suggests that for searching information a person should use video search engines together with text search.

I think that in a way it makes sense, because there are different learning styles. By viewing videos, visual and aural learners would gain more from such learning, for example how-to videos would teach exactly what to do, contrary to only textual information where you have to guess the movements. Even more, this means is a cheap way to upload videos and share them online with the whole world. Most of the people have some kind of a camera to record, and a possibility to use a computer. There are free programs that enable video downloading and uploading, and it is amazing that today's Digital Natives have great interest in digital technology. Teachers who upload some kind of useful content can contribute to the whole world. Students can share their achievements and get peer feedback, which at some point is very important.

Materials used: AOPA Online: Your Student's Style

The tenth article: Marc Prensky. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

Marc Prensky. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Part 1.

First, the author states that the brains of today's young people might have physically changed or at least their thinking patterns are different. Marc Prensky calls these students Digital Natives who were grown up with technology. We, or the generation who grew up without technology, but have adapted it, are Digital Immigrants. The difference between those two is that the latter always have their past which was technology-free or at least computer free environment.
Prensky is concerned with the Digital Immigrant instructors for Digital Natives, because as today's youth processes information very fast, they prefer games and like multitasking, but the older generations are used to serious, step-by-step learning. He suggests that today's teachers should skip the step-by-step part and teach today's students more randomly, and to learn to teach old things in a new way. Prensky himself likes to adapt old content to games.
It is interesting how the author brings examples of games that were designed in order to learn a difficult program or how to teach different subjects in the "Digital Native" language. Key concept here is pace - everything has to be done in a faster manner than the traditional academic way. It is also useful to use your own students to help you develop content.

The article had a point in it when the author said that today's learners are different. They often parallel some words from the English lesson with some games, or they give examples from the games. I think that in a reasonable amount games would be fine, but there are other technologies what to implement.

The ninth article: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture.

Henry Jenkins et al. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture. Media Education in the 21st Century. 

In the foreword Henry Jenkins claims that it is necessary to teach children new media concepts so that they would be able to take part in the participatory culture (Jenkins, xiii) in order to become full society members. He names a set of social skills that are necessary to be learned in the classroom or after-school activities. The skills are necessary to navigate wisely in new media, and among them he names play, multitasking, collective intelligence, judgment, networking, and negotiation.
"According to a 2005 study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than half of all American teens - and 57 percent of teens who use the Internet - could be considered media creators (Jenkins, 3).

The author defines participatory culture as having "relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, and strong support for creating and sharing creations with others. Members who feel some degree of social connection with one another." (Jenkins, 5-6). The author notes that everyone is a participator in such community and all people are at ease when producing content, because they know that it will be valued at a smaller or larger scale.

He has studied various studies which confirm that participatory media will be of greater value among peers, because everybody is allowed to create content themselves. Also the youth who grow up with computers and use them on a daily basis, will be able to communicate via electronic channels and with people from different cultures more easily.

But nowadays there is not an issue whether children have access or not, because a 2005 report from the United Kingdom concluded that now children are categorized into two: a) those to whom the Internet is a diverse, rich environment, and b) those to whom it remains unengaging, and narrow (Jenkins, 17). Those who use computers at home are more dominating in these skills and the other, less skilled pupils are left aside, and the latter find themselves struggling in the Internet.

The author claims that the importance of media education should be ethical issues, enabling acccess to skills and experiences in order to become a full participant in current society, and to ensure that every child would be able to verbalise understanding of new media or interactive media (p. 26-27).

Also he declares that "adolescents need to learn how to integrate knowledge from multiple sources, including music, video, online databases, and other media". This information has to be processed. The need to participate in online collaborations is on demand, because the world is globalizing.

As this was a book preview, not all of the content was captured, but I hope that I got some ideas for my essay. Together with globalization we could make all learning easier with students and teachers from different countries communicating with students via Internet.

The eighth interview: Don Tapscott's interview about education.

It is sad that people do not have supernatural powers to understand whether the article or book to be read is of good value or not. Sadly I have lost interest in quite a few books or they have had deadlines and I had to return them. Thus I am going on with the articles, and wondering whether audio is applicable for a reading task?

Right now I am listening to Tapscott's interview. Bad quality, but good topic.
A quick scetch of what I have heard.

He is talking about today's learning. The kids today aren't prepared to working hard. The backgound of these kids is different and their attention span is different today, nobody even knows whether they have the possibilities to do their homework.
Pupils become very engaged in their computer, where full attention is guaranteed. They can actually mix all channels of media and do homework at the same time. The students are good collaborators.

According to Tapscott there is a need to change the education system. Education is teacher-centered and the students stay aside from the process. He is giving an example of Portugal, where everyone has interest in new generation's learning, but on the contrary he says that in American schools most of the children do not even have laptops.

He also acknowledges that technology is not of utmost importance, and integrating technology into the curriculum is hard work. He also brings forth that the model of education comes from the factory/industrial model, and we are gradually moving on to studio learning. He says that with a small class size you do not need technology, but with more than 30 kids it is impossible to hold a lesson/lecture without it.

What is the purpose of education? According to him children should not learn for the tests, it is important to have more students who know about the things happening in life. Students should be able to find information, synthesize it, organise it. They should know how to gain knowledge, be able to collaborate and communicate. Also how to understand context and to get information.

Tapscott gives lectures, and his intention is to make the students think.


Now to reflect on the topic, I have read several news where 21st century skills are discussed. Those are used to prepare the students for life and work. Test scores are not of use in real life, therefore, I think, the students should be able to concentrate their thoughts and also find necessary information in the web or anywhere. For example know which person to turn to for necessary information. I personally think that it is more difficult and time-consuming to search for keywords in the books since modern technology finds the answers more quickly.
The factory model of the current education system should definitely be reformed, since I can witness pupils who are unwilling to learn from the book and want more engaging content. They are used to interactive environments and sitting in one place for 45 minutes seems to be a strain for them. We still manage to calm the students, but it is getting more and more difficult with time. It seems that more and more pupils want to express their opinion and to wander off-topic. At the same time silence is required in the classrooms, otherwise there is no discipline according to some colleagues. While doing group- or pairwork there can be a little bit of talking.
Pupils have school stress.... all of this seems too much for the current generation of digital natives. The teachers are not that much accustomed to computers, it is an unexplored territory for them. Some of the teachers and parents have managed to become digital immigrants, to explore the territory and pull through quite well, but I think there is a lot of work to do in this field, first to educate parents and educators and then try to go on with improving our education. It seems that educators need more time and effort to be able to integrate computers into the lessons in order to make them more engaging for such learners. I think that today's digital natives will change the current situation, because they feel at ease with computers and technology, and in fact, they think that the teachers do not know much about it. They will be able to find the most interesting way of making the content engaging.
Also the pupils lack information finding skills. You give them the source and it is difficult for them to find the correct topic from there. But to learn a new game they probably do not need a manual, they explore and discover themselves the rules of the game. So that leaves us thinking how we could improve the learning environment of current digital natives being digital immigrants ourselves.

The seventh article: Cooperative learning

The Structural Approach to Cooperative Learning by Spencer Kagan

This article concentrates only on learning strategies based on the classroom activities. The main point that I gained from the article was that all students should achieve at least something from groupwork. It was not connected with interactive things, so it will be of little use in my essay.

The sixth article: Learning by Sharing. Thomas J.P. Thijssen, Rik Maes, Fons T.J. Vernooij

Learning by Sharing by Thomas J.P. Thijssen, Rik Maes, and Fons T.J. Vernooij - a study.
The study comes from Amsterdam and is quite radical. It stroke me immediately from the introduction, because the authors degrade the current school system while promoting the multi-dimensional learning model which, according to them, should replace the traditional, uni-dimensional model. (p. 4)
The authors also draw conclusions from various literature that learning should not be learner-centered as it can be group-based. The latter helps the learner study better and gain more knowledge. The latter might prove as well that working in group can contribute in many ways, such as perfect other learners' mistakes. The second possible way of learning the new way would be learning at one's own pace and curriculum, which enables the students to learn according to their own pace, abilities and learning style. (p. 6)
For the teacher the two above-mentioned approaches mean that he or she is the leader of the team who guides the students through the learning process. Enabling the learner to move forward on his or her own pace will result in the learner becoming active. I think that in today's world this would really be a necessary step towards better learning, because based on my own observations learners are not happy with the teacher's input, they would like to contribute to their learning themselves.
According to the article the teacher's role is also to develop the students' learning abilities in order to gain better results from one's learning process. This process would require self-evaluation from both sides - the teacher and the student, who reflect accordingly on their teaching and learning (p. 7). I agree that it is important to improve the students' learning skills and the ability to be able to choose between important information and the unimportant.
The authors of this paper also emphasize on the importance of the communities of practice, but in order to be most productive they need to be reshaped. There is need for collaboration between all parties, the need for innovation and brainstorming.
The idea of a visiting teacher is brought in on page 12. It is a good idea, and it is recognized in Estonian schools (there was a week called "Back to School 2009" in October) where parents or former students or workers of different professions come to talk or teach about their experience. A fairly different experience may come directly from the practitioner and the pupils may discover something that the teacher would not have told them.

The paper says that collaborative learning is also an important notion. In this respect the teachers act as guides and help the students go through the research. It can be implemented in learning as well – the teacher will give general guidelines and teach the students to get hold of the learning process. Students then give feedback on the teaching methods which enables their tutors to make changes when necessary. (p. 13)

The authors note also the gap between theory and actual working experience, and suggest that through internship this kind of gap can be solved. I think that it would be useful to bring such experience already to high school or secondary school, not to mention the end of basic school. This kind of learning through practice bridges the gap of learning and work. (p. 14)

The shortest point to be made from this text would be that all parties are learners as well as teachers.

The authors also bring in the role of ICT in learning by sharing which enables all the parties to collaborate more flexibly from any place in the world. (p. 19) The fact that a lot of knowledge is available on the Internet, lets the collaborators improve the existing material at any time or any place. It is mentioned, that this kind of education is cheap and let the students learn on their own, receiving immediate feedback.

According to the authors it is also possible to customise education according to different learning styles, which enables the students to progress at their own pace. It is useful for both students and the teachers, because according to the authors the students most likely adapt to the technology very quickly and the teachers can learn from them.

It is concluded that learning by sharing would serve as a model for life-long learning.

Ethics and Law in New Media, week five

Browse the Jargon File. Write a small blog entry about a term/definition which was the most intriguing for you.

I searched for the hacker profile, and found an intriguing post about food. I thought that a hacker prefers only fast food and does not care much about the food quality, but on the contrary the Jargon File notes, that they tend to like exotic food and most of the hackers are health food eaters. It also notes that the stereotypical claim that I previously thought comes from before the early 1980s.
Also Norbert's post was of interest, he stated that 'hacker' has a positive connotation and 'cracker' is used as a negative word.

Write a short blogged analysis about the hacker ethic found in today's world (is it there or not, how much of it etc).


According to the sources I have read, there is hacker ethic in today's world, but it is not sufficient enough to succeed in today's IT world. The key terms for succeeding according to McAllister are teamwork and collaboration in addition to hacker spirit. For that he suggests an education reform would be necessary in order to develop a new kind of computer engineering degree.
It seems that Web 2.0 has put a basis to cooperation and collaboration and open source is what "sells" in the hacker world.


Wikipedia: Hacker Ethic
Steven Mizrach. "Is there a Hacker Ethic for 90's Hackers?"

Neil McAllister. "Does the 'hacker ethic' help or harm today's developers?"




Choose a minority group and describe how they can make use of Internet to reduce alienation and prejudice.

For example a group of young people who are just discovering the world of Internet, and whose parents do not know much about what is going on there. The Internet could help them with useful material (of course this has to be guided by someone, because otherwise it is difficult to find) and help them with the problems that arise in the Internet. These pages contain lots of useful tips and tricks how to survive in the Internet world. 
I think this kind of a situation is soon ending, because generation by generation the people are getting wiser and are able to teach their own kids to navigate in the Web, but right now there remains a group who will be afraid of computers and the Internet.