links for 2006-02-09
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Historians against the War conference coming to UT
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Side-by-side searches for “tiananmen” in google.com and google.cn.
articles of unflattering facts
Over on bOINGbOING, there’s a post that lauds Wikinews’ efforts to document the disingenuous edits that some congressional staffers have made on articles about their bosses. Xeni says, “Wikinews seems to be doing a much better job at connecting the data dots than some of the larger commercial news organizations covering the story — not because Wikinews volunteers have access to facts that other reporters do not, but because they appear to be looking harder for them.” I think we need to define “access.” The facts in question - such as IP addresses of computers used for editing - are certainly publicly available, but I’m not sure they’re completely accessible. In my own research on Wikipedia, it took time for me to develop a level of Wikipedia literacy to understand how the project operates. I don’t think you can expect a political reporter or a generalist to know how to find the “history” page and be able to decode the information while working under deadline. It’s not a function of reportorial laziness, but a function of time spent participating on the site and knowledge needed to analyze the available information. In this case, we probably need to think about “access” in the sense of a poem being “accessible.” Reporters won’t have the cultural and technical knowledge to access this information, while a teeming horde of Wikiheads and bloggers will.
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everybody needs a foundation
The College Board is promoting a rise in the number of high-school students taking Advanced Placement exams, while Kevin Drum has an interesting discussion of the potential downsides of using AP courses for college credit. In particular, some have complained that AP tests require students to learn a broad range of information without developing analytical skills.
I would agree with the depth issue: standardized tests push teachers toward teaching the test and away from developing analytical and, more importantly, writing skills. I remember some tests like the literature and U.S history exams had written portions, but to do well students needed to write in a very formulaic way. We were told that if the topic sentence fell anywhere other than the start of the paragraph, we’d be scored down.
I do think that AP tests are of some value to students. I took six AP exams in high school, which got me out of about 30 hours of coursework and a useless “AP Scholar with Distinction” award. This gave me a lot of flexibility to explore majors my first few years of college and kept me out of giant lecture classes. At the University of Oklahoma, the classes I tested out of would have been broad surveys with multiple-choice exams anyway, so I don’t see how AP classes are an inferior form of instruction. If I had been able to go to a liberal arts school or a prestige university, I might have missed out, but it seems like these lower-division classes mostly made up for deficiencies in high-school education, rather than encouraging students to think critically and communicate their ideas.
I wouldn’t blame AP tests for weak college students. Instead, the K12 system needs to develop better college prep and vocational programs and reduce the reliance on standardized testing for assessment. Unfortunately, the current political climate is pushing schools in the opposite direction.
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links for 2006-02-07
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Lee the Media Librarian says the long version of Dune is no good.
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links for 2006-02-05
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NYPD spying on union and political activities of officers.
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This describes the background of MySpace principals including their involvement with shady dot-coms with invasive privacy policies.(tags: yasns surveillance)
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Company sells ancient cellphone models for collectors and compatibility
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consciousness in a box
Jon Lebkowsky has scanned and uploaded to Flickr a few images from his Fringeware days. Seeing the magazine covers brings back memories from college, when I used the magalog as a source of information about cyberculture and the Internet issue. I remember both issues seven and nine floating around my apartment in Norman. I think I picked them at the Hastings newstand, where I also got Might and Mondo 2000, both of which had an enormous influence on my interests and cultural viewpoint.
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links for 2006-02-04
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OMG, baby sloths!
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Designated folksonomic tags for SXSW bands.
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first large city
Marjorie points to an article that reports Philadelphia has finalized its deal to provide wireless Internet access across the city. The article says that the ISP Earthlink will first install access points in the Northeast section of the city. According to the article, the aim of the project is to make Internet access more accessible for low-income households, so why are they starting in one of the whitest and most suburban sections of the city? It seems like West Philly or the area around Temple University in North Philly would be better choices since they have a mixture of Internet users and under-served populations. When I lived in Philly, I waited for DSL in West Philly while customers in the suburbs had a number of broadband options for years. Starting with the Northeast section doesn’t seem to address the digital divide.
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links for 2006-02-02
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According to a Canadian study, men find funny women undesirable.
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Heather Havrilesky takes on the notion that funny women are undesirable.
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I’m sure it’s not news to anyone that reality shows are edited to create better stories, but it’s interesting to see the issue treated in the mainstream media.
