... has borrowed 25,000 library books.
Telegraph – “Louise Brown, 91, has read up to a dozen books a week since 1946 without incurring a single fine for late returns.”
From: Library stuff
Innovating e-Learning online conference 2009 takes place 24-27 November 2009. Themes for Innovating e-Learning 2009 reflect the challenges facing further and higher education in the 21st century and explore the increased options offered by technology for meeting those challenges. Follow the conference on Twitter using #jiscel09
Large-Scale Assessment of the Effect of Popularity on the Reliability of Research
Source: PLoS ONE
Based on theoretical reasoning it has been suggested that the reliability of findings published in the scientific literature decreases with the popularity of a research field. Here we provide empirical support for this prediction. We evaluate published statements on protein interactions with data from high-throughput experiments. We find evidence for two distinctive effects. First, with increasing popularity of the interaction partners, individual statements in the literature become more erroneous. Second, the overall evidence on an interaction becomes increasingly distorted by multiple independent testing. We therefore argue that for increasing the reliability of research it is essential to assess the negative effects of popularity and develop approaches to diminish these effects.
Visa Docuticker
Creative Commons has announced the launch of DiscoverEd, a search engine of “open” educational resources. Open as in as having a CC or other license that makes them more available for use. DiscoverEd is available in beta at http://discovered.creativecommons.org.
The materials in the search engine were not gathered from an open Web crawl; rather they were assembled from third-party repositories like the Open Courseware Consortium and the National Science Digital Library. This means that you won’t get as many results from a general search (and that it’s generally okay to do a more general search) and that the results have somewhat better details.
I did a search for physics. Information about the search results was in German (huh?) but the results themselves were in English. Results include the title of the result, a brief summary, education level (which I wish had been more helpful; I didn’t see any levels that were grade- or age- specific) and sometimes information about usage license. Some of the data fields have magnifying glasses next to them; click on the magnifying glass next to an entries field and you’ll get a refined list of results whose information that field matches the one you clicked. For example, I could click on the magnifying glass next to a CC-BY license and get only those results that had a listed CC-BY license (an attribution license.)
Actually considering where this material was gathered from I’m very surprised there were not listings with licenses included. I think this just might be an issue of metadata not being complete or properly indexed. When I did a more specific search (for momentum) there were more results with CC licenses on the front page, and when I did a level-based search (kindergarten) I also got a pretty good number of results with CC licenses.
There is some gunk in the search results (moved pages, indexes, etc.) but not much. There’s an RSS feed icon at the bottom of the search results but when I tried to use it I got an error. The summaries and resource titles are good, and I found all my searches got plenty of results. A nice education resource search, though of course I’d love more metadata.
From Researchbuzz
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjoJd_uN-7M
From iLibrarian
Lisa Hoover at OStatic blogs about Five Open Source Apps For Writers and Authors. These programs help authors do everything from manage multiple storylines, develop scripts, format academic papers, and create newsletters.
From iLibrarian
ReadWriteWeb puts together a guide to 7 Free Alternatives to Photoshop With All the Bells, Whistles, Filters, & Layers. This helpful post provides test photos comparing what can be accomplished with each of these tools as well as a quick run-down of what each application includes and lacks.
From iLibrarian
Dana Oshiro at ReadWriteWeb posts about Seven e-Learning and Teaching Resources. This useful list includes services such as Edmodo, the private microblogging application for schools, YouTube EDU which aggregates videos and channels from colleges and universities, and LearnHub, a network where schools can create their own virtual classrooms and students can complete assignments.
From iLibrarian
Ruth Reynard, Dean of Faculty Services for Career Education Corp, writes for Campus Technology about creating effective learning communities using social networking websites in Beyond Social Networking: Building Toward Learning Communities.
“Much has been written recently about the impact of social networking tools in teaching and learning and how educators can build on the skills of their students in using these tools. My discussion here does not negate that good work but introduces the idea that social networking is only the beginning of a longer and more complex process of socially constructed learning and ultimately collaboration and knowledge building. That is, if educators only integrate the ability of students to connect and socialize, deeper points of learning will be missed. While good teaching and learning rests on effective relationships (Cummins, 2000), in an active learning community, those relationships should evolve into actual idea exchange and knowledge construction.”
From iLibrarian blog
The Smithsonian Institution's Museum of African Art has a delightful online kid-friendly exhibit, and it can be explored in detail here. The "Introduction" explains that African art depicts some animals more than others, and some not at all. The cheetah and the zebra do not appear to be found in any of the art, and the ostrich and gorilla appear only rarely. The main page divides the artwork up by general animal type, such as "Leopards and Lions", "Mudfish, Water Spirits and Snails", and "Look for the Animals", which is a work of art that has several different animals in it. Many of the images of the artworks also have a link called "Kids! Click Here" that lead to fun facts about the animals in the artwork. The descriptions of the art that accompany the images inform visitors about the animals depicted, but also about the role or use of the animal in African societies. Finally, visitors shouldn't miss the recording of the director of the National Museum of African Art reading an Asante tale, called the Leopard's Drum, at the end of the exhibit. [KMG] From Scout Report
Sam Dean at OStatic puts together a list of Over 40 Free, Must-Have Open Source Resources ranging from OpenOffice to digital music managers. Open source applications are organized into the following categories:
and then iLibrarian blog
Vadim Lavrusik, new media student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, blogs for Mashable about 10 Ways Universities Share Information Using Social Media. The article discusses different strategies university public affairs offices are using to connect with their communities such as: