Urgh, I am tired. This week I am giving six lectures in four days. After the first four I feel worn out. Don’t get me wrong I love my job but I am getting tired of hearing my own voice. My legs hurt from pacing up and down the room and my brain is numb from concentrating.
When I feel like this it’s good to remember that I have an easy job…
from Age of Irony
Do you read First Monday? Well to be honest I don’t usually have the time to read through every issue but I get the email alert for every new issue – its out on the first Monday of every month – and I tend to browse through the titles and find something interesting to read each month.
First Monday is one of the first openly accessible, peerâ??reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its start in May 1996, First Monday has published 795 papers in 132 issues; these papers were written by 951 different authors. In addition, eight special issues have appeared.
This month has a focus on Wikipedia which is naturally interesting but what really caught my eye was a chapter from Sandra Braman’s book Change of State: Information, Policy and Power.
Thanks to MIT Press and Sandra Braman, First Monday is pleased to present an excerpt from Sandraâ??s latest book Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power. This book examines the implications of the change of the governments from welfare states to informational states. Sandra describes how information policy in areas as diverse as intellectual property, border protection, privacy, and research funding affect issues such as identity, the nature of technological systems, and organizational structures.
The table of contents for Change of State follows with a link to chapter 9, â??Information, Policy, and Power in the Informational State.â??
The book is naturally amerocentric but promises some interesting ideas. It looks like another book to add to the reading list – check it out.
This is really cool. Richard Stallman will be giving a lecture in Göteborg in May.
The Free Software Foundation Europe and Göteborg University are pleased to invite you to a lecture with Dr. Richard Stallman:
Free Software and Beyond: Human Rights in the Use of Software and Other Published Works
Dr. Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement: defending essential freedoms for the users of software. In addition, he will address how the ideas of free software do or don’t extend to other kinds of published works. He will also explain what the Pirate Party must change in its program to avoid unintended negative consequences in the software field.
Dr. Stallman is the founder of the GNU project and president of the Free Software Foundation. He has received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology, the University of Glasgow, Free University of Brussels and Universidad Nacional de Salta. In 1990, he was the receiver of a Macarthur foundation fellowship and has been elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The lecture will take place at:
University Aula
Göteborg University
Vasaparken
Göteborg, Sweden
May 16th
From 5pm to 8pm
While the lecture is a public event, and we invite you to forward this invitation to whomever you feel might be interested, we kindly request that in order to participate, you register via http://www.rms2007.se/registrering
Back in May last year I wrote about a case of plagiarism from my university. The interesting thing about this plagiarism was that it was a teacher who had stolen part of a masters thesis written by two students whom she had supervised.
At the department of business studies two students wrote their masters thesis. Their supervisor then took parts of the text and included it word for word in an article she presented at an international conference. The students were not acknowledged in any way. The head of department defended the supervisorâ??s actions in the student press â?? which is sad, but in a sense an understandable defence. Still sad and it shows a definite lack of backbone. (this blog in May 2006)
The local newspaper reports that the case has been under review again and that this time the plagiarizing researcher is not being defended. She has, according to the experts, not followed good research practice and the case is clearly one of plagiarism.
The embarrassment must have been bad when the department defended the plagiarizing researcher, but now that the guilty opinion has been delivered it must be really bad. In addition the whole department that defended her actions as common practice really has egg on its face now.
Good. Stealing other peoples work is not acceptable. Stealing from students is unacceptable and really quite pathetic.
The HCC8 will be held in Pretoria, South Africa between 25-27 September 2008. This is a very good conference and I hope to see you all there. This is a really early warning and the website www.hcc8.org has not appeared yet. But here are the important information and dates.
Types of submissions
We welcome contributions such as:
â?¢ Traditional research papers (5000 â?? 8000 words ),
â?¢ Work in progress paper (2000 â?? 3000 words) reporting on ongoing research;
â?¢ Panels (3-5 members).
Important dates
Paper submission deadline: 31 October 2007
Reviewer comments: 15 March 2008
Final camera ready copy due: 30 May 2008
One of my favorite cartoonists XKCD has once again captured the difference between a scientist and other people…
Well right now I am sitting supervising my eCommerce & eGovernment class while they sit their final exam. In most cases I would not have to do this myself but since I did not book via an examination hall I had to resolve the problem myself.
The actual examination is three short essay type questions to be answered in 3 hours. In addition to this the students are given four questions and they get to choose the three they want to answer. They have all been sitting working intensely for two hours and the early leavers are beginning to drop off.
I am not a big fan of the written exam as a form of examination. Mostly because all the exams I have sat for have only had the impact of me studying and cramming up until the last moment and then promptly forgetting everything within weeks from the exam.
So in some cases essays are a good solution. They allow the student to dig much deeper into a specific topic and develop necessary research and writing skills. The problem with the essay, however, is that the students tend to read less of the course material and focus on their chosen topic.
Naturally there are several different kinds of examination but they all either allow in-depth studies of smaller parts of the material or require the students to cram everything into their brains for a short intense burst of regurgitation.
So what to do? Not a lot. I keep tampering with my courses in order to find a good balance between forms of teaching and examination but no matter what is done there is always something to be gained and something else will be lost.
A team of scientists at the University of Maryland have “discovered” a way of making healthier pizza. The scientists have:
developed a way of baking and fermenting dough which can increase levels of antioxidants, which protect against cell and tissue damage.
It may not be the cure for cancer nor the common cold but it is apparently a scientific approach to the pizza. It brings to mind the funniest science quote ever made on film:
Back off man, I am a scientist! (Bill Murray in Ghostbusters)
Why would anyone want to create a healthier pizza? Do you think they have applied for, and received, government funding for this breakthrough in science?
(via BBC Health)
The BBC reports that one of the top engineering schools will be shutting down their dorm Internet access every night in order to improve academic performance. Students will still be able to log on to the library or their departmental laboratories.
The authorities in India’s premier engineering institute, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay (Mumbai), have cut off internet access to students in hostels at night.
They feel that 24-hour internet access is hampering students’ academic performance and overall personality development…Ms Thosar-Dixit said they were beginning to see a drop in attendance during morning lectures and a noticeable decline in students’ participation in extra-curricular activities.
“In the morning the students would not be fresh and attentive and their socialising patterns were changing as they preferred to sit in their rooms and surf the net rather than interact with their mates.
This is an exciting example of technology regulation. If the school chooses to regulate in this fashion it curtails free choice among students and punishes all students – even those who have a “good” relationship to technology. But if the school chooses to ignore the problem then the overall performance of the students (and the school) will decline.
The decision to turn of the Internet at night may be well-intentioned but the question of concern is not the regulators intention but rather the results of the regulation. In addition to the results an important consideration in regulation must be the signal regulation sends to the regulated. In this case the students are told that their behavior patterns are incorrect and unacceptable. Whether this is true or not is not the relevant issue. Right and wrong change over time.
I disagree with blanket prohibitions such as these. The paternalistic approach creates a great deal of tension between groups. Between them and us. The regulated and the regulators. I know for a fact that it is not only students at the IIT in Bombay that have “unusual” nocturnal habits. Therefore the school is attempting to impose a normality on a weaker group while the regulators themselves do not subscribe to the concepts of normality they are trying to impose.
Orwell again: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Oh my god!!! This is the most recent strip from PhD comics. Slackerney is on his way! This is truly the end of an era.
For those of you who are unable to see the significance of this event then either you are hopelessly lost… or you have a wonderful experience ahead of you discovering the work of Jorge Cham. The comic strip is called Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD in case you missed it) and features the troubles of ordinary PhD students struggling with writing, conferences, self doubt, procrastination, insecurity, supervisors, food and sleep deprivation in the futile quest for a title.
The strip began in 1997 and the whole archive is available online. But beware it is not only highly amusing it is addictive and will increase your level of procrastination to new heights. I became hooked in 2002/2003 and since then I have read all the strips, bought the books, bought the t-shirt and included this strip (with permission!) in my own PhD thesis.
The significance of the strip above is that Mike Slackerney is about to pass his PhD. He has been a student since before anyone else can remember – his supervisor is embarrassed to remember the date. So this event must be seen as an evolutionary leap forward.
Personally I think it is great since I took way too long to finish writing my thesis – but remember Newtons First Law of Graduation: A grad student in procrastination tends to stay in procrastination unless an external force is applied to it. (PhD comics 3 March 2001)