The Google Generation: is easy access to information really such a great thing?

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Jacqueline Boivin

Lately I have been wondering what the implications are of having all this information so readily available and easily accessible through Google. Of course, I can remember a time when life wasn’t like this. But for the so called “Google Generation,” they have never known life to be any different. They are the so-called cohort of young people born after 1993, with little or no recollection of life before the web. So, to find out more about this overload of information and what it is doing to people, I did what I know best – I asked Google. Apparently, there is a new emerging concept of “Education 2.0.” This is the idea that memorization of facts and figures is no longer necessary, because you can just look “that stuff” up on Google. It’s more important to just understand the context so that you can focus on context and meaning rather than facts.

https://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/education_20_never_memorize_again.php
But is it really true? Many people still believe that it is essential to have an internal knowledge base of facts in your own mind, in which to draw conclusions from and use to contribute to meaningful conversations. And others say that “the more you know and understand, the easier it is to learn new information and understand it.”
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5270092.ece
“Personally, I believe that it is not enough to just have easy access to information. You still need to know how to question that information, or be able to recognize when it is just plain wrong. You also need to know how to conduct strategic searches so that you can find the most relevant and important information. So, I’d like to pose the question to you. Do you believe that it is no longer necessary to memorize facts, when hey – you can just look it up on Google?”

Find me on Twitter: @jacbird and @masitblog

Science 2.0: the new wave of science

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Jacqueline Boivin

So by now, we have all heard of Web 2.0, right? In case you haven’t, Wiktionary defines it as “The second generation of the World Wide Web, especially the movement away from static web pages to dynamic and shareable content and social networking” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Web_2.0 For instance, the tools of Web 2.0 include sites like

Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, Twitter, Flickr, and social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit, Delicious and Fark etc. And now, the idea of Science 2.0 has come into being because of the tools of Web 2.0. Science 2.0 can be defined as a second generation of science, where researchers use wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science (see the Scientific American link below).

Science 2.0 Aspects:

online collaboration
tagging of scientific data to create searchable databases
FaceBook-like social networking sites for researchers (can use to find like-minded collaborators)
open notebook science – posting your live notebook with raw results on the web

What are the benefits?

Basically, I think Science 2.0 is a great idea! It just seems that science is better and more fun when it is being discussed with a group of people. I don’t know about you, but when I was studying science at school, I always found it to be more rewarding when problems and ideas were discussed with a group of friends. Also, the tools of Web 2.0 will allow for better cross-discipline collaboration and less isolation among smaller labs.

What are some challenges?

After reading various articles on Science 2.0, there seems to be some fear about “getting scooped” (i.e. if you make your ideas readily available on the web, then perhaps someone else could try to get credit for them. Or, someone could build on your ideas and discover something, that you yourself would have found out given just a little more time). There’s also some concern about not receiving formal credit for contributing your ideas to wikis and blogs etc. I understand this fear of getting “scooped”, no one would want the credit for their hard work to go to someone else. At the same time, if someone makes a leaping discovery based on your work, isn’t it only fair that they should at least get some credit? And as for not getting formal credit for contributing to blogs etc. Well, aren’t you in science because you love it? Aren’t you happy to be discussing it with your peers? All this fuss about not receiving credit because you contributed something to a blog post seems a little petty to me. Blogs and wikis are not intended as a replacement for online journals, so you would still have those for your career advancement.

Science 2.0 Examples:

MIT’s openwetware project – https://openwetware.org/wiki/Main_Page
Nature Magazine’s “Nature Network” – https://network.nature.com/
Oceans 2.0 project – https://neptunecanada.ca/news/index.dot?id=11287
open-access journals (i.e. Public Library of Science) – https://www.plos.org/

Website Resources:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk https://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/01/08/f-tech-research.html https://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/the-internet-is/ https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/uom-mog030608.php

Find me on Twitter: jacbird

Contracts and Copyright Tips

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Jacqueline Boivin

The goal of today’s post is to provide you with some information on writing contracts and copyright law, as a freelancer. I recently read a great book by Michelle Goodman entitled “My So-called Freelance Life”. Much of the information I am providing here is contained in Chapter 12 of her book, but I thought it would be nice to write up a short list of tips and provide some resources about contracts and copyright law. Michelle warns that without having a crystal clear contract, you could find yourself in a “time-sucking, money-losing situation”. So, what are some tips you can follow when working with contracts as a freelancer?

Specify in the contract how many revisions you will allow for, and what constitutes a revision
Specify who owns the copyrights to the work you’re creating
Specify how you will be credited for your work, if applicable
Never blindly sign a contract a client sends you without reading it from start to finish
If you get to provide your own contract, then you can write one that is 100% fair to you
Keep in mind that nothing replaces the counsel of a good attorney who routinely works with artists, writers, performers, and other freelancers
Don’t forget that if you write a creative piece for a client who has “all rights” to your story, song, or video – then they can tweak your work without consulting you, and can resell your work anywhere they want without paying you

Now, let’s take a look at some website resources that are mentioned in the book, and a few others:

Website Resources:

www.creativecommons.com

This site “works to counter what the organization considers to be a dominant and increasingly restrictive permission culture.”
Defines copyright as: “in general, copyright law allows an author to prohibit others from reproducing, adapting or distributing copies of the author’s work”
This may be true, but of course, many starving artists do depend on those copyrights to allow them to earn a livable wage
However, the idea that there is a place to go where you can freely use and reproduce other people’s work is a good one. And so, if someone wants to allow their work to be used and adapted for free with their permission, then I see this as a good thing.

Visit this website to find out more about the copyleft movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/copyleft The U.S. Copyright Office: https://www.copyright.gov The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO):https://www.cipo.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/Home A short overview of Canadian copyright law written by a Canadian lawyer: https://users.trytel.com/~pbkerr/copyright.html www.nolo.com

A “goldmine” of free legal advice
An American site, but probably a lot of it would hold true in other countries as well

www.keepyourcopyrights.org

an American site that encourages people to hold onto their copyrights, and “take a more active role in managing the life of their creative work”.

www.starvingartistslaw.com

Self help legal information for artists and writers
Includes information on Music Law and Writers Law

*picture credit to: https://www.canyon-news.com/artman2/uploads/2/gavel.gif

Find me on Twitter: @jacbird and @masitblog

The Social Bookmarking Phenomenon!

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Jacqueline Boivin

Lately it seems that everywhere you turn, there is a new social bookmarking site of some sort. These sites are interesting, and serve an important purpose. According to Wikipedia, social bookmarking is “a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages with the help of metadata (i.e. tags).”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

To me, these sites are useful in that they offer an alternative to search engines for organizing and rating content. It is actual web users who find and rate the content, not just a computerized search algorithm.

Below, I have chosen my top five social bookmarking and news sites that are competing and vying for your attention and time: