Digital landmarks [infographic]

World Cup opening ceremony will be made by a paraplegic wearing an Iron Man-like robotic bodysuit controlled by signals from the brain

 A little world cup news, an interesting story in technology. 

The first kick at the World Cup opening ceremony will be made by a paraplegic wearing an Iron Man-like robotic bodysuit controlled by signals from the brain. Brazilian doctor Miguel Nicolelis led a team of 156 scientists from around the world to create the futuristic exoskeleton, which was designed to enable paralysis victims to walk. At the World Cup opening ceremony Thursday in Sao Paulo, a paraplegic whose identity has been kept secret will leave behind his or her wheelchair to take to the pitch in the suit and give the tournament's first kick. Electronic circuits in the device's "feet" will send a return signal to the user via an artificial skin worn on the arm, conveying the sensation of movement and contact.

More news here:
http://www.newsdaily.com/article/b422c420625263ce788dc9689b260a44/paraplegic-in-iron-man-bodysuit-to-open-world-cup

IBM 3D prints world's smallest magazine [video]

I guess they are just trying to show what it could do… 

IBM 3D Prints World's Smallest Magazine Cover http://mashable.com/2014/04/25/ibm-world-smallest-magazine-cover/#:eyJzIjoidCIsImkiOiJfZTk1bGFmM3IzNHNlMG9iOXlseTFodF8ifQ

Interacting with dynamic shape display [video]

This is so cool - almost mind boggling where we are getting with technology.


inFORM - Interacting With a Dynamic Shape Display from Tangible Media Group on Vimeo.

If this doesn't inspire you I don't know what will: Learn by making.

Wowsa. )

Information Literacy Standards in Higher Ed - Draft and survey request

Framework draft for Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Ed:

http://acrl.ala.org/ilstandards/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Framework-for-IL-for-HE-Draft-1-Part-1.pdf

Survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JCVY3GW

It will be interesting to see how these mesh with the ACRL Visual Literacy Standards:

http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy

Time to provide some feedback and your thoughts.

Scientists use sound waves to push and move things (and levitate) [video]

Ok, this is just cool technology.

Leveraging Visual Literacy for Communication (webinar archive)

I enjoyed this webinar, lots of good info.

Personal Learning Networks for IT Professionals

How do you increase your skills and keep up with technology? Tips and tricks for IT professionals.

Literacy and insights

We are now in the middle of asecond Gutenberg shift frombook fluency to screen fluency,from literacy to visuality.”- Kevin Kelly, Senior Editor of WIRED.

Lots of great information about visual literacy in this presentation.
 

Gutenberg Revisited from CHTCT

Visualizing twitter

A little bit old but really interesting in terms of thinking about twitter:

This Is What Learning Looks Like: Using Analytic Tools to Visualise Classroom Twitter Conversations from sharstoer

20 years ago, the WWW went public

20 years ago the world wide web went public. What a wild ride it's been.
Will our next digital landmark be the rise of social media,  mobile or big data?

http://info.cern.ch/

Talking about metadata for images & literacy standards, linked data and semantic web for libraries,

Just a quick update - so much going on professionally this Fall. Teaching, teaching, teaching for Lyrasis (I hope to be teaching on linked data and semantic webby goodness soon plus the usual standards), just picked up reviewing articles for GLQ, chapter  in prepub (When do I have time to be professionally active?) coming out in Time Organization for Librarians: Beating Budget and Staff Cuts to be published by Scarecrow Press (2013), Semantic Web Technologies and Social Searching for Librarians now available, and 3 presentations/2 workshops/bootcamp (conferences: Information Literacy; COMO; GeekEnd; DrupalCamp coming up. I think I may have 1 more proposal for the Fall, if I can remember when the IT Conference is at RockEagle. Yeah, there is a reason I wrote a chapter entitled, "When do I have time to be professionally active?" ;-) (Promise it is NOT all on the weekend, tho bootcamps often are).

So, here are the topics for the presentations:

Making the digital connection: linkeddata & libraries (COMO)
Linked data and libraries are hot topics, not only for staff in archives, institutional repositories, and digital/web initiatives, but also for catalogers, with FRBR and RDA hovering on the horizon. In this session, Robin Fay (UGA), Laura Akerman (Emory University), and Doug Goans (Ga Tech) will introduce linked data, explore some linked data library related projects and resources, and discuss how linked data and open data fits in with the Semantic Web.

Participants will:
*Gain a basic understanding of linked data
*Discover new library projects
*Gain a better understanding of how linked data will drive our future systems and how it fits into the future of the web -- the semantic web

 
Title: Metadata Makes the World Go Around: an Introduction to Metadata in a Web-Based World (COMO)

Did you know metadata is everywhere? Did you know that you are a metadata creator? This fun & dynamic intro to metadata explores how data drives the web, devices (mp3 players, etc), library catalogs and more, and how we create and edit that metadata.

Participants will:

*Gain a better understanding of how data drives the web

*How devices and platforms work together

*Basic introduction including terminology for metadata, the semantic web, and linked data

----------------------

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Visual Literacy in a Digital Age  

What is it? Does it involve social media and if so how? How can we use visual literacy in all of our teaching and training? Explore visual literacy, focusing on the new ACRL visual literacy standards, especially as relates to digital media hosted on sites such as Flickr, Youtube and the Internet Archive.

 Participants will leave with a better understanding
visual literacy standards and the basics of multimedia related metadata, as well as ideas for incorporating multimedia into teaching and training.  

on innovation, technological revolution, digital evolution & one Googler's rant

As many of you have seen now there was a public G+ post from a Google staff person; it has now been taken down and "leaked" (some are wondering whether it was intentionally leaked since there are claims that they have permission to republish it).

Anyhow, these are just my thoughts after reading it yesterday. The post itself is rather long and obviously not meant to be a formal piece of writing, but it is interesting with some very valid discussion points. If nothing else, it is an opinion piece on 2 different companies with very different workplaces and philosophies.

While it mostly focuses on his time spent at Amazon and more recently, Google, the more interesting bits are the thoughts on innovation. He talks about how Amazon made a commitment from the top to change how it worked. Amazon has become a very innovative company (in spite of my feelings about the confusing and unfriendly world of ebooks; I do love my kindle and shop regularly at amazon). I'm just one of millions. He also talks a bit about the culture of working for Amazon at the time (micromanaging, cubeville). The second part covers his time at Google, especially in terms of product development. One thing he talks about is a lack of awareness of user experience/needs in terms of technology -  Google looks for products vs. services. He also talked some about the good of Google - their work environment, community service, etc.

What I got from reading this post is that Google culture (& not necessarily individuals although individuals in leadership positions do drive culture or conversely, stagnant it) does not really grasp the why of community driven content (such as social media). I said recently of G+ that unlike Facebook which has a centralized upload for photos, videos, posts, etc. ;  for G+, it's picassa for photos, youtube for video, _____ ? (perhaps G buzz?) for posts. Not having an API makes it nearly impossible to push content from G+ to other social media networks. For alot of us, that is CRUCIAL.

Thinking about all of that, it seems that a lot of companies and organizations are struggling with adapting their workflows to new technology products (such as software) in the information age. Rather than trying to think about things in a new way, old thinking and understandings of the world are applied to the new workflow. Leadership (& others) do not grasp the fundamental point: our culture has changed. The way we do things should change - and it's not just the product being developed or the service being offered. It's not about taking our workflow and bending it around a new thing. While some would argue why fix (or break!) what's working - innovation NEVER comes out of stagnation. I would also argue that just because you can make a workflow (or worse - a WORK AROUND) work, does not make it a good, efficient, or productive workflow. 

So, it really is a cultural shift - yes, Michael Wesch really did know what he was talking about almost 5 years ago when he posted the Machine is Us/ing Us on Youtube:



...and this is where we are. Digital advocates (fundamentalists? I hate the term digital natives and technological stereotyping based upon age, btw) don't see technology as something that is frivalous (ok, maybe the Xbox is); technology just is. Having technology at hand (& connected - egads the U.S. needs more wifi) is an expectation. Creating content is part of life now -- and that act of creating  content and sharing it is driving new ways of looking at work, new workflows - community sourced knowledge.

It's easy to create one post and post to many automatically; to "mashup" (who says mashup anymore? nobody) multiple formats to create a new digital object; to repackage, repurpose, reuse (recycle). One of the biggest fundamental changes that technology has delivered is the shift of power - creative power, especially. Anyone can take a photo and upload it Flickr. Anyone can create a website. So, if your everyday foundation involves using technology to create content and contribute (reviews, writings, etc.) and the tools support creating automatic linked paths (linking data), how can a workflow structured as a line from point A>E work? How can a business or organization SUCCEED as a traditional hierarchy with traditional linear workflows?  Because after all, there is a big difference between succeeding and existing. ;-)  

Looking at our history, the 2nd Industrial Revolution was focused on science and innovation and lasted until some time after WWII (I would say up through the 1960s and the peak of the space race). A lot of our corporate (but especially higher ed and govermental) workflows were put into place during that time.

For libraries and many information organizations, the 1970s were the beginning of the digital revolution (although it is usually dated as beginning in the 80s with the rise of PCs) and we saw the rise of automation in the 1970s-80s, moving from printed card catalogs to some sort of automated system (database) using MARC language. Nothing really has changed for libraries from the 1970s until the mid 2000s, except our platforms and databases got better (more integrated and powerful; data more portable; reduction of manual work).

As a whole, as the digital revolution became more fully realized, we saw the true beginning of the information revolution (focusing on service rather than products). We're now in the Information Age, with the rise of social media and mobile, community created content, "citizen" journalism, and immediacy of information (real time). WE all are creative collaborative -- well -- creators. As whole, we have moved fully into a service based culture focused with a dependence on technological tools; other members of our society are either catching up,  will be forced to adapt once the culture changes around them entirely, OR will be left behind.

...and that is where many libraries and organizations got stuck. Due to budget cuts and an assortment of other issues (aging networks, outdated hardware, hierarchical structures, a lack of understanding of  how cultural shifts impact organizations), the leap across from the digital revolution to the information revolution seems at times, nearly impossible. It involves a dedicated vision - not just a migration or conversion (both of which would leave behind remnants of old thinking, but a complete re-envisioning from the ground up. That's not to say that libraries (& others) should throw out all of their products (such as books) or their services (such as circulating those books), but that  there are different ways of doing things (self check, ebooks sent automatically to account when available, etc.) but without addressing fundamental problems from a holistic view, the institution or library will never be truly innovative.
of course, some folks get this. Maybe everyone will one day.

-- just my thoughts (as always)

The Smartest Machine on Earth (Ai, machine learning & more)

Last night I watched Nova's Smartest Machine on Earth program.
Really fascinating stuff as it explored how machine learning happens (it is essentially a weighted relevance ranking dependent upon data and rules, but then it makes decision based upon specific bits of information including pattern seeking). It also touched on what makes us human, our peopleness and how our experiences shape our knowledge (and how do you teach those to a computer?) The main focus was exploring the work on the machine Watson which plays on Jeopardy Feb. 14-16. (an overview of how he did on Feb 14)

One interesting example talked about typography and trying to teach a computer to recognize all of the variations of the letter A: from typewritten to handwritten, all of the various fonts... really interesting.

Seeking participants in Internet Privacy (Athens area)

Russell Forum, a civic engagement program of the Russell Library is still actively seeking about 5-7 additional participants to test a new National Issues Forums guide on privacy on the internet. This issue guide will be of particular interest to those who mediate internet resources and public users in library contexts.

No previous experience with NIF forums is necessary to participate.We will test the guide at a forum at the Russell Library where neutral moderators will take the group through several approaches to addressing the question of what should—and shouldn’t—go on the Internet, suggesting what could be done and what could happen as a result. The test-drive forum will take place January 18th from 3:30-5 p.m. at Russell Library at the University of Georgia Libraries.

If you are able to participate or have friends, students or colleagues who may have interest in testing this guide, please send me an email at jsevern@uga.edu.

Presentations from Internet Librarian

Speaker presentations for Internet Librarian are now available online, no required login. http://fb.me/LPXHhhHt

Search engines, discovery tools, Bing, gadgets, IA (Information Architecture), the eBranch, Mobile, digital identity, and more.

net neutrality (w/ video)

Chile passes law to enforce net neutrality> http://bit.ly/9cdGm0
An oldie but goodie starring some of the early personas of the 'net.

How information has changed and the culture of expertise

Excellent video which gets to the heart of how social media is impacting the organization of information and the culture of expertise. I'm not saying that we do not need experts or expertise, but it does seem that there can be room for both.

Learning in an open access world (free conference)

from apple & maclearning.org -- sounds interesting!

http://edseminars.apple.com/event/2610
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Learning in an open-access world.

Join colleagues from across the country in exploring how open access is transforming learning in higher education. Apple and MacLearning.org invite you to AcademiX 2010 for a look at open access, the new teaching methods that are evolving with it, and the Apple technologies that help make it all simple. Six 20-minute talks will expose you to successful approaches, and jump-start a provocative conversation between participants and presenters.

You’ll see how leading educators are finding it easy to produce, distribute, and access academic content using Apple products and open standards. You’ll also learn how students are using Apple tools outside of the traditional lecture environment for research, collaboration, and problem solving.

Fees
The AcademiX 2010 conference is offered free of charge.

One Event, Multiple Ways to Participate
The presentations will take place simultaneously at MIT and Northwestern University, with audiences at more than a dozen other campuses joining in a live video conference. An open microphone will be available at each campus so the presenters and audiences can hear your questions or ideas. If you'd like to attend one of the in-person events, you can register at this site.

If you can’t attend in person, please register on this page to watch the live webcast and interact online with the presenters and your peers.

An integral part of AcademiX 2010 is the Conference Connect online conference system. The ConferenceConnect system is available to all AcademiX 2010 participants, whether attending at an in-person event or via the web. ConferenceConnect will provide a detailed multi-day agenda, a participant directory, participant response surveys, session-based back channel chat rooms, online evaluations, local area information, open resource links and much more. The software's "mobile learning space" is complementary to the AcademiX conference, and is used before, during, and after the conference.

Presentations
Confirmed topics and speakers for the AcademiX 2010 conference include:

This is How We Think: Learning in Public After the Paradigm Shift
Paul Hammond, Ph.D. Director of Digital Initiatives, Dept. of English, Rutgers University
Richard Miller, Ph.D. Executive Director, Plangere Writing Center, Rutgers University

"This is How We Think" continues the line of thinking begun in Miller and Hammond's YouTube piece, "This is How We Dream." In a world where information abounds, where reading and research have moved from the library to the laptop, and where the act of learning itself is now making its way out of the shadows into the public eye, how must the work of education change? In this collaborative presentation, Professors Miller and Hammond will discuss their efforts to invent new media teaching practices that encourage students to engage with the most pressing problems of our time.

Commons-Based Licensing and Scholarship: The Next Layer of the Network
John Wilbanks, VP for Science at Creative Commons

Knowledge products have been generated as text for hundreds of years, and scientific and scholarly results have been locked into text-based technology since the mid 1660's. But journal articles are a compressed version of what happened in the research. The form and function of a journal article was settled long before we could effortlessly transmit data, or incrementally store and edit vast amounts of text, or store and forward research tools in repositories. There is no reason, other than technical lock-in by the printing press, why we should think of the article as a natural unit of knowledge transmission in science. Researchers and teachers make data, text, research tools, inventions, pictures, sounds, videos, and more. But almost none of them et measured other than the article. We now have the capacity to measure the quality of a scientist across multiple dimensions, not just the article. This talk will examine the increasing importance of disaggregated, multivariate knowledge in scholarly communications, and the impacts both good and bad of the coming shift away from the journal as the core form of knowledge transmission.

Innovation and Open Access in Scholarly Journal Publishing
Jason Baird Jackson, Ph.D. Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Dept Chair, Indiana University

Drawing upon wider lessons learned while editing a toll access journal published by a scholarly society and later establishing an open access journal published in partnership with a research university library, I will describe a range of motivations underpinning the movement for building an open access scholarly communication system. Beyond characterizing the many "whys" of the open access movement, I will offer a picture of where open access journal publishing (as distinct from open access repository use) is now and where it appears to be going. Themes include the opening up of legacy journal content, the circumstances of scholarly societies as publishers, the role of libraries as publishers, author's rights questions, tenure and promotion issues, and the impact of open access publishing for students, communities of concern, and for the careers of individual scholars.

New channels for learning: podcasting opportunities for a distance university
Ben Hawkridge, iTunes U Project Officer, Open University, UK

The Open University is a UK based international distance institution with around 200,000 students, many actively learning in online channels. The University produces rich media courses, via a structured authoring process, in which student interactions (with media; with others; and with teachers) are 'designed in' from scratch. In this talk I will focus on one specific new channel opportunity - institutional podcasting, and in particular the experience of the Open University on iTunes U. Our 'best practice sharing' project STEEPLE shows how RSS provides a powerful technical key to managing these varied new channels. However, real success lies in creating value in these channels that matches up with the new needs of the web 2.0 student!

Education for a Mobile Generation
Kurt Squire, Assoc. Professor, Edu Comm & Tech, Curriculum & Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Assoc Dir. of Edu Research and Development, Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

For years, educators struggled with how to wire classrooms for the Internet. With the arrival of mobile media devices, soon every student will come to school with a broadband enabled, multimedia device in their pocket. How do we design educational experiences in an era in which we must assume that students can -- and will -- access whatever information and social network they want at a moments notice? This presentation describes the forms of participation enabled by such devices, how youth are using mobile devices such as iPhones to accelerate learning, and what a cutting-edge curriculum that leverages such devices looks like. These new approaches not only offer, but require educators to break down the walls of the classroom.

The Digital Natives Are Getting Restless: the Student Voice of the Open Access Movement
Nick Shockey, Director, Right to Research Coalition, Director of Student Advocacy, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)

Students today are digital natives. We’ve grown up in a world of unfettered access to digital information, instant gratification in the best possible sense. Yet when we need access to scholarly journals, we’re suddenly locked out. Though our education literally depends on them, we’re often cut off from journals crucial to our research, our papers, and our understanding of both details and the larger picture. However, students, in addition to numerous other stakeholders, are quickly realizing that access barriers to journals are as unnecessary as they are harmful. We’re working to reform the current academic publishing system into one that is open and equitably serves the interests of all who depend on it, not just those who can afford the often high cost of access.

Who Should Attend?
AcademiX 2010 is offered to individuals engaged in the production, distribution, and use of scholarly communications who are either employed by, or attend, institutions of Higher Education. The intended audiences are faculty, administrators, instructional technologists, developers, librarians and students.