Techdirt. Stories filed under "learning"

DailyDirt: Learning A Foreign Language

Joyce Hung — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:00:00 PDT

Apparently, Japanese is the most difficult foreign language for native English speakers to learn. Not only does it have different written and spoken codes, it also has three different writing systems. Furthermore, Japanese syntax is left branching, which is the complete opposite of English syntax, which is right branching. Learning a foreign language is never easy (although some people seem to have an easier time than others), but it's not impossible with enough time and effort put into it. Here are a few more links about learning foreign languages.

A father spoke to his son in only Klingon for the first three years of his life. He was apparently interested in whether his kid, who was just going through his first language acquisition process, would pick up Klingon just like any human language. And, yes, the kid did start to learn it. [url]
What it takes to learn Chinese, or any other foreign language, is simply lots of hard work. You don't have to be talented. Just follow the "10,000 Hour Rule," and practice, practice, practice. [url]
Scientists in China think they've figured out a better way to teach Chinese. Using network theory, they developed a learning strategy that exploits the structural relationships between Chinese characters, which are actually composed of a fairly limited number of sub-characters. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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Obama Administration Considers Joining Publishers In Fight To Stamp Out Fair Use At Universities

Mike Masnick — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:55:40 PST

Okay, this is really quite unfortunate. In 2011, we wrote about an important copyright case involving three publishers suing Georgia State University for daring to have "e-reserves" that allow professors to make certain works available to students electronically via the university library. Nancy Sims, copyright librarian for the University of Minnesota, wrote a guest post summarizing the case for us as follows:

The publisher-plaintiffs are suing over the way instructors (and possibly others on campus) share course readings like academic articles and excerpts from academic books. They are objecting both to readings posted on course websites (i.e., uploaded by instructors and accessible only to students registered for a course) and readings shared via "e-reserves" (i.e., shared online through university libraries, usually also with access restricted to students registered for the course). The publishers claim that sharing copies of readings with students is not usually a fair use, that faculty can't really be trusted to make their own calls about what is or is not fair use, and that permissions fees should be paid for most of these uses.

Thankfully, last year, we wrote about how the district court issued an astounding 350-page ruling that basically said that most of these electronic reserves were clearly fair use. We had some issues with the way the judge went about the analysis -- often coming up with random and arbitrary standards for the amount of a work that could be used while remaining fair use, but, on the whole, it was good to see the judge support fair use relatively strongly (and, in some cases, to not even get to a fair use analysis by saying that the use was allowed as "de minimis" copying).

Of course, no matter what happened, the other side was going to appeal. We're getting closer to the appeals court hearing the case, but something interesting popped up last week. In a somewhat surprising move, the Justice Department jumped in and asked the court for some more time for the filing of amicus briefs from concerned third parties, because it was considering weighing in on the case. The Justice Department? Why should it be interested in a dispute concerning whether or not public university libraries are engaged in fair use by making works available to students?

In digging into this, we've heard from a few sources that it's actually the US Copyright Office that has asked the DOJ to weigh in on the side of the publishers and against the interests of public univerisities and students. Yes, the same Copyright Office that just promoted a former RIAA VP to second in command. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Let's be clear: it is flat out ridiculous that the Obama Administration may be supporting the publishers here. Two out of the three publishers are foreign publishing giants, and it would be supporting them against a public university library tasked with helping to educate students. The entire purpose of copyright law is supposed to be to promote the progress of learning. The copyright clause in the Constitution used "science" but back in that era "learning" and "science" were effectively synonymous. The very first Copyright Act in the US was actually titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning." Current copyright law is explicit that fair use covers this sort of situation:

the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

And yet... these publishers, along with the US Copyright Office and (perhaps) the DOJ, would like to ignore all of this, and reject fair use in such public learning centers? It is ridiculous. Oh, and did we mention that the lawsuit by these publishers is really being funded by the Copyright Clearance Center (who, shockingly, would be in charge of collecting fees for such uses...) and the American Publishers' Association? If the Obama Administration wanted to appear any more in the pocket of "Big Copyright" and against the public interest when it comes to learning and education, I'm not sure of any better position to take.

This is just a year after the SOPA fight, and it appears that the Copyright Office, led by Maria Pallante, who was a massive supporter of SOPA, has not learned the lesson of that debacle. It would be a travesty if the Justice Department listened to such an out of touch position and argued that the court should reject fair use in such scenarios.

It would be a complete embarrassment for an Obama administration that has argued that improving our education system is a key policy issue to turn its back on education by having its Justice Department argue against a public university library and students, and in favor of a blatantly self-interested copyright collection agency, funding some foreign publishers, trying to shake down students for extra money to learn. Just the fact that the US Copyright Office is supporting this and asking the Justice Department to make this move is a sign of how screwed up the Copyright Office is today. And it remains unclear why this is even an issue that concerns the Justice Department at all. Since when is access of students at a public university to educational materials an issue that should be of any interest to the Justice Department?

For what it's worth, we've heard that the people in the Justice Department who are considering its position are talking to various government agencies and officials over the next few days to determine what its final position should be. We would hope that the Justice Department, and the wider Obama administration (including the Copyright Office), take into account what happened last year when SOPA was put forth and the government sought to use copyright law to limit the public's rights. It would seem unwise to then take a position that might stir up significant interest, specifically when it involves something as ridiculous as supporting foreign publishers over public university students seeking reasonable fair use access to educational materials, as is clearly supported by the Copyright Act.

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DailyDirt: Learning More About Our Brains

Michael Ho — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:00:00 PST

We've discovering interesting things about the way our brains work all the time. Maybe someday we'll fully understand how our brains actually think, but we're a long way from that now. But in the meantime, here are a few more fascinating tidbits from studying our brains that might lead to smarter humans in the distant future.

Studies of human brains and closely related primate brains have shown some differences that could point to specific genes responsible (or at least relevant) for the evolution of brain intelligence. Next stop, planet of the apes, folks. [url]
Software can track what you've learned by constantly quizzing you, and apparently the best time to review something you want to memorize is right before you're about to forget it. Use it or lose it... and now you can precisely quantify when you're about to lose it. [url]
Brain imaging techniques could replace IQ tests someday by predicting intelligence based on "global brain connectivity" that seems to correlate with the ability to perform challenging tasks. Taking the SAT in the future might not involve number 2 pencils, but instead a few hours in an MRI machine.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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People Realizing That Other Occupations Can Learn From Music Success Stories

Mike Masnick — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:07:55 PST

For all the talk about how difficult it is for musicians to make a living today, and how there are all sorts of challenges, it's quite interesting to see that other people in other professions are increasingly looking to the growing number of success stories to see what they can learn. Music manager Emily White recently alerted us to the fact that she's taking some of the lessons learned working with artists like Amanda Palmer, and applying them elsewhere as well. For example, Olympic gold medalist swimmer Anthony Ervin recently began a "comeback" attempt, and needed to find support to go "on tour," competing for the US on the World Cup circuit. Apparently, expenses for such a trip are entirely on the athlete. So Ervin started doing what artists often do: connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy:

But what’s more spectacular than the times, places, and races is Anthony’s unusual and creative marketing campaign and his unorthodox methods for connecting with fans and formulating his own brand. It’s something we’ve never really seen before. And as some of the post-Olympic sponsorship money begins to dry out for elite swimmers, it could be a precedent going forward -- a way to generate and self-brand and connect with fans, a way to keep going.

A big part of this was an IndieGoGo campaign last fall, which raised $12,704, by really reaching out to his fans. And, as with typical crowdfunding campaigns, he's let some of his unique personality come through with the campaign and the possible awards. Since he's well known for dabbling in music as well, he offered to write people their own songs. And, of course, he also has offered up private swimming lessons for big donors as well.

What struck me about this is an entirely new way for swimmers to fund some of the more expensive swim tours out there. By providing creative incentives – like singing a song, or making a phone call – Anthony is literally giving back to the swim community dependent on the amount of support he gets. Also, throughout the Tour, Anthony’s journey is being updated. So not only can you donate, and then receive an autographed postcard, but you can also feel like you’re on the World Cup tour with him. Check out his Tweets, or his website. He’s uploading pictures of him talking to kids in Sweden, traveling around Russia.

It’s almost like Anthony has embraced some of the rock band roots he has and created his own “rock tour” of Europe, partially funded by his very own street team of loyal supporters. What’s amazing about all this is that bands have been doing this for years. Start-ups, films, photographers, long-distance athletes, too. And now, we’re seeing Olympic swimmers take to the Internet, to help fund their travels and excursions and training.

Of course, some may argue that there's nothing "new" here. And, to some extent, that's absolutely true. Lots of people are doing crowdfunding for different things these days. But it's still neat to see that these kinds of ideas are permeating into different areas where they haven't been used before, and that people elsewhere are taking their cue from some of the success stories in the music business. At the very least, it suggests that, perhaps, those embracing these new music business models aren't just on the right path, they're blazing a nice trail for tons of other areas as well.

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Fair Use Protection For Learning Should Be Applauded, But Not Limited To Universities

Mike Masnick — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 03:04:24 PDT

Following the recent pro-fair use rulings concerning Georgia State's e-reserves and book scanning efforts by a bunch of colleges and universities in the HathiTrust case, Siva Vaidhyanathan has a good article pointing out that these two rulings recognize that universities are "vast copy machines" and that's a very good thing.

...these cases strengthen the claim that universities and their libraries have a special place in copyright law because they have a special place in society. Courts and even Congress have long acknowledged the essential role of copying in the educational process. That’s why the preamble to the section of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act that outlines “fair use” specifies “teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research” as examples of “fair uses”—uses that, although they involve the copying of protected material, are considered noninfringing because they enable essential public goods.

Universities are not copyright-free zones—far from it. But they do perform special services that often demand flexibility and liberties that enable them to “promote the progress of science and useful arts,” the core mission of copyright as declared by the U.S. Constitution.

I actually think that Siva underplays the importance of learning in copyright -- as that was its original intent. The Constitutional clause concerning copyright talks about "promoting the progress of science" -- which at the time it was written meant "learning," and the very first Copyright Act in the US was actually entitled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning."

That said, I'm a bit disappointed that Siva then takes that storyline even further to suggest that universities deserve special protections against copyright enforcement that should not apply elsewhere. For example, he insists that while the HathiTrust ruling finds fair use for universities in scanning books (even if the scanning is done by Google) it should not apply to Google scanning books itself:

In any event, we are never going to see that operatic courtroom showdown between Google and publishing industry over whether the sweeping scanning of millions of books for explicitly commercial purposes constitutes a fair use by Google. I have written many times over the years that I am dubious of the strength of Google’s argument, and nothing in either the settlement news or the HathiTrust case has undermined my conclusion.

... Google is not a library. It is not a university. It is not a public service. It is a business. Too often we forget those distinctions. The project of creating, maintaining, and offering vast collections of digital material should be something that universities and libraries control, not something we depend on one company to handle.

I have long argued exactly the opposite, that Google's book scanning project should absolutely be seen as fair use as well. The use is clearly transformative and most of the evidence suggests it increases, rather than harms, sales. But, more importantly, it really is creating a tremendous library index that will help people find information and learn. I think Siva is going way too far in suggesting that universities should get special treatment. People learn from all sorts of places, not just universities. And we shouldn't carve out special rules for universities that, by default, harm those who do not attend or cannot afford to attend those universities. Part of the wonder of something like Google's book scanning project (and other similar projects, such as the one by the Internet Archive) is that it helps make these works accessible to all -- and we should be encouraging that for the sake of learning across the board, rather than just for a few institutions.

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California To Commission 50 Open Textbooks For 2013; Finnish Teachers Write One In A Weekend

Glyn Moody — Wed, 3 Oct 2012 14:30:00 PDT

Techdirt has been following open textbooks for some time now, and 2012 looks to be a bumper year for them. Here, for example, is a major initiative in the US:

California college students hit with tuition increases in recent years will get a little financial help after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Thursday to create a website on which popular textbooks can be downloaded for free.

Twin bills by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) will give students free digital access to 50 core textbooks for lower-division courses offered by the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems. Hard copies of the texts would cost $20.

The bill establishes a new California Open Education Resources Council, which will be required to choose the 50 core textbooks and then: to establish a competitive request-for-proposal process in which faculty members, publishers, and other interested parties would apply for funds to produce, in 2013, 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks
which would be released under a cc-by license. The move is likely to be significant nationally, as an article in The Textbook Guru points out: The ripple effect of this legislation should spread way past California and throughout the whole country. With quality publisher-grade peer-reviewed options becoming newly available in open format and competing against the high-priced publishers' textbooks, faculty will need to pause to review these and see how they can be used in their classroom.
After all, if high-quality textbooks are freely available in digital form -- or hence for low prices as printed copies -- hard-pressed universities elsewhere in the US (and internationally) would be crazy not to consider them. The cc-by license means that the text can be freely modified for local needs as necessary, or translated.

As the above indicates, those 50 titles won't be ready until next year. Meanwhile, in Finland, some teachers decided to produce something a little sooner:

A group of Finnish mathematics researchers, teachers and students write an upper secondary mathematics textbook in a booksprint. The event started on Friday 28th September at 9:00 (GMT+3) and the book will be (hopefully) ready on Sunday evening.

You can find the book's LaTeX source code in a repository on Github: it's under the same cc-by license as the California books, so you can adapt it freely -- if you can read Finnish....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

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Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

Tim Cushing — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 07:19:25 PDT

Publishers are at it again, levying what amount to economic sanctions against that infamous freeloader hangout, The Library. In a move that will endear it to exactly no one, Hachette is increasing its back catalog prices 220% for ebooks, sticking it to the cherished public institutions whose shelves (including the digital ones) are lined with nothing but Lost Sales (apparently).

Hachette has been hard at work dragging its reputation through the mud. You may remember it from a few weeks ago, when it greeted Tor's announcement that it was going DRM-free with "HAHAHA but no, seriously, there will be DRM." This move seems ill-advised at best, what with some authors banding together to offer their titles to libraries for $dirt cheap, a price that falls more in line with the economic realities of the average library.

Hachette isn't the only publishing fish in the sea (and not even the only fish to jack up its prices -- Random House dialed its prices up 300% in March). Hachette is one of several publishers, many of whom haven't increased prices (or at least, not as severely). Of course, other publishers have gone other routes, including limiting the number of lends on their ebooks, making their digital offerings the equivalent of poorly manufactured physical books (Falls Apart After 26 Uses!). As a whole, the Big Six treat libraries like an intrusive vagrant.

So the current state of the library ebook market is this:

2 major publishers which charge high prices (Hachette, Random House)

2 major publishers which won’t sell at all (Macmillan, Simon & Schuster)

Penguin, which is only selling ebooks to libraries grudgingly and with support for the Kindle explicitly blocked

HarperCollins, which imposed a 26 checkout limit for library ebooks

I realize the publishers are running businesses, not charities, but those on the end of these price hikes are running something much closer to a charity than a business, relying on late fees, used book sales and donations to keep their shelves stocked. Considering many potential customers use libraries as tools for discovery, it would seem to be in their best interest to get as many of their titles in front of readers as possible, rather than price themselves out of a well-respected lending system.

Hachette's pricing "strategy" is doubly disappointing, considering it was once one of the "good guys:"

Hachette used to be one of the bright lights in library ebooks because they charged the regular retail price for their ebooks. And even though they wouldn’t sell their front list titles to libraries, at least we knew the titles would eventually be available. Only now those titles will be terribly expensive.

Christopher Harris, writing for the American Library Association, wonders if Hachette has forgotten how to publish.

Hachette is increasing backlist prices by 220% and … what? And we get ownership? And we get increased simultaneous lending? And we get anything other than another price gouge from a publisher that seems to not comprehend the basic fundamentals of publishing?

Let’s make this really easy to understand. Publishers publish content. Libraries buy content. As long as publishers keep publishing content, libraries will keep buying content. Why? Because libraries buy content. Only we buy it from a relatively fixed budget.

By drastically increasing the price of backlist titles, all Hachette is doing is reducing the funding that can go towards purchasing its new titles.

Harris points out that libraries aren't looking for handouts. They're looking for a mutually beneficial relationship, one that rewards publishers, readers and writers. But trying to turn a back catalog into a cash cow on the back of the library system helps no one.

That is why I cannot begin to comprehend this move by Hachette. Increasing backlist prices must either reduce the available budget for new titles or reduce acquisition of backlist titles—lost sales for Hachette either way. Furthermore, it reveals a lack of focus on the part of Hachette; instead of building profits on releasing the best possible titles every year, the company is stuck looking backwards. Finally, it shows a lack of understanding about the benefit of having more open access to backlist titles as additional entry points into new book purchases.

This short-sightedness seems to be more and more commonplace, especially in industries affected by digital disruption. The focus has shifted from building a sustainable business to concentrating on quarterly reports. Concentrating on immediate results tends to lead toward efforts that do far more long-term damage than any short-term gains can hope to balance out.

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The Secret To Better Education... Is Dumb Robots?

Mike Masnick — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:35:43 PDT

A year ago, in writing about innovation in education, I mentioned an observation I had about learning, combined with a prediction about how technology could help revolutionize education in a good way:

One of the other lessons I learned in teaching (and in tutoring before that) was that the best way to truly master a subject is to teach it yourself, and have people asking you to explain it back to them. This is why I'm not joking up above when I talk about the possibilities of having certain subjects taught by other students as well. You might think you fully understand a subject, but just wait until people start asking questions (similarly, despite quite a bit of study in the subject, my full "understanding" of certain aspects of information economics didn't become really clear until I had to explain them repeatedly via this blog). And, of course, it need not be students teaching students -- but you could have software designed to act like a "learning" student, where the student has to "teach" the software.

It appears that others have had the same idea... and been doing some studies about it. Via TechCrunch, we learn of some new research, by Shizuko Matsuzoe and Fumihide Tanaka at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, that found that when students "taught" a "dumb" robot, they learned a subject much better (in this case, it was Japanese students learning English):

Matsuzoe and Tanaka found that the children did best when the robot appeared to learn from them. This also made the children more likely to want to continue learning with the robot.

They note that most traditional "educational" robots tend to work in the other direction... acting as "teachers" for the kids. But those appear to not be nearly as effective as when you flip the relationship. As I found back when I taught, having people continually ask you questions to clarify their own understanding forces you to truly understand the subject yourself at a much deeper level than if you're just a "student."

You can take a look at the full study over here (which, it's great to see, is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). And there are some really interesting findings. First, the difference in performance with and without the robot is pretty significant: But perhaps even more interesting is that "3 to 5 weeks later" result. This actually went against the researchers' hypothesis going into the research (I'm always a fan of research that rejects researchers' initial hypothesis!). They expected that after a few weeks had passed, students would gradually forget some of what they learned. But what they found was really encouraging. It seems that the experience itself made them even more interested in continuing the learning process, and those who learned with the robot really seemed to figure out how to "teach themselves" much better: Contrary to our initial assumption, the average percentage of questions answered correctly was in fact higher than the results obtained on the day of the experiment (we predicted that it would have been lower because the children might have forgotten the learned verbs). Subsequent interviews with parents (details in Section 6.3.3) provided us with some clues for this result. Most parents told us that their children appeared to enjoy the experience of teaching the care-receiving robot so much that he or she continued to play the game at home, even after several days, weeks, and wherever similar objects were found.
While this is still early research, it's definitely encouraging, and hopefully more people will start to explore similar ideas. Teaching kids by having them teach others could be a really effective way to create a much deeper level of understanding within students, rather than just teaching them to learn by rote.

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Will Free Online College Courses Actually Widen The Socio-Educational Gap?

Timothy Geigner — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:52:33 PDT

While we recently discussed how licensing schemes can make the intersection of the internet and education very expensive and complex, there's also been some news recently going in the opposite direction. Coursera, a company that partners with colleges to provide free online courses, recently announced that it has expanded its partnerships to include several top-tier schools, such as Princeton, Duke, and Johns Hopkins. Meanwhile, MIT, Berkley, and Harvard announced that they are going to start a similar program at their schools called edX. The goals for both of these groups is to democratize higher education, opening the doors of social progress through the power of the internet and online courses.

And yet some would argue that the opposite will occur. Take, for instance, Noliwe M. Rooks, associate professor at Cornell and author of several books. Contributing to Time, she argues that online courses will have the opposite effect and actually widen the socio-educational gap between the rich and poor, and also along racial lines. I think such a theory is horribly myopic, but let's take a look.

Despite near universal enthusiasm for such projects, it’s important to take a few steps back. First, although the content is free now, it’s unlikely that it will remain that way for long. According to an analysis of one of Coursera’s contracts, both the company and the schools plan to make a profit — they just haven’t figured out the best way to do that yet.

A couple of problems here. First, while the industries are by no means fully analogous, I imagine that there were people years back who said the exact same thing about Google's search business. Or YouTube's video business. You'll note that both remain free to users to this day. Perhaps so shall Coursera. But, secondly, even the link Rooks provides to demonstrate her fear that students will eventually be charged doesn't really do that at all. The team at Coursera is currently brainstorming ways to monetize the business, but charging for what the company is calling course-completion "certificates" is only one idea. They've also discussed corporate sponsorship and advertising-supported monetization. The point is that charging for courses isn't some forgone conclusion and, whatever these certificates would cost, the investment on the part of the student would still be a far cry from what it costs to attend a university these days. But then Rooks goes on to make what are her two key points. The first is that online education isn't as effective as the classroom experience.

In terms of learning on the college level, the Department of Education looked at thousands of research studies from 1996 to 2008 and found that in higher education, students rarely learned as much from online courses as they did in traditional classes. In fact, the report found that the biggest benefit of online instruction came from a blended learning environment that combined technology with traditional methods, but warned that the uptick had more to do with the increased amount of individualized instruction students got in that environment, not the presence of technology. For all but the brightest, the more time students spend with traditional instruction, the better they seem to do.

It would be very easy at this point for the reader of Rooks's piece to see a fork in the road, where one must choose to either agree that online education is inferior or disagree and dismiss her argument. I'll do neither, because the question is moot. Remember that we're talking about the impact this is going to have on the socio-educational gap, not on the average student. Looking at it from that perspective, the effectiveness of free online education at Princeton (or any other school) compared with the effectiveness of in-classroom education at that same school is of no meaning whatsoever. The comparison to be made is between the effectiveness of free online education at Princeton (or any other school) versus not being able to afford an education at that same school at all. When viewed in its proper context, I can't see how anyone could argue that these free courses will do anything besides close the socio-educational gap.

And, finally, we have the argument that this will chiefly benefit both rich and white communities:

Supporters of online learning say that all anyone needs to access a great education is a stable Internet connection. But only 35% of households earning less than $25,000 have broadband access to the Internet, compared with 94% of households with income in excess of $100,000. In addition, according to the 2010 Pew Report on Mobile Access, only half of black and Latino homes have Internet connections at all, compared with almost 65% of white households. Perhaps most significant, many blacks and Latinos primarily use their cell phones to access the Internet, a much more expensive and less-than-ideal method for taking part in online education. In short, the explosion of this type of educational instruction, though free now, may leave behind the students who need education the most.

Again, it would be very easy for the reader at this point to pick a side, either believing Rooks's numbers or not and drawing a conclusion. I won't, because no matter where those numbers are right now, they are not static. I would argue that anyone believing that wider adoption of internet connections and greater reliability aren't only going to increase as time goes on doesn't know what they're talking about. So, even if there is an "internet gap" of sorts today, be it along racial or economic borders, that's only going to decrease. Given that Coursera just started up, drawing the conclusion that it, and future companies like it, are going to help widen the socio-education gap seems rather odd.

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New Research Shows How Copyright Law Is Keeping Useful Info Off Wikipedia

Mike Masnick — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:39:00 PDT

The Atlantic has an interesting article about some forthcoming research from MIT PhD student Abhishek Nagaraj (though, oddly, the article never introduces him, never mentions his first name, and just refers to him throughout by his last name only). It's the latest in an increasingly long line of evidence showing how copyright is stifling content and keeping it from reaching the public in useful ways. Nagaraj found a particularly useful natural experiment in the archives of Baseball Digest "the oldest and longest-running journal of matters baseball-related," which has been published continuously since 1942. For various reasons (sounds like they didn't renew...) the issues from 1942 until 1964 are in the public domain. Everything after that... not so much. Google's book scanning project scanned nearly every issue from July 1945 until 2008.

Nagaraj realized that Wikipedians were using this as good source material for Wikipedia pages -- especially on the profiles of older baseball players. He noted that there was little stopping the text from being rewritten, but the real issue was around images. People could use the scanned images to illustrate the profiles, but clearly they could only use the public domain ones without permission.

But Nagaraj found was that the availability of public domain material dramatically improved the article's images. Before the digitization, players from between '44 and '64 had an average of .183 pictures on their articles. The '64 to '84 group had about .158 pictures. But after digitization, those numbers dramatically changed: there were 1.15 pictures on each of the older group's articles -- but only .667 in the new group. More recent players, covered by privately-owned parts of Baseball Digest, had half as many images on their pages as did old-timers.

And, yes, the article notes that he put in place various controls to correct for unrelated differences. Basically, the only observable difference in why the pages have more images is the public domain status of some of those works vs. others. Some might argue that this is no big deal, but he found a second bit of useful data s well:

And the effects of this -- of just having an image on the page -- cascaded to other metrics. "Out-of-copyright" players's pages saw a significant boost in traffic. Articles from the pre-'64 that were already in the top 10 percent saw their hits increase more than 70 percent. Articles from that group in the least-popular ten percent saw traffic to their articles increase by 25 percent. Those pages were more frequently edited across the board, too. And this makes sense: Google rewards updated content, and it rewards images. The out-of-copyright players provided more of both.

I'm reminded, yet again, of that chart of the now infamous gap in books under copyright that you can't find any more -- even though older books in the public domain are widely available. Once again, we're seeing not only the massive value of the public domain, but how much useful content is being locked away by excessively strict (and excessively long) copyright law.

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Techno-Panic Headlines: 'Enhanced Ebooks Are Bad For Children'

Leigh Beadon — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 15:59:00 PDT

It's no secret that the media loves techno-panic stories, especially when they can quote some scientist or researcher condemning a new technology. Sometimes the studies they point to are bogus, but more often than not the fault lies with the reporters, who oversimplify or flat-out misrepresent the findings. The Guardian recently published a perfect example of this, where even the story itself seems to admit that the facts are far less sensational than the headline.

And that headline is pretty blunt: Enhanced ebooks are bad for children finds American study. Bad for children, huh? That must mean there were some pretty clear negative results in whatever this study looked at, right? Not so much. When you read the details, you discover that the study was looking specifically at a book's ability to promote literacy and reading comprehension, where it found that ebooks with interactive graphical bells and whistles distract focus from the text and are inferior in that regard. But the study's authors also note, quite firmly, that this is simply something for parents and educators to keep in mind when deciding on activities for their kids, and that enhanced ebooks are still fantastic for helping to engage kids who are otherwise uninterested in books. Basically, they say a lot of enhanced ebooks fall more on the play side of things than the study side—but kids play, and it's actually great if some of that play involves storytelling and reading, even if it's done in a lighter fashion. In short, they absolutely do not say that enhanced ebooks are "bad for children".

Children reading enhanced ebooks also "recalled significantly fewer narrative details than children who read the print version of the same story", said the researchers, speculating that the extra features may be distracting. But while "print books were more advantageous for literacy building co-reading", ebooks, and particularly enhanced ebooks, were better "for engaging children and prompting physical interaction".

...

Chiong told the Guardian that enhanced ebooks "absolutely still have a place. Kids seem to love them. If enhanced books can engage kids who might not be as interested in reading, we will achieve an important goal. In our study, we were specifically looking at book-reading with a focus on learning and comprehension. That is only one of many purposes for reading. If the purpose is to just have fun or explore a classic tale in a new way, enhanced books are great."

What's not mentioned, but seems obvious, is the fact that this same argument could be applied to books with sound effects, pop-up books, and for that matter just books with illustrations—all things that potentially detract from "pure" literacy but serve to make kids more interested in reading. The researchers also note that enhanced ebooks can be done well and done poorly: the right kinds of interactivity, actually relating to the narrative, can be far less distracting and maybe even beneficial—it's the unnecessary ornamentation that is the core problem. That's not unlike any form of entertainment, even for adults: just see debates about the use of 3D in movies for an example.

So what we actually have here is a pretty interesting study that sheds some light on the way kids interact with enhanced reading material while refraining from taking any extreme positions on the technology. Every newspaper headline writer just fell asleep while reading that sentence.

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The Biggest 'Pirates' And 'Freeloaders' Of Them All? College Professors And Librarians

Mike Masnick — Wed, 4 Apr 2012 05:36:00 PDT

There's an interesting article over at Law.com highlighting just how many lawsuits there are in which college professors and librarians are fighting back against overly draconian copyright laws. Most of the cases they mention are ones we've discussed here, but it's a good article overall. It talks about the Georgia State fair use case, the UCLA case about streaming video, and the Authors Guild suit against the Hathitrust for trying to make books more accessible.

The really incredible thing in all of this is that copyright is supposed to be about the encouragement of learning. In fact, the first US federal copyright law was called "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning." But, the fact is that universities and librarians are constantly bumping up against the ridiculous and over-aggressive limits of copyright law in ways that prevent them from basic tasks that aid in education and learning.

Copyright system defenders love to paint critics of today's copyright laws as merely being a bunch of "freeloaders" and "pirates." That's a ridiculous assertion. The big problem of copyright law today is how it impacts everyday people doing everyday things. The fact that so many professors and librarians -- those who are at the forefront of the "encouragement of learning" -- are discovering that copyright law gets in their way more than it helps suggests a law that is completely out of touch with its intended purpose. This isn't about freeloaders and pirates. This is about some of the fundamental principles of education.

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DailyDirt: I Want A New Drug...

Michael Ho — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:00:00 PDT

Many mind-altering drugs lead to trouble at some point. But what about treatments that help improve memory or intelligence? Forget those energy drinks, serious scientists are working on ways to improve memory and learning skills. Here are just a few examples.

A protein named the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) seems to be correlated with exercise and improved memory. But exercise is hard, so there'll be plenty of BDNF pills and 'Flowers for Algernon' situations to look forward to. [url]
Taking drugs like Ritalin and caffeine might provide a temporary boost to mental abilities, but R&D efforts to discover a pill that permanently improves brain function are likely futile. Pharmaceutical companies benefit more from treatments rather than cures, anyway. [url]
Air Force researchers have figured out a way to reduce training time by 50% -- using mild electrical currents delivered to pilots' heads. The technique uses transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), and the treated pilots have been reported to say, "I know Kung Fu" in a Keanu-like way. [url]
To discover more interesting articles on the human mind, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Online Technology Entrepreneurship Class At Stanford Postponed... Because Of Copyright

Mike Masnick — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:51:05 PST

The Constitutional clause often referred to as the Copyright Clause involves granting the power to Congress:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Many people get confused and don't realize that the "Science" part was really about copyright (not the "useful arts.") And, by "science" they really meant "learning." In fact, the very first US Copyright law, in 1790, was entitled:

An ACT for the Encouragement of Learning

So you would think that the use of copyright law to block the encouragement of learning would be unconstitutional. Unfortunately, it happens all the time. Jon sent over the news that the online Technology Entrepreneurship class he'd been looking forward to taking from Stanford University has apparently been postponed due to copyright issues. According to the classes' professor, Chuck Eesley:

Unfortunately, the launch of my Technology Entrepreneurship online course has been placed on hold, due to delays surrounding copyright and intellectual property clearance issues. We are working on this and I anticipate providing you with an update within the next few months.

In an age where there's lots of support and interest in online education, to find out that copyright law, of all things, is being used to block education seems like a complete travesty.

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Mocking Blackout Reactions Is Too Easy: Let's Learn From Them Instead

Marcus Carab — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:24:40 PST

Unsurprisingly, yesterday's Wikipedia blackout caused a lot of reaction on Twitter. The whole point of a move like this is to shock people, get their attention, and make them start asking questions—and the primary target is those who don't already know about the issue at hand. So it's also unsurprising that some of the reactions were pretty damn stupid. And since there's nothing the internet likes more than making fun of stupid people, it's once again unsurprising that a few different sources decided to catalogue and mock them.

@herpderpedia sprung up to retweet the various freak-outs and desperate pleas of stymied users—mostly students. There's a lot of misdirected anger, with people blaming Obama or denouncing Wikipedia, and a lot of general ignorance: many thought the site had already been shuttered forever, or that the blackout itself was mandated by congress. And since memes are always in their fifth stage of irony for some people while others have yet discover them, there are also quite a few tweets that look like parodies.

But what I see most of all are questions. People are asking why? in huge numbers, and that's fantastic. Granted, a lot of them are directing their questions to the wrong people, and it's not as if all of them are going to use this as a starting point to genuinely learn more about these issues. But some will. And you can bet they'll all be paying more attention to SOPA/PIPA now—not to mention any future legislation that sparks chatter about Wikipedia's Black Wednesday.

Some will say they shouldn't be asking when the blackout page provides plenty of information, but when you look closer you see that several tweets complain about complicated language and unclear explanations, and most are just shouts of extreme frustration (remember, these are all people with a looming deadline on some other project). More importantly, this speaks of broader themes online: people have two primary means of finding information now—search and social—and when one fails, they go to the other. When you want fast facts you Google something then click through to Wikipedia, but when you have a more immediate human need borne of panic—OMG OMG OMG OMG WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO WIKIPEDIA? CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME? Omg [actual tweet]—you turn to your social circles.

But it's the internet, and there will be mockery, and that's fine. I just hope the mockers realize that this isn't like when Kim Jong Il died and some Twitter users thought it was Lil Kim (that was both less excusable and more hilarious). Beneath the surface idiocy, most of these people have been nudged in the right direction by Wikipedia's blackout, even if only slightly—and their reactions provide a lot of insight if you can resist taking the potshots, most of which are too easy anyway.

Now that's out of the way, here are some easy potshots at tweets:

fuck jimmy wales. fuck him and fuck wikipedia. dickhead my works taking ages to do now cos i goota go on so many wesbits.wt a prick.'protest [What sort of company employs a quasi-illiterate to surf Wikipedia all day? I'm genuinely curious]

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? WHY AM I THE LAST TO KNOW WIKIPEDIA IS BLOCKED! I BE ON THERE DAILY!!! [I like that she is less annoyed about losing Wikipedia than she is about the fact nobody told her. I've often thought SOPA/PIPA supporters are just mad because they were the last to find out about free movies.]

I will cry if they shut down Wikipedia forever.. :'( [Why, because you won't be able to look up "sissy"?]

WHY THE FUCK IS MY WIKIPEDIA BEING A BLACK ONE I DIDNT WANT THAT OH GOD IM SO MAD [Swap "Wikipedia" with "President" and this would be the perfect redneck tweet]

I think Wikipedia planned this shit. [Really? I figured it was a typo.]

Gay no Wikipedia!? I was about to search something fucking bitch.. ["The page 'Something fucking bitch' does not exist. You can ask for it to be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered." Incidentally, the first result is "Flavor of Love (season 1)"]

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Educators Worried About SOPA/PIPA's Impact On Education

Mike Masnick — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:36:52 PST

Another day, and another group of folks points out how SOPA/PIPA will cause problems. This time, it's a large group of folks involved in the production of educational content and services -- including folks associated with MIT's OpenCourseware project, the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Harvard, Stanford and many other places, pointing out that SOPA/PIPA threaten the innovation and adoption of technology in the education space:

Today, there are myriad sites that encourage lawful distribution, remixing and redistribution of educational content (e.g. Curriki, Connexions, P2PU, YouTube, CK12). These services are democratizing access to educational content.

Of course, sometimes they are misused. Fortunately, today the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbors craft a careful balance -- a content owner would issue a DMCA takedown to remove the content, but otherwise the platform is not held liable for alleged copyright infringement.

These bills would undermine this framework and chill the creation of educational content. Sites that host or use user-generated content could be required to monitor their site for infringing material, and could potentially have their domain name blocked by the government if content owners thought that infringement was occurring on that site. This represents an entirely new legal power given to content owners to control the flow of content online and to shape the very foundation of the Internet. Indeed, it could lead to entire sites becoming unavailable due to the behavior of a tiny minority of confused or malicious users.

Will Congress still ignore all of these complaints?

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E-Learning Company Blackboard Bows To The Growing Power Of Openness Again

Glyn Moody — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:46:40 PDT

The last time Techdirt wrote about the learning company, Blackboard, was in the context of its attempt to enforce a ridiculously broad patent on the field. Even before the patent was thrown out completely, Blackboard made an unusual move: it offered to exempt open source projects and those who contributed to them from its patent attacks:

As part of the Pledge, Blackboard promises never to pursue patent actions against anyone using such systems including professors contributing to open source projects, open source initiatives, commercially developed open source add-on applications to proprietary products and vendors hosting and supporting open source applications. Blackboard is also extending its pledge to many specifically identified open source initiatives within the course management system space whether or not they may include proprietary elements within their applications, such as Sakai, Moodle, ATutor, Elgg and Bodington.

Commitments to limit potential patent protection are uncommon, particularly for enterprise software companies. The Patent Pledge -- in terms of its sweeping scope, strong commitment and public nature -- is unprecedented for a product company such as Blackboard.

That "unprecedented" commitment was a reflection of the power and popularity of the open source options, and the recognition by Blackboard that suing these free projects would lose it a lot of friends in the academic world. Here's another manifestation of that power, announced last week: Blackboard Inc. today announced a series of new initiatives to provide greater support for open education efforts. Working with Creative Commons, Blackboard will now support publishing, sharing and consumption of open educational resources (OER) across its platforms. The company also updated its policy confirming the ability for education institutions to serve non-traditional users with Blackboard Learn� without incurring additional license costs.

Support for OER enables instructors to publish and share their courses under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) so that anyone can easily preview and download the course content in Blackboard and Common Cartridge formats. The new functionality is available now for CourseSites, Blackboard’s free, fully-hosted and supported cloud offering launched a year ago and now used by over 18,000 instructors from nearly 12,000 institutions in 113 countries. Similar support for OER will be available soon for Blackboard Learn.

Blackboard also clarified its license policy to formalize the ability for education institutions to extend course access in the Blackboard Learn platform – as well as ANGEL and WebCT – to non-traditional, non-revenue generating students at no additional cost. The move supports engaging wider use of the platform to serve different types of “guest” users taking part in efforts including open teaching initiatives, auditing and accreditation activities, student recruiting programs, community outreach programs and collaborative research efforts.
The first part of this announcement is about open formats. Blackboard users can now share courses using the liberal Creative Commons license CC-BY, or the Common Cartridge standard. The second part is a classic play by a proprietary vendor trying to stop users moving to open source solutions by offering zero-cost options for certain classes of use – in this case, "non-traditional, non-revenue generating students". Both are testimony to the continuing shift to openness in education, and the rise of key open source e-learning programs like Moodle and Sakai.

Although Blackboard's announcements are welcome, particularly its support for the CC license, they are unlikely to halt that trend. That's because moves to truly open formats and open source are not just about cost, but also about freedom from lock-in and the ability to adapt solutions to local needs – something that Blackboard's proprietary approach does not allow. The only way the company can counter those strengths is by going totally open itself.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

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Access Copyright Admits That It's Holding Education Hostage Unless Universities Pay Up

Mike Masnick — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:24:24 PDT

We've written a few times about Access Copyright, the Canadian collection society that licenses universities and has them pay a per student fee in order to "pay" authors for all the photocopies and handouts professors make for students. Of course, it doesn't look like very much of that money ever actually makes it to the authors. In the meantime, being in a monopoly position, Access Copyright decided to jack up its fees. And they didn't just double or triple or even quadruple them. No, Access Copyright decided to go big and attempted to increase the per student fees by a whopping 1300%... and then tried to stifle objections to the plan.

In response to this, a bunch of universities decided opt-out of using Access Copyright, meaning that they all need to deal with making sure copies and coursepacks are properly licensed. Not surprisingly -- especially since this was all recently decided, just prior to the semester starting -- some universities are struggling mightily to deal with this and to make sure certain uses are cleared.

But what's really sickening is how Access Copyright appears to be watching this last minute scramble and laughing about it.

Erin Finlay, legal counsel for Access Copyright, said many of the issues that caused the breakdown in the relationship with the universities could have been resolved at the negotiating table. She said the institutions are putting students at a disadvantage.

"When an institution suggests that if you cannot clear this, if you can't get permission before you post it (online) you're not entitled to use it, or you have to find a substitute, or you have to find an open access substitute, I think that harms the educational experience, and I think it harms what we teach our children," Finlay said.

"There's a much easier way that allows access to all of the works and has allowed access to all of the works for the past 17 years, and that's through the Access Copyright licence."

This seems to be a flat out admission that Access Copyright is a monopoly that knows it's a monopoly and that it can charge outrageous monopoly rents, because there's no other game in town. And, really, it's ridiculously cynical to claim that its the universities' actions that are harming the educational experience. The universities wouldn't be doing this if Access Copyright hadn't jacked up the rates 1,300% in the first place... So, if Access Copyright claims that not providing works through it is "harming the educational experience," it has only itself to blame for offering such a bad deal.

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DailyDirt: Back To School Time...

Michael Ho — Wed, 7 Sep 2011 17:00:00 PDT

It's that time of year again -- time for kids in the US to go back to school after a summer break. There are plenty of folks who argue that summer breaks are unnecessary and waste valuable teaching time. There also seems to be no end of suggestions on how to fix the US education system. Here are just a few more opinions about improving educational systems.

Would students be better served by taking "applied math" classes instead of pre-algebra, algebra, pre-calculus and calculus? Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys, engineers or scientists... [url]
Google's Eric Schmidt admonishes British teachers for teaching students how to use Microsoft applications -- instead of programming. Out of spite, how about we teach kids how to use Microsoft Visual C++? [url]
Teachers have a hard job in NYC... and it doesn't help when it's so easy for new teachers to be dismissed as bad teachers. But it's not easy to grade teachers, either. [url]
Teaching as a career doesn't seem to be a highly-regarded profession, according to several polls. But it's not clear how the trend of diminishing status for teaching professionals can be reversed. [url]
To discover more interesting education-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Academic Publishers Attempting To Eliminate Fair Use At Universities [Updated]

Timothy Geigner — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:23:00 PDT

There are stories about legal battles over copyright that make you shake your head in bewilderment. There are some that make you chuckle. And then there are some that simply infuriate, such as this one sent in by Chris ODonnell.

For those who may not be aware, e-reserves are a practice by which universities can share course materials with students, relying heavily on fair use. Basically, it used to be that professors would have to reserve printed materials in the university library for students, the school paying permission fees for each printed copy. In the digital world, of course, this is wholly unnecessary. Professors more often put a single copy of the reading material up on a school server, slap some password protections on it to make sure only students of the class have access, and all of that dead tree copying suddenly becomes antiquated. This, of course, is great for education, as students who are already paying rising costs for course material and tuition suddenly don't have to share in the materials cost for digital goods now protected under fair use. It's a huge win for higher education, something every good citizen realizes is of rising importance in the global economy.

So, of course the content creators are suing. Specifically in what reeks of a test case, Cambridge, Oxford, & Sage publishers are filing against Georgia State University and asking the court to issue one of the all-time-detrimental-to-education injunctions in the modern era.

Some quick background is probably in order. E-reserves have long been a contentious issue for academic publishers. Publishers Weekly has been following the long history of so-called academic publishers using strong-arm tactics to get institutions to limit what can be done with e-reserves:

"Indeed, there has been mounting concern over e-reserve practices since the early 1990s, when publishers predicted that e-reserves could erode revenue from printed coursepacks. In 1994 publishers sought to deal with e-reserves at the Conference on Fair Use (CONFU), but the issue proved so contentious that the participants could not agree on a recommendation for the final report. Since then, the threat of litigation has loomed over a number of universities concerning their e-reserves, as publishers' reproduction revenues dipped."

Read carefully, and you can immediately see what's going on here. Basically, the digital world has made sharing educational documents more efficient, such that reproducing printed copies of material is no longer a necessity. And academic publishers are freaking out because a revenue stream is threatened. This, of course, is where fair use should come into play as a protection for those seeking to share and enhance knowledge for our nation's young people, something which virtually everyone would agree is important. But not so-called academic publishers. For them, it's that revenue stream that's important, and the progress of the nation's knowledge be damned.

That would be bad enough, but the injunction the publishers are seeking against Georgia State is even worse. This is outlined by Kevin Smith, Duke University's first Scholarly Communications Officer, in a piece entitled "A Nightmare Scenario For Higher Education". Smith notes several revelations about the injunction, which would first seek to make Georgia State University responsible for everything that is copied within their grounds and associated web spaces. It does this by enjoining university students and professors to the injunction. It includes not only e-reserves, but also faculty web pages and LMS systems, effecitively encompassing the entire educational institution under Georgia State's responsibility to monitor materials available to anyone anywhere. Smith notes:

"In short, administrators at Georgia State would have to look over the shoulders of each faculty member whenever they uploaded course material to an LMS or any other web page. Arguably, they would have to monitor student copying at copiers provided in their libraries, since GSU would be enjoined from “encouraging or facilitating” any copying, beyond a limit of about 4 pages, that was done without permission."

The whole concept of higher education revolves around the ability of an institution's professors to share and expound upon knowledge. The very label of "a free exchange of ideas" now goes out the window, as the injunction results in the giving up of fair use by not only university staff, but students as they try to learn. Let's be clear: students are attempting to use this material to further knowledge while "academic" publishers are putting up roadblocks.

But it gets even worse. Smith discusses how permission fees are the real goal here, as well as the obliteration of fair use for all of Georgia State, before noting:

"Added to these rules from the Guidelines is a new restriction, that no more than 10% of the total reading for any particular class could be provided through non-permissive copying. The point of this rule is nakedly obvious. If a campus had the temerity to decide that it was going to follow the rules strictly (since the flexibility which is the point of fair use would be gone) and make sure that all of its class readings fell within the guidelines, they still would be unable to avoid paying permission fees. Ninety percent of each class’s reading would be required, under this absurd order, to be provided through purchased works or copies for which permission fees were paid, no matter how short the excerpts were."

I'll paraphrase in case there are others like me, because when I read the above my brain immediately began attacking my eyeballs for exposing it to something so utterly ridiculous. Publishers are attempting to require universities to pay more in permission fees for using their content and they want to make it a rule that no more than 10% of course material may be material that was acquired without payment. It's classic monopolistic behavior: you have to pay for our stuff and you have to use our stuff by rule, therefore you must pay no matter what. If this sounds familiar, it's because music publishers have tried this on high school radio stations in the past. Update: A bunch of commenters make the convincing point that we may have read too much into the 10% limit, and that it does not forbid other types of licenses... though the agreement is still highly questionable on almost every other point.

To summarize, we've got "academic" publishers threatening litigation upon universities that are sharing educational material, under clear fair use protections, in a more efficient manner to further knowledge, while at the same time attempting to codify rules demanding that they use such material. All while education costs rise and the United States continues its hand-wringing over its slipping education system.

To summarize more succinctly, I have to go throw up now.

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DailyDirt: Educations? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Educations!

Michael Ho — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:00:00 PDT

The solution to a variety of problems always seems to point to better education. But what do we do when education itself is the problem? There are folks who are trying to shift schools more towards vocational training camps, but some educators still think that the goal of education isn't just to create more employees. Here are just some interesting links on the topic of learning.

The "default" undergrad degree seems to be a business major -- since about 20% of bachelor degrees given are to business students. The second most popular degrees go to social science and history majors. [url]
Internationally, the US doesn't rank at the top of science, reading or math tests. But if there was a test for arguing the validity of those scores, the US would win hands down... [url]
An editor at The Atlantic points out an interesting discussion over whether students should be forced to read certain books. Perhaps nothing should be forced upon students...? [url]
To discover more interesting education-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Cornell Library Rejects Non-Disclosures On Journal Pricing; Will Reveal All Prices

Mike Masnick — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:10:00 PDT

One of the more pernicious areas of locking up knowledge that we've seen and discussed involves academic journals. These tend to involve private publishers who get a tremendous amount of completely free labor in terms of content submissions and even reviewers/editors... and then demand the copyrights of the research, while charging universities ridiculously high fees. Those publishers have also gone to great lengths to try to block the US government from trying to make federally funded research available to the public at no cost after a limited amount of time. And, of course, the journals often rely on secrecy to get the most money -- including requiring universities to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that forbid them from revealing how much they're paying for a journal.

It's nice to see some universities really starting to push back, and it's even nicer when it's a university that I attended and from which I received two degrees. My sister informs me that Cornell University has decided to take a stand and is refusing to sign any NDAs from various journals, and will make the prices they're being charged for such journals public. As the University made clear in a statement about this policy, it feels these agreements go against the basic nature of openness and fairness:

It has become apparent to the library community that the anticompetitive conduct engaged in by some publishing firms is in part a result of the inclusion of nondisclosure agreements in contracts. As Robert Darnton recently noted, by "keeping the terms secret, ... one library cannot negotiate for cheaper rates by citing an advantage obtained by another library." For this reason, the International Coalition of Library Consortia's "Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information" states that "Non-disclosure language should not be required for any licensing agreement, particularly language that would preclude library consortia from sharing pricing and other significant terms and conditions with other consortia." The more that libraries are able to communicate with one another about vendor offers, the better they are able to weigh the costs and benefits of any individual offer. An open market will result in better licensing terms.

Additionally, nondisclosure agreements conflict with the needs of CUL librarians and staff to work openly, collaboratively, and transparently. This conflict increases the likelihood that the terms of a nondisclosure agreement would be inadvertently violated, posing a threat to the university

The next step is focusing more and more on truly open journals and increasing their acceptance in academia.

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What If We Gave Toddlers An 'F' In Walking?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:22:32 PST

theodp writes "To improve math and science education, Physics prof Dr. Yung Tae Kim thinks professors and teachers should take a page from skateboarding. 'The persistence and the dedication needed in skateboarding — that's what we need to be teaching,' explains Kim. 'No one says to a toddler, 'You have ten weeks to walk, and if you can't, you get an F and you're not allowed to try to walk anymore.' It's absurd, right? But the same thing is true with math and science education. If you want to learn trig or calculus, it's set at such a pace in schools that it guarantees that only the absolutely best students will learn it.' Kim says it's possible to 'polish the turd' of high school and college education, and lays out his plan for doing so in Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning (YouTube: parts 1-2-3), a video drawn from a farewell talk he gave to his Northwestern students. There's more on The Way of Dr. Tae at DrTae.org and PhysicsOfSkateboarding.com."

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Which Is More Important? Ownership Of Ideas... Or Community, Knowledge & Learning?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:24:36 PDT

My wonderful sister sent over the following quote on plagiarism vs. a community of knowledge and scholarship by famed literary critic F.O. Matthiessen, from his classic book, American Renaissance:

"During the course of this long volume I have undoubtedly plagiarized from many sources--to use the ugly term that did not bother Shakespeare's age. I doubt whether any criticism or cultural history has ever been written without such plagiary, which inevitably results from assimilating the contributions of your countless fellow-workers, past and present. The true function of scholarship as a society is not to stake out claims on which others must not trespass, but to provide a community of knowledge in which others may share."
-F.O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance 1941

Good stuff. Too bad so few still seem to feel the same way.

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Can You Teach Entrepreneurship?

Mike Masnick — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:45:00 PDT

Paul Kedrosky has a thought-provoking post, discussing how various entrepreneurship programs don't seem to be producing more entrepreneurs. He's finding that when he talks to people in those programs, they're often more interested in participating in the ecosystem around entrepreneurship (such as by becoming a venture capitalist) rather than being entrepreneurs themselves. To be honest, I don't find this all that surprising. Most entrepreneurs I know are pretty driven to start a company now and not wait around for however long it takes to go through a schooling program. If I didn't have the opportunity to tack on business school right after undergrad (unlike most b-schoolers), I doubt I would have gone back (and I spent way too much time in business school talking to others trying to convince them to start businesses). I don't think entrepreneurship programs are a bad thing, per se, but I'd imagine the real help is in assisting those already in the process of building a business, rather than studying to be entrepreneurs. Also, while Paul talks about the importance of "creating more entrepreneurs," I'm not sure that makes sense. I think the people who are meant to be entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs.

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