John Peel comtemplating Drum & Bass via bhikku on Flickr. If you’ve filled your boots with the wall-to-wall glastonbury festival coverage, you might find it curious that many people have little or no interest in new music, choosing instead to listen to the artists they liked in their formative years and loyally sticking with them for life.
Open Access by Peter Suber is now open access If you never got around to buying Peter Suber’s book about Open Access (OA) publishing [1] “for busy people”, you might be pleased to learn that it’s now freely available under an open-access license. One year after being published in dead-tree format, you can now get the whole digital book for free.
In 2013, 44% of newly elected Fellows of the Royal Society had biography pages on wikipedia. Earlier this month confusingly-named “Royal Society” announced their new fellows for 2013. The society is made up of (quote): A quick-and-dirty measure of the scientific coverage of wikipedia is the percentage of these fellows that have a profile on wikipedia at the time of their election to the prestigious Society.
“This house believes that Academic Education will never meet the skills needs of the IT Profession” via #BCSDebate Here’s an interesting upcoming event: a debate on the motion: “ This house believes that Academic Education will never meet the skills needs of the IT profession” This deliberately provocative motion conflates Education with Training as well spreading further confusion about the important differences between
Thirteen year old Amy Mather aka @MiniGirlGeek steals the show at Manchester Raspberry Jam 2013 Last Saturday, the first ever Raspberry Jamboree rolled into town, organised by the unstoppable force of nature that is Alan O’Donohoe (aka @teknoteacher). The jamboree looked at the educational value of the Raspberry Pi (a $25 computer) one year on from its launch on the the 29th February 2012. Here are some brief and incomplete
Metadata gets many people hot under the collar, especially Cory Doctorow and Paul Downey. Lots of people will tell you that metadata is “data about data”. While this definition is commonly used, it isn’t very helpful. Instead, it can be more useful to think of metadata as after- data . This, after all, is one the original meanings of the word meta (μετά) in the greek language.
Creative Commons licensed picture of a DayGlo Raspberry Pi by @kevinv033 on Flickr STEMNet is an organisation in the UK which creates opportunities to inspire young people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Recently, along with about 15 PhD students from the CDT in Manchester, I became an STEM Ambassador. This post briefly describes what STEMNet is all about, why you would want to get involved and how you can do so.
Delete. Creative Commons licensed picture by Vitor Sá – Virgu via Flickr.com News that Reed Elsevier is in talks to buy Mendeley.com will have many scientists reaching for their “delete account” button. Mendeley has built an impressive user-base of scientists and other academics since they started, but the possibility of an Elsevier takeover has worried some of its users.
What, if anything, can stop the MOOC? Creative Commons licensed picture via Giulia Forsythe on Flickr. The debate about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is making lots of people think harder about education and how people learn.
Peter Wothers lights the blue touchpaper. If you hate Chemistry [1] it’s probably because your Chemistry teachers weren’t up to scratch. Peter Wothers, The Modern Alchemist, is someone who might rekindle your interest in Chemistry through his delivery of the 2012 Christmas Lectures.
Born Digital? Mobile, mobile, mobile! Creative Commons licensed image via Youth and Media Thoughtworks is an Information Technology consultancy which started in Chicago and now has offices all over the world. This year they’ve been running some interesting events called Quarterly Briefings which discuss topical technology, with the help of some case studies.