Google has acquired FeedBurner for a year, in Aug 2 2008 feeds.feedburner.com redirected to feedproxy.google.com and the migration of this best RSS team will upgrade Advertising and publishing in Google. Though Google's expanding is scary yet exciting, with another firm purchasing in Russia lately, the contextual advertising and keyword filtering in Google Ad will keep fervent for a while in the globe business.
Absolutely, the benefit to business networking and the ads hits catalyze the growth of RSS, but as another reason of acquiring FeedBurner, publishing, it's accompany silently with Advertising symphony.
Though the benefit for publishers is exciting, with integrated equipments from Google. In spite of all the critical reviews for this acquiring, the RSS for publisher is way more exciting. By simply subscribing to RSS feed, the publisher can access the latest articles/publications/videos/blogs etc. without surfing back & forward or being annoyed by the stream-media ads.
This may not benefit to those who has no access to the content or online publications, besides, the extreme constrain in scholarly publications may minor the benefits and contributes in academic world. Fortunately, the open source movement is gradually extending from IT to other intellectual products. According to the latest EDweek, Stanford University opens the school of education scholarly articles to the public for free. This action of open content in academia interweaving with K-12's movement, is drawing a picture of World Two Point O, with equal open access to all.
Summer school is fun: life won't get boring if we can squeeze a semester into six weeks. lol Finally, got over the animated film: it's different from geek work. The essential part is actually at the storyboarding and scripts, other than geek. Also, Adobe is amazing, but After Effects is such a giant for my laptop. I bedt it will only take half of the time with mac instead of pc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZxMVfT3mps
Description: Go to Blogger. Create an account and follow the steps to create a blog. After posting your thoughts regarding the Literacy assignment, send your blog link to the class email list and invite your peers to check it out. Visit a couple of your peers' blogs and post a comment or two.
The online discussion on the topic of Literacy actually proves the information literacy is already in a non-traditional way and we are soaking in the information world. The "information highway" is not fast enough and the “cyberspace” is no longer a new for us (Dyson, Gilder, Keyworth & Toffler, 1994). Futurist is putting hards on creating the society with a vision of digital inclusion (Meinrath, 2006) and we all are the member of this web 2.0 global society. Honestly, I will be overwhelmed by the information everyday if I don't have a priority.
The article below is the revised post on information literature, inspirited by the critical comments. Comments said that the analysis of the weakness of the resource was not strong enough and makes the article inbalanced. While reading the comments, I was wondering how I could pin-point the weakness of the resource while not being "rude". Thus, I have to think critically, which my culture taught that disagreement is not a good way to approach.
As a result, the multiple contradictions make the critical thinking more interesting for me.
When people in the culture avoiding “the critical thinking” encounter this information cyberspace, the government based censorship is necessary. Remember I was not agree with the censorship at all, and tried my best to help friends approach the information freely with some technique. Now I changed my mind though this chemical reaction of “critical thinking” and “agreement thinking”. A society with majority without ability of filtering out the useless information, the control is necessary and it requires the leaders in power have the ability and wisdom of filtering the most effective information. Is this fooling people? As long as the controller is thinking about how to educate the people critical thinking, it will reach to the point of zero-filtering.
Here is the example. When A was volunteering at the travel agency in Hawaii, she was asked by a visiting scholar B from an ancient Asian country C about the strip-clubs in Honolulu. A was shocked by the “open mind” of C, since A thought C is a very traditional country and condemns the immorality. After A gave C a lesson of sex industry and human trafficking in the world, the injustice and ignorance of the “consumer” and the misunderstanding between cultures, C changed the mind of looking for the information of strip-clubs.
Critical thinking education is necessary, especially for the culture focusing on harmony and agreement, valuing obedience and humbleness. In this information cyberspace era, critical thinking is the inner power of creativity.
Here is the entry I posted at online discussion in class. The blue part is the revised updating after classmate’s feedback.
Understanding Information Literacy
Liu Liu
Prof. Mike Mencraca
ETEC 698 - Summer 2008
Introduction
This blog entry will review author’s understanding of information literacy and its operation (or lack thereof) in website development and second language teaching and learning, this entry will The second part of the entry briefly describes the website http://www.iosn.net/ strengths and weakness.
Information literacy
Information literacy is ability to locate the information and use the information effectively. In this special era of information, the internet makes the information more approachable comparing we all can become an expert in three months if we grape the information literacy. As the world is filled with commercial ideas and dominant by all fun and cool ideas, as the educator, it’s time to rethink about the classroom. Make the school, classroom as a "cool" place to be, teach students thinking different and critical, while having a sense of the globe.
Website Design – Open Source
The open source really makes all programming works easier and more productive. In Communication & Information at UN website, there is a Portals/Directories for Open Source software & Free software where located most international open source systems information. The link is: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_freesoft/. Open source systems make the program more efficient and the software more acquirable, while free software breaks the economic barrier.
Take my personal experience as an example: three years ago I made the website for an international organization in three months. The whole progress of building a website included every single step of developing an online system and especially when the customer revised the requirement, it would take me forever to fulfill the updated requirement. Years later, the same organization asked me again to make the site, and this time with the open source content manage system Joomla and related open source systems, the whole website only took one quarter amount of time comparing with the former one, with more professional functions and more friendly interface. Open sources are not free software, but it definitely, but it is a huge step to bridge the injustice. As Stallman R. said on GUN website and I am quoting here:
The official definition of “open source software” (which is published by the Open Source Initiative and too long to cite here) was derived indirectly from our (Free software) criteria for free software. It is not the same; it is a little looser in some respects, so open source supporters have accepted a few licenses that we consider unacceptably restrictive of the users. Nonetheless, it is fairly close to our definition in practice.
Computer-assisted language learning System in Mandarin
Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) originates from Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI). The philosophy of CAI or CALL is that the lessons should allow the learners to learn on their own using structured and/or unstructured interactive lessons. These lessons carry 2 important features: bidirectional (interactive) learning and individualized learning. CALL is not a method but a tool helping teachers to facilitate language learning process. The software assisting mandarin learning, the on-line mandarin learning communities, the instructional videos are different ways of CALL.
The International Open Source Network (IOSN) an initiative of the United Nations Development Programmer’s (UNDP) Asia Pacific Development Information Programmer (APDIP) and supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada. The IOSN is a Center of Excellence for FOSS in the Asia-Pacific Region. It shapes its activities around Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) technologies and applications. Via a small secretariat based at the UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok and three centers of excellence – IOSN ASEAN+3, IOSN PIC (Pacific Island Countries), and IOSN South Asia, based in Manila, Suva and Chennai respectively, the IOSN is tasked specifically to facilitate and network FOSS advocates and human resources in the region.
The vision is that developing countries in the Asia-Pacific Region can achieve rapid and sustained economic and social development by using affordable yet effective FOSS ICT solutions to bridge the digital divide.
The only weakness of the website is the limitation of open source, not the free source.
Technically, the site is built by the open source CMS Plone (plone.net). It offers customization options like all other CMS. One of Plone's greatest strengths is its accessibility: Plone is built following government standards such that it is user friendly with people with disabilities. Although Plone is a very powerful and highly extensible CMS, it’s incredibly hard to learn to develop for because of the poor documentation.
Regarding the website IOSN, the translation of the website hasn't done yet, with the list of language choices. Removing the undone language choices will help the visitors to get the information effectively without confusion.
This is the data from Alexa traffic details for iosn.net on June 7, 2008:
Iosn.net users come from these countries:
Iosn.net traffic rank in other countries:
South Africa 20.8%
South Africa 52144,06297
India 14.2%
Iran 102,3114622
Iran 9.4%
Philippines 617614,213
Thailand 3.1%
Vietnam 3112665,296
Philippines 1.7%
Thailand 60140,482
Malaysia 1.0%
India 221,35478
Vietnam 0.7%
Malaysia 30334,463
Other countries 49.0%
From the table above, the IOSN is well-known in South Africa, but the place like China, East Asia and Pacific islands have not ranked in.
The video is extremely sanguinary. Don't watch it alone if you are : lachrymose, vegetarian or tries to be vegetarian, love natures. Do not watch it at all if you are under 18. http://www.youtube.com/v/_uN5fC-kdUQ&hl
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change, we all are crying for. strong, I pretend to be. pray, if we can do nothing but. peace, God put this word in my dream. ---------------------------------
Often, What I heard: ----poison in Chinese doll, dangerous food, population and poverty, politics controlling, human rights, eating everything, blah blah blah...
Always, What I felt: ----Oops for the polititians...The system is not made by the present government leaders, but left from generations before. everyone knows there are something wrong, someone decided the revolution and the new policies, no one is patient for this gradually developing and thanks for the international pressure, the studious characteristics in Chinese people and the humble heart in Chinese culture. ----The Chinese people are the same people like you.
Now, what I want to state: 1. If you love the animals, stop consuming the leather products. If you love the animals very much, stop eating them. If you love the animals than human, pls feel free to contact me, I would like to help you walk through this. 2. Chinese are not equal to sanguinary people. There are more vegetarians in China, since the Buddhism morality and Daoism theory. If unfortunately you went to a Dog Meat Restaurant in Beijing and still feel vomitous, I am sorry. I have a list of the best vegetarian restaurants if you are interested in. 3. Do not buy any product from slavery labeled places! There are child-free products out there to choose and groups of people and organizations in the frontier aiming for the slavery-free world. Join the abolitionist instead of anti-Chinese. It will be more fun to anti slaver and slave traders. 4. I still have two questions for the reliability of the brutal clip in the video: why the butcher is out of the scene all the time? I want to find him and convert him. who made the video clip? I am not able to sit by and watch the video by myself. I have to close my eyes,frown badly and drag the control bar and I am frighten by the film maker. 5. PEACE... I suggest not reading the stuffs bellow for saving time. Those are emotional and unconditioned reflex right after watching that video.
Finally, I chose to pray. (thannks for Jeannie's warning last night.)
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The part of the video about the fur-process was actually one of the reasons I chose to be a vegetarian way back. The fur-process video was really popular in 2005 and most of my friends were panic & commiserative for the animals. A number of my friends promised not consuming anything made from fur. Personally, I chose to be a vegetarian radically for a year, not only from the video, but also the compassion for the animals and the great Buddhist people around me in China. The impact in personal level is huge and immediate. Now, since the video brought out the issue 3 years later, I searched google and it's amazing that the system wide changes were followed after the video published as listed at the end of the article (if you can read Chinese). I agree there are tons of problems right now in Chna, but I believe that peoples' soul are longing for good, though fleshes are weak. Change!!!
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Honestly, I haven't been labeled as a vegetarian for a while, and the difficulty is at the nutrition side as well as at turndowning the kind friends while dining out. Now, I submit the desire of meat to the love of the creature. I fast on meat so that there will be a change. I really appreciate the video. --- It strengthened my soul to have a full control over the flesh. --------------------------
One thing I have to say : is the video above speaking in a fair and square tone? I am not able to be absolutely neutral in any issue about China, but I will try my best to evaluate the video without prejudgement. ---------------------------------------
The way this video carrying the message, combines with the hatred specifically towards the Chinese people. Chinese People are demonized and generalized as a group of uncivilized and sanguinary people in the video. People in China are also people, there are good and bad, like every other places in the world. If we make our decision of consuming-behavior from this one Chinese butcher's mental aberration, we are illogical. If there are something wrong or bad about all the Chinese people, which make us to hate the products by them, we are looking down upon Chinese. If we feel Chinese products are bad and Chinese people are evil, we are in the danger zone of racialism. We learned what the racialism will bring, the same thing as the butcher was doing in the video...(eyes wet.) Otherness and fear of difference are the root of hatret. History taught human to be peaceful and we, people who are called, have to realize the proper way of presenting the message of justice and respect, instead of anger. If the world media keeps spreading this kind of demagogical message with anger and putting the similar content in educational materials, the hatred and worry the video carries will cause the prejudgment and racialism psychologically and bring the disaster at the end. We didn’t know how divine and friendly the Hawaiian people are until recently, but the history textbook misrepresented for years. We didn’t realized the slavery was wrong until civil war. We didn't know and we thought we knew and then we screwed things up. we don't know! Please, be awared of the power & responsibility we are carring when we spreading the message. -------------------------------------
Then, look at the purpose of the video: not killing the animal, or not buying things from China? They are mixed, and this mixing is illogical and hilarious. If we love the animals, we would naturally choose to practice the things as I mentioned above: not consuming any leather products, or radically chose to be a vegetarian. The hilarious choice the reporter suggests in the video is to find a better way to kill someone for my own comfort. To make it clearer: Now, I really want to drink a cup of hot tea. If I choose Long Jing Dragon Well, I need to kill a person by gun; if I choose English breakfast tea, I have to kill a person by high-tension chair. Thank God I have a choice of making this person die in a better way! (tears -> hollow laugh and sorrow) The whole point is to stop consuming the leather products because they are adorable animals and invaluable lives!
Secondly, if it’s about not buying products from China, I am really happy to hear that. I don’t care about the number of the GNP; I care about the reality of people’s life. The workers were probably slaved in the factory, working sixteen hours a day for the shoes we were wearing in the luxury party; the sister chose to give up school because the family could only support her brother’s tuition and she gave in because she believed the value of the; the young girls went to the city to make a better life in a way of selling their body to the wealthy men, supporting the family and school facilities back home… It’s heartbrokenly sad. I have no strength to explain how wet my keyboard is right now and I have no appetite to point out the behind scene purpose of the perfect mixing in the video for demonizing a peoples group, but I stand up and vote against any slavery products.
Yes, yes, yes, I urge you to stop buying products from China, so that young people from rural China will go back to the farm and have a content villatic life; don’t buy any products from China, so that Chinese people can work less and spent more time with family, with lovers, with people who are really valued in their life; don’t buy anything or bring anything to China, so that Chinese people can keep Chinese culture as a beauty of this diversity world; don’t buy anything from China, so that Chinese people may slow down the pace and think about the meaning of life, the truth of the world and the reality of the Creator God.
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Wake up, you chosen ones. Join in the global social justice, to change our media, change our educational mateirals, change our mind sets, bring the freedom to the nations and people.
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Links: The news in Xin Hua Net: http://news.xinhuanet.com/st/2005-04/05/content_2788199.htm The news at QQ (similar to AOL or MSN or Yahoo): http://news.xinhuanet.com/st/2005-04/05/content_2788199.htm The comment in Xin Hua Net; http://news.xinhuanet.com/comments/2005-04/06/content_2788576.htm The video at Sina: http://you.video.vnet.cn/b/284782-1220422263.html The report from Wild Animal Organization in China: http://www.cnwildlife.com/Article/Class1/Class2/200504/20050407215524.html
the conference time and venue is affirmative, but we still need to wait for the speakers' confirmation. I wish I could be more creative ... Sign...the laptop seems overloaded for the size A1 poster. en...next time, vector graphics only...
From the final presentation, a number of students chose homosexuality as their report topic. Some are passionate, with tears; some are logic, with Bible quotes; some are "none of my bussiness", with some post-modern attitude.
I didn't say anything radical or prorevolutionary, though I really wanted to. --- it's nothing about change, but love and healng.
Remember the time when someone told me I was a lesbian, for I checked out more girls than he did at the club and never danced with guys. Remember the time in Shanghai hanging out with my best friend Snew and imagined about our own "orientation". Remember the time I had the chance to sneak on that community and participate in the "academic" research with friend, and figured out it's not cool to be a gay, it's all about brokeness.
I wish I wasn't ignorant, so I could speak the truth and healing.
Broken hearts, in different ways, Different inperfection, in the same tone. As an outsider, it's easy to demonize the otherness, As an insider, it's easy to be blind or panic. All are broken, All need Grace and Love.
"where is the problem? I am the problem." It's from the autor of Blue like Jazz and now I can totally understand why he gave up the social justice work.
Our passion to serve the justice starts from a documentary named Not for Sale. We are heart-struck while noticing the slaved population and injustice around the world. All what the other people have done really encouraged us to put into some action for the justice. It begins with passion and we believe it will end with fruit. But social justice is such a huge topic. I have no idea how to begin: it's like there is a problem right there, disordered, dark, but no way to clear it out. So, I couldn’t stop asking myself some basic questions: Where is the problem? 1. I started looking for the problems among communities and people groups and I figured out that every society has problems of injustice and they exist from the beginning of the civilization. Not only societies, but also single person, we all can be the source of the problem and I am the hugest problem because I know myself the best! And China is the hugest problems since I know China the best, and Christians are the hugest problem since I know Christians the best. ...take my home for example: the minorities H.R., welfare for the people from rural China, floating population, Hukou policy, family violence, people with disabilities, … it's too heavy to think about and I felt from my own point of view, the place I called hometown was such a messy in social justice, how can I serve the social justice internationally? Then I reached the point that if I am not free from anxiety, how can I be able to bring some justice hope for the weak and mistreated people? It's hard. And it's heavy. Can I be that strong, be free from things so that I can state myself as free being? Easy to say than practice...=)
2. So I decide to think lighter and do something fast & good: website & poster. It's the easiest way to contribute directly to the awareness of the social justice and it's the most efficient way for my personal preference. I can tell people: look, there is a problem we ignore and there is a hope to ensure; I can care about this and you can do the same. I believe that awareness is the beginning of the change. Still, really admire and appreciate those who are serving in the frontier of injustice. 3. Justice and charity. Before, I thought charity can change the world and I still believed so. But justice seems in a higher position. Even they are similar -- both are for good changes, but they are very different. As Jordan Seng quote from his friend that social justice is system wide fixing while charity is single personal supporting. Justice is carrying power. It's easy for women to put effort on charity because women are emotional and personal (which is the beauty of the soul). But Mother Teresa of Calcutta's journal told us that charity is challenging. There is a good example to show that charity is individual: a lady travelled to Africa and found out a kid was sold for slavery by the parents. So she bought the kid back and returned him to his parents and she started an organization to buy back the children from the traffickers, return them home and educate the parents. I would have done the same thing as the lady did if I was in that situation, but would also feel awful since what I had done also engaged into that slavery trading chain.
so, charity is individul while Social justice worker may bring the system wider solutions … but sometimes: it will turn to be : ----
4. Communism! It jumps into my mind and I don’t like that system really. I was told it's good and I knew it's good because it's a system promising abundent life for everyone, but after I read some stuffs from ourside world, it sounded like violently forcing people to be justice even if they don’t want to. Yes, communism is aiming for building the heaven on earth and the theory is beautifully inspired by the Eden, but the result turns to be painful and violent. To be honest, only two of my friends are faithful communists, my parents may doubt the communism & never told me about communism, but they are content with what they have from confucius philosophy, and my grandpa lead all his life like a saint. So mentally, if people believed in communism, it's a kinda heaven on earth. But the fight between Tibet and Communist in history looked actually like a war between religeous group! So, social justice is powerful and misuse of this power may cause disarster.
------------------------------------------------- Didn’t know it’s that hard… I should wear a shirt with “where is the problem?” in front and "I am the problem" in the back...=)
The article is not very inspired, simplely because the the videos list there are not really attrative if I am a high school student. I appreciate the video in class about homosexuality in classroom: The producer cut all different injustice moments at film, advertisement, or pubilc speech to show that we are not born with the homophobia but taught so by the media. And we need to rectify the mistake we already made. Video is powerful AND that's why I choose this article to read. And those videos with injustice message are way more interesting than the movies with the justice title, if the target audience is youth. I feel we need to educate the public speaker, the movie stars and the producers about social justice instead of students in the classroom... En... I got the list of movies I have to watch now. =P
I like the strategies by Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen. More importantly...I found the organization Teaching for Change( the organization to transform schools into centers of justice where students learn to read, write and change the world...). It's so amazing to find out that other people are doing the same thing... great hope...=)
Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. The class was disposed by Buddha, sculpture, paintings and decorations. We were asked to choose an object or rather let an object choose me. Then we were asked to do an exercise in empathy and answer the questions list below: What is it about this object that drew you to it? List seven adjectives that describe this object. If you were able to enter into a conversation with this object, what three questions would you ask? Now, imagine that you are the object and you are looking at yourself through its eyes. What three questions would you ask yourself? Reflect on this experience. How is it related to multiculturalism? How could you adapt this experience to an elementary or secondary classroom?
I chose the Buddha bronze, since it caught my attention at the beginning. It’s only the head part of a Buddha, sounds scary, but not at all when you really see it.
Ok, that’s all what I got from this Buddha: old, broken, peaceful, calm and scary.
I was thinking about other religions and the conflicts among religions. The other day I got a concept of “Community of Gods” and the proof is in the Genesis 1 in the Bible: “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So, if Gods is a plural + if you trust the Bible, God should be a community. I knew little about Buddhism and I was told that all other religions are evil. In this otherness case, I am facing some so called evil statue and try to communicate with him. (I felt I could start a cult or something crazy...)
Totally awkward.
Anyways, what we were doing was to understand otherness, so for some reason I started commiserating this Buddha statue. So generally, I asked what his name is and where he is from, w hat he is doing in this world. Of course, there wouldn’t be any answers from the statue.
But how good is Christians? Jesus is absolutely perfect, the Bible is awesome, but the Christians are notorious. Probably that’s why we call all other religions are evil: because the follower can’t follow the God’s good will 100%. Or because the followers of Christ have some selfish purpose to achieve while defacing other belief system.
My 3 questions are: Who are you? Why you are here? Where are you going to? The buddah bronze of course is not going to answer me, but when I was really asking this buddah bronze, I successfully avoided judging the buddah as I could have done as usual for the other religion. So instead of saying: oh, that's a buddah, the God of nothingless and compassion and they believe they are from nowhere and going to nowhere, I keep the questions open to him and leave it as a question without pre-judgement... GREAT!!!
Then, the other exercise bothered me the whole day : “exercise in empathy”. I will look at myself through the buddah's eyes and ask myself the questions. So: ' "How mature do you think you are?" "Wanna be my friend?"
It's way too weird... I just learned that maturity means the willingness of changing the mental map and chaning the way of old thinking. Sometimes, it's accepting otherness and sometimes it's sacrifice. En...how mature I am? ... It's hard but I wanna be more mature. ... En...be his friend? That's strange...to keep normal...I decide to give up thinking this.
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For classroom, it's role play: like role play for African American, role play for Hawaiian, role play for poeple from mushall islands, role play as a minority, role play for all kinds...
It's acutally the homework in ETEC414. We were told to find some website about education (in general) and analyze them. Just like this site in all means. :)
How many of us never have a feeling towards someone or some behavior of “oh, that’s weird”? None!
The world is the world with diversity but we human is not naturally appreciating this diversity. We have bias towards differences, get worried about the alliances or even worse, hate each other due to the differences. Weirdo = Abnormal by our own ruler As educators, we feel urged to prepare ourselves and our kids to appreciate this colorful world with diversity.
From the site introduction in Tolerance.org, it is a principal online destination for people interested in dismantling bigotry and creating, in hate's stead, communities that value diversity. Through its online well of resources and ideas, its expanding collection of print materials, its burgeoning outreach efforts, and its downloadable public service announcements, Tolerance.org promotes and supports anti-bias activism in every venue of life.
The site targets on four groups: teacher, parents, teens and kids. As a potential teacher, let’s explore the teacher’s site: (http://www.tolerance.org/teach): it provides educators with educational materials that promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity in and beyond the classroom. It's interesting to look at the classroom activities to get more ideas about how other expert preparing their curriculums.
Also, the outlook of the website is amazingly mature. Each sub-site can be a integrated site acutually. From the screen shots of each sub-site, we can feel the efforts by the site owner, through the delicated layouts, color themes, structures and contents.
(click the picture to open a window for the sub-sites) Teachers
