Clue game from class

Class period on Friday, April 25th.  Congrats to the class for “solving the crime.”  Hope you had as much fun as I hoped:

posted here for the HON 392 Web Revolutions class:  Today is “Show and Tell” Day, but it’s my turn again…Today is the “Day of Silence” for support for the GLBTQ community and allies.
With that in mind, and to allow for full participation of all our class members, we are going to try an experiment.  MY SHOW N TELL IS THIS EXPERIMENT.  From this moment on, there will be silence in the room  (*with the exception of any guests, and of course, you don’t have to ask to go to the bathroom; you’re grown-ups now!)
We are testing an experiment: can this group, an established working group, one with previous relationships between its members, collaborate completely on-line (or virtually) to come up with the “answer” to a given problem? There is ONE BEST answer to this project, unlike the “real world” in business, in journalism, or even in medicine or aviation.  I do not have a prediction or hypothesis either way, if the class will achieve its goal.  But it will be interesting to observe the process, and I will be walking around the building to see your progress.  Here are the rules:
1.  No face-to-face communication of any kind-talking, passing paper notes, sign language, charades, wipe board, etc.
2.  There is one best solution; your goal as a team is to find that solution.
3.  Each person is to participate fully, and each person will be given critical information that must be shared to find/derive the best answer.  You cannot show anyone the contents of your envelope, although you are free to communicate what the contents are.
4.  The game is based on a version of the (once) popular Board Game clue (the original).  The group must determine who committed the crime, with what weapon, and where.  Also one of your classmates is the victim: who was murdered?  Hint if s/he is dead, s/he won’t be able to communicate.
5.  You are allowed to leave the room at any point, but there can never be more than four people in any room in this building (or any other) at any time between the start of the game and the end time…
6.  THE END TIME.  We meet back in this classroom (4B) at exactly 11:35am to debrief and process how the team worked.
7.  If you have questions at any point before 11:35am, you may text me at 701-739-XXXX and I will answer text messages only (again, with the exception of the guests-and don’t get them to ask on your behalf).  If you do not wish to speak in class after 11:35am, you may text me a message that I can read to the group on your behalf.
Let the game begin!  No cheating. 

RateMyProfessors.com is more accurate than you might think

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/25/rmp

April 25

Validation for RateMyProfessors.com?

“You’ve heard the reasons why professors don’t trust RateMyProfessors.com, the Web site to which students flock. Students who don’t do the work have equal say with those who do. The best way to get good ratings is to be relatively easy on grades, good looking or both, and so forth… But what if the much derided Web site’s rankings have a high correlation with markers that are more widely accepted as measures of faculty performance? Last year, a scholarly study found a high correlation between RateMyProfessors.com and a university’s own system of student evaluations. Now, a new study is finding a high correlation between RateMyProfessors and a student evaluation system used nationally. A new study is about to appear in the journal Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education and it will argue that there are similarities in the rankings in RateMyProfessors.com and IDEA, a student evaluation system used at about 275 colleges nationally and run by a nonprofit group affiliated with Kansas State University.  What is notable is that while RateMyProfessors.com gives power to students, IDEA gives a lot of control over the process to faculty members. Professors identify the teaching objectives that are important to the class, and those are the measures that count the most. In addition, weighting is used so that adjustments are made for factors beyond professors’ control, such as class size, student work habits and so forth — all variables that RateMyProfessors doesn’t really account for (or try to account for).  The study looked at the rankings of 126 professors at Lander University, in South Carolina, and compared the two ratings systems. The findings:

• Student rankings on the ease of courses were consistent in both systems and correlated with grades.
• Professors’ rankings for “clarity” and “helpfulness” on RateMyProfessors.com correlated with overall rankings for course excellence on IDEA.
• The similarities were such that, the journal article says, they offer “preliminary support for the validity of the evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com.”

Test your internet knowledge of website popularity

http://www.mentalfloss.com/quiz/quiz.php?q=295&p=1?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2008-04-25&utm_content=Top-Posts-1

At first, i thought this was a preference test, but it’s not: it’s to see if you can identify which website gets more hits.

Sports Bloggers: Who owns what?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/media/21bloggers.html?ex=1366516800&en=803cbd732368b4d4&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Business / Media & Advertising

Tension Over Sports Blogging

By TIM ARANGO

Published: April 21, 2008

“Tension over sports blogging is one of the strains between sports franchises, leagues and reporters to have emerged during the digital age….

Recently in Dallas, more than an hour before game time, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was in the locker room grinding on the Stairmaster, surrounded by several reporters — their microphones deployed, heads tilted away to avoid flying droplets of sweat.  A reporter for The Dallas Morning News, who writes a blog, asked Mr. Cuban about a bruised Dirk Nowitzki, referring to the star power forward as a “warrior” for his willingness to play while injured. “We’re not trading him to the Warriors,” said Mr. Cuban. “Bloggers might make that point.” The comment was a bit of word play, but it illustrates how Mr. Cuban, a prolific blogger himself, feels about some of the bloggers who cover his team.  Last month Mr. Cuban sought to ban bloggers from the Mavericks’ locker room, but the National Basketball Association intervened, ruling that bloggers from credentialed news organizations must be admitted.  Mr. Cuban then decided to let in any blogger — “someone on Blogspot who has been posting for a couple weeks, kids blogging for their middle school Web site or those that work for big companies.”  Tension over sports blogging is one of the strains between sports franchises, leagues and reporters to have emerged during the digital age.  The dispute has grown lately between the press and organized sports over issues like how reporters cover teams, who owns the rights to photographs, audio and video that journalists gather at sports events, and whether someone who writes only blogs should be given access to the locker room…”

Kay’s Question: How many bloggers do I need to let in “my locker room” as a franchise owner?  Again, where is the line drawn between legitimate press and bloggers? 

Course Hero Website

Link courtesy of AjacentIdea (Ryan):  Is this the future of education?  Can open source be a helpful, yet fair (meaning “no plagarism”) asset to higher education?  How will this add or subtract to the experience of college?  high school?  life in general?  Is this synergistic or counterproductive?  And what about its ties to Facebook?

http://www.coursehero.com/ 

Digital Rights and University Electronic Reserves

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/17/gsu

A Press Revolt Against E-Packet Practices, April 17th, Inside Higher Ed article by Andy Guess

“For all the talk of textbooks with their hefty price tags, professors have always included other sources in their teaching material, whether in the form of journal articles, newspaper clippings, individual chapters or other media. For years, such disparate resources have come packaged in bound course packets. More recently, electronic reserves have in large part taken their place, allowing students to access digital copies of the same material through course management systems or their library Web sites…”

Then read the comments.  One in particular was interesting (to me):

“We don’t need them: The publishers may think we need them for journals, but with free software packages like Open Journal Systems from the Public Knowledge Project, it’s possible for an academic department or organization to produce a journal with blind peer review without a lot of difficulty, and where the results are freely available to all:  http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs .. Steve Foerster, Director, E-Learning Services at Marymount University, at 10:25 am EDT on April 17, 2008″

Can you blog a smell?

“‘writing about perfume is like dancing about architecture.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/fashion/17SNIFF.html?ex=1366171200&en=a4d8dc243fa5c403&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Fashion & Style

Everyone’s a Critic

By RUTH LA FERLA

Published: April 17, 2008

Online sites and bloggers now speak directly to consumers about fragrances, and the industry leaders are not amused.

For Class: April 14: Faculty and freedom of communication?

Topic for class discussion: how much “free speech” is there for faculty when dealing with electronic communication?  How much should be disclosed on MySpace, Facebook, other social networking sites, or by blogs.  For example, take the following article on faculty “office door” communication:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/10/lssu

April 10

Pardon Me, but Your Door Is Terribly Offensive

“Getting one’s own office can be a rite of passage right up there with defending a dissertation or receiving tenure — and many professors’ lairs are reflections of their own attitudes and beliefs. Usually, it takes just a quick glance at the door, as anyone who’s taken a stroll down the hall of an academic building can attest: What a professor finds amusing, outrageous or just plain interesting is there for all to see…”

Kay’s question for class: Do these same (yet controversial) issues arise in electronic communication?  Is a quote at the end of an e-mail from a faculty, subject to criticism?  How about his or her Facebook page?  Where do you stand on “freedom of speech” versus “hostile environment for students”?  How much is too much to disclose on a website?  Does your opinion change if we were to shift the framework from faculty to students?  Does it matter if it’s done on “University computers” or “University networks”?  Write for a few minutes, then we’ll discuss as a group.  :)KMP

Flickr users hate video addition?

Flickr Users Cry Mutiny Over New Video Feature

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/04/mutiny-flickr-u.html

And of course, not to miss the irony, they have created a Flickr group to address this issue:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/no_video_on_flickr/

More in class…

Warning for our Class: Death By Blogging??!?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/technology/06sweat.html?ex=1365220800&en=790cdfdaf4c1eb71&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

NYTimes: Technology
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop
By MATT RICHTEL
Published: April 6, 2008

Some professional bloggers complain of the stressful demands of a constant flow of news and comment.

http://www.collegecandy.com/wired/8235

Death By Blogging?

April 9, 2008 - 4:30 pm, By Sues - Univ. of New Hampshire
I’m risking my life to get this out to you. Seriously. According to a recent New York Times article, blogging can cause death. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s the evidence…