full posts
Malcolm Gladwell - Blink
Just finished reading the excellent books by Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point and Blink. I should have read the first years ago, but somehow it disappeared from view until Ton bought Gladwell's second book. It was then I realized I hadn't read The Tipping Point. Better late than never. I enjoyed reading both books. Of course TTP was pretty much old news, I've been affected by many writing about the book. Blink is just as interesting. It's all about what happens in the blink of an eye, the choices we make in a split second. On the one hand we should trust our gut feeling a little bit more and on the other we should slow down our acting so we're not fooled by our own built-in prejudices filed in our brains. Just order this book and read it yourself, it's worthwhile.
Norway: illegal to make private copies of CD
From Jill Walker:
I'm always frustrated when I buy a CD and the producer has protected it to rip it into a MP3 file for my notebook so I can play it while I'm sitting at my desk. Hopefully this law will not pass in Norway. It's obviously aimed at the wrong behaviour.
Towards a new communication model
Sounds promising. You can follow the discussion at the IAOC Blog.
Blogging at Hangleton Junior School
Margreet van den Berg pointed out this article from the BBC on the use of weblogs for children. It's already been published in June 2004, but I haven't seen it before. It seems like a good example of what I wrote earlier about the screen being the umbilical cord for teenagers. Of course this goes for younger children as well.
I don't mind being jobless, I follow my passion!
Finding a job is probably not that hard. Finding a job that suits me is! Last weekend I met with some friends and explained the current situation: newly graduates experiencing great difficulty finding proper jobs. Their reaction was somewhat laconic telling me they had a tough time too. Yes, probably true, but at least they had different companies at the same time they could apply to. And they didn't compete with literally thousands of other applicants. And they have degrees in business administration and somehow those are the people that always seem to make more money and get the jobs. And they don't mind working for companies that don't care for the personal well-being of their employees (hey, we pay you more than enough salary so don't complain). Oh, and let's not forget that they don't mind living in houses that are too expensive.
I say no to all the above and that's why it's hard for me to find a paying job. But at least I'm following my own passion and my own path and I've never been happier in my live!!!
Teach them how to judge
Some weeks ago there was an article in NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch newspaper, that reported on the lack of student to judge the trustworthiness of information on the internet. Just this morning someone pointed out an article in the newsletter of InterNLnet on the same subject. I wanted to blog about this before, but somehow it slipped my mind. It appears that students are more and more into copying information from the internet for assignments without really checking the content of the information they copy. Somehow people address this behavior as something new. I've been a student at high school before the rise of the Net and let me break the news for you: copying information carelessly was daily business. But everyone knew. Teachers were aware of it and were able to pick out the cheaters. And now students do exactly the same using the Net and all of a sudden teachers lack the skills to judge their students writing capability.
The only thing new in this issue is that students could trust the printed books they copied from since they were officially printed. On the internet every single person has the ability to publish. So no editor for mistakes, misspellings and quality of writing. No reviewers that weigh the content before it's being published. So therefore everything is out there: the good and the bad, the beauty and the beast, the wrong and the right, the true and the false. And who is going to tell the students what is the good, beauty, right and true?? Stop fearing students copying behavior. Show them what reliable resources are, teach them how to judge what they're reading, tell them how to search the internet for different sides of the story. And that's exactly what the (Dutch) educational system is lacking. Teachers don't know anything about searching strategies on the internet and students are left alone in the cruel jungle of information. Who will guide them back to civilisation?
