Psiphon - creating cracks in the wall

To add to my previous posting on Psiphon here's an entry from Scott Leslie's blog that give further info:

"Psiphon, developed by the Citizen’s Lab at U of T, allows individuals to form social networks that proxy web traffic in a way that no central censor will ever keep up with. See an illustration here that helps explain it. Instead of just a few central proxy server sites that authorities can block themselves, this turns any machine with an IP address into a potential proxy, but unlike more anonymous p2p approaches this works through the idea of small trusted networks. "

Whose 'Pedia is best?

Wikipedia a force for good? Nonsense, says a co-founder-News-Tech & Web-TimesOnline

The British education secretary, speaking to educators, suggested that the internet as “an incredible force for good in education” for teachers and pupils, singling out Wikipedia for praise. Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia counters this claim suggesting that the website’s integrity is in question. Sanger left Wikipedia, and two weeks ago launched an online encyclopaedia called Citizendium.org, which he said would be monitored and edited by academics and experts as well as accepting public contributions.

But our options don't stop there - if you're distressed by the liberal bias in Wikipedia and want to make sure that you're only confronted by conservative factsl, turn to Conservapedia... which has this entry about Harry Potter:

The English "public" schools Hogwarts resembles are Protestant institutions; but at Hogwarts, chapel is conspicuously absent. A failure to mention Christianity, combined with the presence of wizardry, have led some to wonder whether Rowling is substituting paganism for Christianity.

Luckily the education secretary didn't mention Conservapedia as "an incredible force for good in education."

Open CourseWare - Open University

LearningSpace - OpenLearn LearningSpace - The Open University

Finally - shared learning content that is structured and pedagogically sound. Unlike the disjointed, unstructured mash of MIT's Open CourseWare project this is what sharable open learning resources is about. Open University's offerings include pedagogically sound preparation, activities and assessment. Open Learning offers complete "lesson plans" complete with interactive multimedia.

Can a University really refuse to offer online courses?

learning technology: Can a University really refuse to offer online courses?

This posting by a fellow blogger deserves restatement -

"Is it really possible for an institution of higher learning to refuse to offer or stop offering online courses to its students? Baylor University has taken that position and will no longer offer any online courses.

At first glance, that seems ludicrous and downright unbelievable; what is the leadership at Baylor thinking?

Many institutions, 2-year and 4-year, are literally and still rushing to the web to create and offer online courses; it often increases enrollment for the institution and scheduling flexibility for learners. However, most institutions are and will continue to struggle with the quality issue. Well . . . issues. What does a quality course look like once developed? What constitutes a quality online learning experience? What resources are necessary to develop a quality online course? Can faculty - trained in their content areas - create quality online courses? What sort of and how much training do they need to do so?

Faculty are good at what they do in the classroom, but delivering the same type of quality learning experience in the online environment - no matter how much administrators and faculty may insist otherwise - is a different animal. Teaching online requires using new technologies to develop materials, to present content in a meaningful, accessible and usable manner, and to interact with learners. The pace is fast and furious - from listservs to discussions to wikis to blogs to other social networking tools; and most institutions expect faculty to keep up with that fast pace. And, keeping up isn't as easy as many faculty and administrators would like to think. Emerging from graduate programs over the last five years are educational professionals that have spent their entire academic careers focused on the cognitive impact of technology, and that group is struggling to keep up with the pace. How can we reasonably expect faculty with terminal degrees in English, Mathematics, Political Science etc to keep up with a field - other than their own - that is moving that quickly when those trained in the field are struggling to keep up? Ultimately, a decision, like Baylor's, to focus on what the institution can unquestionably continue to do well, is not a bad one; that's much more desirable than joining a race that can not be won or even sustained . . ."

I agree with what is said here - if an institution is going to offer distance based courses - they MUST build and maintain the instructional and design and evaluations skills necessary to build and maintain the distance learning. Too many institutions are moving into alternative delivery and just adding more resposnibility and expectations on a Faculty that often hasn't even been taught how to teach, let alone how to design learning materials.

Main Page - AcademicBlogs

Main Page - AcademicBlogs

This website provides a community developed, wiki-style listing of academically related web logs (blogs). The Chronicle of Higher education published an article about academicblogs.org that provides background information and general commentary about the site.

Circumventing the Internet censors

In those countries that monitor internet usage it takes a foreign "friend" and/or filter beating software to allow them to surf the net without Big Brother watching. Researchers and academics in China and Iran for example are using software like Psiphon or Tor to surf the net without being oberved by their governments. Tor works by itself, Psiphon requires someone you trust, outside the monitored area to allow you to use their system by proxy. The drawback to Psiphon is that the "friend" can monitor what the user does, so trust, the basis of social networking, is crucial. How does it work?

HOW SOFTWARE BYPASSES INTERNET CENSORS
Psiphon, a new open-source software program developed at the University of Toronto, allows academics and others in foreign countries to bypass government Internet filters. Here's how:

• A user in a country with censorship tries to access a prohibited site, like Amnesty International's. The government filter blocks him.
• The user locates a friend or family member in a country without government censorship. (For various reasons, connections to personal computers are not generally blocked.)
  
• The uncensored friend installs Psiphon, sets up a Psiphon "node," and passes a Web-site address and password back to the user in the country with censorship, sometimes on paper or via telephone.
  
• The user logs in to the node, connecting him with the friend's computer. Psiphon encrypts the information with a secure connection known as "https."
  
• The friend's computer transmits unrestricted Internet access back to the user, circumventing the filter.

But lest we get smug and believe our freedoms are inviolate - take heed. "Western universities control Internet use, too. Students and faculty members, forget about legalistic "responsible-use agreements" that suspend their right to, say, download music or run businesses on university computers. Vague clauses in those agreements give colleges latitude to ban other activities, says Paul A. Cesarini,... Bowling Green officials confronted Mr. Cesarini for using Tor in his office to prepare for classes on cybersecurity. They said Tor violated the university's computer-use policy and asked him to stop - he refused. But not before entertaining the stone visage and stern demands of the tech police.

Students Punished for Facebook Comments

A student council president of a Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Toronto asked a very pertinent question after being suspended for "online bullying" for negative comments made about the school Principal in Facebook, "When does the school's jurisdiction end?" said Sultana, 17, , adding as far as he knows none of the 19 students was accessing Facebook during school time or on school computers. Since Sultana says he only viewed the comments but did not take part - yet suffered a suspension - where does guilt begin? By association? By viewing comments? By opposing the principal? By voicing free will? By using Facebook to vent? Having an opinion at 17?

The students involved in this online discussion, not able to plead their case or discuss the suspension, are naturally concerned and confused. But what it really signifies is that there is something wrong with the administration of this school - and the students in their frustration were venting about that. Not only is there concern about how they were treated by the principal before this Facebook discussion, but also why they are denied opportunities to discuss the issues when punsihment is meted out.

The long arm of totalitarian control, denying opportunities to face the charges, denial of freedoms - exercised by a principal who obviously has some organizational problems to deal with. This is not what we should be teaching our students.