Learning, With New Technologies

 An interesting article by Levy, Nardick, Turner & McWatters in the recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education's Digital Campus talks about the stress technology imposes to students. Of course the standard story with learning is that you're doing your homework and at the same time surfing the Web searching for news you don't really care about, Skyping, MSNing, checking your mail, listening to music and, well, just hanging on Facebook. Maybe one should also add YouTubeing. In fact I'm doing it right now, multitasking I believe it is called, but you can call it time wasting if you prefer; and I must admit I was doing it every time while I was reading and critically assessing the articles for the assignments, doing tool experiences and all other stuff for the New Media course.

That's why in May I started to print out the articles, going to a cafe place and reading them there. To my surprise it took me astounding little time to read them. :o And somehow like I understood them better. The trouble was transfusing that to a digital written form. Once again I found myself multitasking. There's just no escape!

But that comes, like the authors of the article say, with being a member of the Net Generation. Many students today are in fact aware and are concerned with the role of new technologies in their lives. A study they conducted on 300 students at six colleges shows that students are aware of, and seemingly frustrated by, the amount of time they spend online. Many of them feel pressure and are stressed out. "I don't have a coping mechanism, there are so many things: e-mail, personal e-mail, texting, news." one of the students said.

And it's true, oh how it's true! Time management isn't a merit of the Net Generation. Especially considering the limitations of a 24 hour day and the amount of stuff you have to do. How can you not comment on a friend's photo, look up what's happening in Manchuria, or see a new You Tube sensation that everyone's talking about?

So is it all a waste of time? Not necessarily, as another Digital Campus article shows new technologies can lead to fascinating results. David Silver describes his experience with online education. In his course Green Media, about making media about making food, he asked his students to go Twitter and tweet and check their classmates' tweets about the course. He states three reasons for Twitter; first it's a public account and the larger Tweeter community has access to their work and the larger the potential readership is the better the student's works are; second, tweeting under their real names makes them more responsible for their work; and third it simplifies course management replacing classroom technologies.

The results of the class were, as Silver puts it, exciting. Not only were the students thrilled the openness of Twitter as a public network made ti possible for the project to reach and inspire audiences. That's how Katherine Harris from San Jose State University learned about this project and integrated it to her own class. An example how sharing and openness nature of the Net can be beneficial.

In the end it's simply a matter of the viewpoint. As with everything else so with learning technologies and online education. New possibilities make new threats, but also new opportunities. Don't underestimate but don't also overestimate the Web, as in everyday life so in your learning environment, try to do your best. :)

Yes, It Leaks

Balkan Leaks is an interesting initiative which emerged from WikiLeaks. Although mainly addressing issues in Bulgaria other interesting documents can be found. 

Welcome

[bulgarian cyr] [serbian cyr] [serbian lat]

Dear friends,

Following the example of the whistleblowers site Wikileaks we opened this site to promote transparency and fight the nexus of organized crime and political corruption in the Balkan states.
We are deeply convinced that we're not alone in this battle. There are plenty of people out there that want to change the Balkans for good and are ready to take on the challenge. We're offering them a hand.
If you have any confidential documents related to political, criminal or financial topics and you want to share them with the press in a secure, anonymous way, you can use our secured and encrypted upload server. We will review the documents and publish them after checking the information.
To submit just follow those simple steps:

1. Download and install the Tor Browser Bundle for your system.
2. Launch the Tor browser and connect to our tor enabled server: http://4loue2imox5prywc.onion/upload/index.php
3. Wait! Tor is secure, but slow :-( If it really takes too long to join the page reload the tor browser. 
4. Upload the files and disconnect.

Tor is working in such a way that nobody, including the administrators of the site can't guess who is the real submitter.
Tor offers a pretty high level of security and anonymity, but if you wish to do even better follow the recommendation:

• do not use your home or work internet connection for submitting;
• use a public, password free WiFi point;
• if possible, use a VPN connection to a server outside your home country.

Please, respect the following requirements for your uploads:

• Upload only documents which are either:
  • not available in the public space or
  • are in the public space but reveal data not known from previous journalistic investigations.
• Please, join a short description of your uploads;
• Name and number the documents in a comprehensive way;
• Do not upload opinions and allegations without document proofs.

Please, prefer the PDF format.
Thank you for your contribution.

The Balkan Leaks team

Sony and the IT Pirates

Ambroise Garneray Kent battling Confiance

In the 16th and 17th century piracy was at is peak. With enormous wealth being transported from America to Spain pirates in the Caribbean saw a significant source of profit. As if this wasn't enough Spain also had the Barbary Corsairs in the Mediterranean to fear. People of that period surely had to sympathize with the Habsburgs as today's people surely sympathize with Sony.

When Sony announced a breach in the PlayStation Network on April 26th 75 million users were surprised, shocked and indignant. They admitted "a compromise of personal information as a result of an illegal intrusion on its systems". This meant personal information (names, addresses, etc.), account information (login names, passwords, transactional histories) and even credit card information of 75 million Sony costumers are in a place were there shouldn't be.

This is inconvenient both for the company and for their costumers. Yet the damage is not that big as media would have you believe. Analysts predict $ 3 million a week loss in profit plus whatever they need to give to restore trust (predicted to cost less than $ 50 million). For a $ 88 billion a year revenue company "that's hardly back-snapping" as Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter puts it.

There is a naive opinion that a corporation of such extend as Sony was not prepared for a situation like this. In the end the circumstances are fairly simple, the company decided to save money because the probability of a breach like this to happen and its financial impacts were evaluated as small.

If you need someone to sympathize with perhaps a better choice are the users of the PSN? Of course IT piracy seems more drastic than other forms of information mining but all is fair in love and war. It is absurd to mix emotions and business. People should be aware that the minute they give their information to some IT service they risk its abuse. That is why there are protocols of credit card theft. Corporations have been monitoring e-mails, personal websites and SNS profiles for a long time in order to get valuable information for themselves. In the world of business there are only interests. 

Honestly I can't see why a situation like this caused so much media fuss. Business intelligence has been around for decades. Costumer information is the new gold.

If you are a PSN user the question is how to protect yourself form IT pirates in the future? Of course you could use a alias, fake username, fake address and someone elses credit card but the actual solution is far more simple. You can learn it from history, when Spain is down turn to France/England or in this case just buy an X-box. :) Chances are they already bought your information.