new news

not just on the graduate level...

web based learning has reached our neighbors across the pond. brittain is restructuring it's educational program to include lessons on twitter, wikipedia, et al. at the elementary level. 

proponents of the change stress that children today must have a firm grasp of technology if they are expected to succeed later in life. detractors say this should not come at the expense of traditional (read: print) learning methods.

i think it's safe to say there's room for both. why not assign students the task of researching the victorian era in both wikipedia and a reliable print source? why not have them twitter in (historical) character?

the people have been heard! again.

it seems like facebookers really know how to cause a fuss over changes they don't like. last month they lead a rebellion against the terms of use clause that gave facebook indefinite ownership over all user content (you quit, but facebook holds the info in your profile hostage). this month, facebook users complained that the redesign to the site was no good and facebook acquiesced. apart from confusing regular users (me: "hey, where'd that button go? it was right here a minute ago.), the redesign streamed more details in the public forum (your "friends" see more and more about you on their home page) and made privacy settings difficult to locate. but, no more.

in light of this and our discussion on monday, i think i'll go investigate those privacy settings now.