Chris Borg

Interesting perspective on a widely reported on and somewhat surprising move by the team at Facebook. Frédéric Filloux of www.mondaynote.com posed a fantastic question, Imagine Facebook already trading on the Nasdaq; how would the market react?

coursekit:

Some of you may have seen the news about Blackboard buying MoodleRooms and NetSpot. I wanted to post a quick note on how we look at this.

We’re seeing the learning management system market consolidate, with Blackboard attempting to offer something for every institution. These market…

Another data grab

Firefox is set to release an add-on that keeps tabs on who is tracking our actions while online.

“Collusion will allow us to pull back the curtain and provide users with more information about the growing role of third parties, how data drives most Web experiences, and ultimately how little control we have over that experience and our loss of data,” says Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs in his blog.

As a Firefox user I think I will be an early adopter!

world-shaker:

Some of these are a little suspect (“Not everything you read online is grammatically correct”), and one or two are written from too old of a perspective (“People will gossip if you give them something to gossip about”; sidnote from me: Sometimes people will make up stuff to gossip about.), but these two stood out as some of the gems in here:

1. Every single thing you put online has the ability to stay there for ever: Even if you close up your Facebook account or take down your blog or website, someone can still find your stuff and use it. There are tools like the “Wayback Machine” which can bring back web pages that were taken offline years ago. Also, friends and former friends might take screenshots or cut and paste your embarrassing status updates, only to use them later to embarrass you.
2. Not everyone you “friend” is your friend: Just like in the real world, not everyone you know is a friend. Think long and hard about the people you’re “friending.” Drama doesn’t just stay in school anymore, now it follows you home thanks to the social networks. Plus, stuff you share with what you think is a private social networking page is a simple cut and paste away from being broadcast all over school. Also, be careful when friending friends of friends and friends of friends of friends. You don’t really know these people, why are you giving them access to your private life? Sometimes, it’s like giving them the keys to your house.

Interesting take on 21C skills, especially like #7!

Publicly ranking teachers by name will not help them get better at their jobs or improve student learning.