For all that’s been written a substantial fraction of which I’ve read together with my experience enrolled in an edX course, I still don’t feel I can make a judgement about the mission behind MOOCs. At least I can’t guarantee I won’t have regrets even six month into the future about the warrant behind a statement about MOOCs that inserts either the sort of grand sweeping vision of the model’s advocates or the misdirected disbelief of David Brooks.  The ground underneath any possible statement is just moving too fast with new MOOC collaborations announced monthly it seems while the convential wisdom about MOOCs changes at least every two weeks.

Here are a few things I can say from my experience though.

1. The courseware is spectacular.  It has some downtime and it is rough around some edges like many online services are in their beta period, but at least from the student perspective it is more polished than Blackboard in both its interface and its tendency to just work. I haven’t seen the instructor or administrator side of it, but if it is anything like the student side I could imagine a lot wanting to use the edX software if it was spun of from the edX MOOC platform.
2. My course HarvardX’s CS50x is interesting. When it wraps up in April will probably beget part 3 of this series.
3. With the letter “X” they seem to have their branding figured out, but there are some questions. It is capitalized in edX and in [Insert University Name]X, but not in [insert Course Number]x. How long will it take for adding an “x” to course numbers before they bump into some university’s course numbering scheme. These probably ought to be the easy questions.

The premise of the site is simple. People ask questions and attach a bounty, and the site’s users offer competing answers trying to win the reward. Paying people to answer questions isn’t new, Experts Exchange has been doing this since 1996. Expert’s Exchange requires a subscription to even view the answers to previous answers though. Every question along with every answer is available free online, and it is possible to ask a question without submitting a bounty. Sometimes it is possible to get a number of impassioned responses for the smallest possible non-zero reward the site and the currency it uses allows. Which brings us to the next major point behind Rugatu. Rugatu uses bitcoins, or more frequently fractions of bitcoins, as the major reward for participating in the site.

Using bitcoins as the device for rewarding users creates some interesting dynamics on Rugatu. The chief one seems to be that the site’s users really want bitcoins and a substantial number of the site’s users visit the site regularly on at least a daily basis for the chance to compete. Sometimes this means that there is a lot of noise with people offering short answers analogous to registering for a drawing, but often given enough time quality answers seem to emerge. For example on this thread it took quite a while for anyone to answer with the idea that consulting an appropriate professional in the situation might be appropriate.

One area Rugatu really excels in in terms of both rewards and in the quality of work received is in submissions requesting logos and artwork. One of the highest bounties on the site was for a logo the submitter could use for their profile on forums based on their username. The 5 bitcoin reward offered for the winning design was worth more than 55 United States Dollars on most exchanges at the time the prize was disbursed. With that as the high water mark for rewards and most rewards being for values less than a hundredth of that, it’s an inexpensive way to get questions answered or get work done on the cheap. On the other side while it is probably not going to make anyone rich, it seems like an interesting way to make a little bit of internet pocket change.

Me

This means that picking up some tips at a webinar and being able to apply them the next time I’m at work to gain practice with them or evaluate them. It also means that investing time and tuition on an in depth program of study with a narrow focus of specialization could become a net loss when I find an entry level position that falls outside of that area or that demands a wider scope of practice. This latter concern means that credentials such as the various tuition based certificates of specialization and certificates of advanced study have to be put on hold for now. It is hard to justify taking on more tuition and student loan debt a a credential developing a focused specialty when I’m working to market myself towards several potential career paths largely defined more by things I’m avoiding like Traditional Cataloging, Children’s and Young Adult Literacy,  and Food Service than by one niche I just feel I have to fill.

I’m targeting my search to areas as diverse as Reference and Instruction, Health Science or Humanities subject specializations, Distance Education, Public Service, as well as general opportunities to get involved in Administration or Office Support in a higher education setting. This is in addition to pursuing options to work with collections or in environments that I find especially interesting for some reason or another.

On the plus side that means I have time to work on developing and polishing general skills that I can bring into a variety of positions. It has been since my freshman year at McKendree that I’ve taken a general computer science programming class sequence and it is hard not to think of way in which brushing up on and strengthening those skills would be useful. I’ve also been interested in brushing up on my scientific literacy, especially as it relates to quantitative methods. Given these two targets as a starting point I’ve come up with a few options.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this three part series.

Not an actual line of play this weekend, though I had feared it might be.

Saturday I had the distinct privilege of playing in the lower division of the Mizzou Quads chess tournament. I has been roughly a decade since I’ve done anything like this so I am rather proud of my 0-3 record that includes a draw in an casual game between rounds to someone with an ELO rating 400 points my senior.

It has been a long time since I’ve really though about chess, but last Tuesday a late night Google and Wikipedia session thrust knowledge of this tournament into my awareness. Most competitions offer information of hotel accommodations, but this was a twenty minute walk from my apartment. What better way to open Comps Week than to spend the Saturday competing in a field of intellectual endeavor I have neglected since March 2002 according to USCF records.

The tournament was divided into two divisions. At the top there was a four player round robin. The bottom division was a six player Swiss bracket. With an ELO rating of 914 I entered the tournament as the bottom seed of the lower Swiss paired division. As bottom seed I did not disappoint with an 0-3 record.

Round 1 playing as back against opponent ELO rated 1458 with a ratings floor of 1200 played 1. … d6 against 1. Nf3 moving into the Pirc defense. Very spirited game and  my opponent went politely with my opening line to a deadlocked middle game. After several vigorous exchanges beginning move 17 the game opened up and the game ended on move 40 when I resigned a lost position.

Round 2 against an opponent ELO rated 1387 played as white opening with 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 d5. 3 C4… attempting to play a Queen’s gambit lost the game at move 28 with the potential for white to force checkmate with several lines of play. In spite of the game’s short length this was probably my favorite. After this game I played a friendly game against my opponent which ended in a draw. I don’t know if they were trying to humor me or what, but they answered my 1. d4 with 1. … d6 and played the opening line with great dexterity. At the end of this informal rematch I was offered a draw when I was down one pawn, but we had opposing color bishops and both Kings in the center of the board.

After the friendly rematch during round 2 all attention turned to the game my round one opponent was playing. Their game ended with 3 move repetition right as the flag fell on their clock. That game ended with a King and Queen against a King. It really had me kicking my own ass knowing that my first opponent couldn’t force checkmate with a King and Queen.

Round 3 was probably the most interesting game I played. I played as black again against an opponent ELO rated 960. He opened with the all to common and boring 1. e4 and I answered as usual with 1. … d6. I say this was the most interesting, because not knowing my preferred opening line he forced out of it even if it meant handing over a material advantage of a minor piece. The full game is transcribed below.

1. e4 d6

2. d4 Nf6

3. Bc4 g6; At this point I fear my opponent is attempting a cheap fool’s mate.

4. Bg5 Nxe4; It’s been a while, I’m taking the seemingly cheap pawn and trying to chase the bishop.

5. Bxf7+ Kxf7; I have now been thrust from anything I know as a familiar opening line. Maybe I should have practiced my opening lines before this tournament instead of just searching for the entry on Wikipedia for hypermodern.

6. Qf3+ Nf6

7. Qb3+ Be6

8. Qxb7 Nd7

9. Qf3 Bg7

10. Nc3 Rf8

11. d5 Ne6; Why not answer a threat to a minor piece with one to the Queen?

12. dxe6 Kxe6; Oh right check is a thing. It’s been a decade alright. I also have a thirteen minute advantage on the clock (which means less than the mass of feces contained in a fart apparently).

13. Qe2 c6

14. Nf3 Kd7; In retrospect … Ng4 looks more interesting.

15. NxN dxN; Oh shit my Queen could be pinned through the King on the open d-file.

16. Rd1+ Nd5; And this is how the world ends, not with a whimper but with a bang.

17. NxN Qa5+; It is never a quality loss if you can’t take the threat to them.

18. Nc3+ Ke8

19. O-O Bf6; I may be down a black squared bishop, but doubled pawns are a pain.

20. Be3 Ra-d8; At this point in spite of their bold opening I suspect my opponent just might be tired.

21. RxR QxR; Nope.

22. Bxa7 e4; Why not?

23. Nxe4 Bxb2; It’s hard to strike fear in hearts if you never attack.

24. Rd1 Qa5

25. Bc5 Rf7; Wondering if 7 can be that important unless… Holy shit it is the endgame.

26. Nd6 Kf8; Pretty much praying to the gods of attention deficit for a stalemate.

27. NxR QxB; That’s right an even trade of material while down.

28. Ne5 BxN; Mistake, favorable sacrifice, whatever it was not enough.

29. Qf3+ Bf6; Probably the most bring move of the game.

30. h4 Kf7; A quick rule of thumb is that if you are moving your King to the center of the board to use it like another piece the game must be nearing its end.

31. g4 Qxc2; Hey, pawns might matter if there is an endgame.

32. g5 Qxa2; Trapped.

33. g5xBf6 exf6; Would have resigned this lost position, but my first round opponent couldn’t win with a King and Queen versus King.

34. Qxc5 Qe6; Hoping for a quick QxQ and sloppy endgame leading to a draw.

35. Rd7+ QxR

36. RxQ Kg8; No such luck.

37. Qe6+ Kg7; That Qe6 offered quite a bit of hope for a stalemate.

38. Kg2 f5

39. f4 Kh6

40. Qe7 g5

41. Qxg5++

Not at bad ending all things considered. Playing scholastic chess a decade ago I remember ratings being rather rigid due to statistical inbreeding and players all knowing similar opening lines. This tournament was different. Both more intimate and more fun. I’m definitely going to look at entering the St. Louis Open next month.

If the Big 12 collapses it will not be for a lack of athletic competitiveness. Sure Colorado will probably be a ringer in the PAC-12 this year boosting the relative rankings of established teams in the conference, but it could be interesting seeing what happens when Nebraska hits perennial Big Ten favorites Michigan State, Ohio State, and Wisconsin.  Nebraska also lost its membership in the AAU which probably hits on the scholarly image of the Big Ten.

While a lot of editorial length goes towards hypothetical 14 and 16 team super conferences in the coming years. What happens if the Big 12 contracts to a Big 8 again, managing to keep its AQ status. If the two Oklahoma teams flee to the Pacific Coast while A&M jumps to an already overcrowded SEC and other defections happen from the Big 12, while the University of Texas tries to pull a Notre Dame there are still ways to keep the Big 12′s  AQ status alive.

Florida A&M represents the sort of academically and athletically competitive school that could thrive in a resurrected Big 8 or reconstituted Big 12, and it may be a better cultural fit than Houston or SMU around which speculation of Big 12 membership usually condenses. Then there’s the chance a few teams from the SEC or PAC may feel things are getting a bit  crowded, like Arkansas.

The last thing I would expect is a Texas departure from the Big 12. No other conference would let operate functionally as an independent.

I’m not going to wax contemplatively in this post on how social media brings people together, because other people are probably already doing that better and more articulately than I feel like trying to do right now. I just want to throw up some more pictures from Thursday’s walkabout.

Clicking on any of the below pictures will take you to the full resolution image.

The journalism corner of the Quad. The first J-School in the country even though Berkley and Columbia like to pretend they have a duopoly on graduate level journalism education.

Thomas Jefferson’s original grave marker sitting in from of the Residence on the Quad and covered in snow.

A view of the Lafferre Hall, the engineering building from the south.

Lafferre Hall from the Quad facing side (East).

Townsend Hall, home of the University’s School of Information Science and Leaning technology and the roads in front of it.

Front end loaders clearing in front of Memorial Union.

Ellis Library and Lowery Mall

Jesse Hall and its steps apparently the dome does a fine job defrosting itself.

Here again is the picture of the columns that lead the post. License information for these pictures and those featured in the gallery at MyMissourian is below.

This Mizzou Snow Photo Gallery by Aaron Rogier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.aaronrogier.net/contact.

Pretty much feel free to use these as long as you attribute them to me, and ask politely before appropriating them for commercial use.

The first published at Ars Technica concerns a case of problematic interpretation. The setup seems very innovative, the results seem interesting, and then the investigator offers his interpretation involving an outmoded Lamarkian view of evolutionary biology. He devised an apparatus that allowed E. coli to be cultured over a gradient of differing concentrations of nutrients and antibiotics while being able to travel between these cells and observed rapid acquisition of resistance to ciprofloxacin, on the order of ten hours. And then he interprets his results through a pre-Darwinian lens. Presentation abstract available here.

The next is is from all of the way back in May, though I only recently ran into it. Darryl Cunningham offers a comic strip version of the MMR controversy and disgrace of Andrew Wakefield. In a hypothetical future in which I am responsible for children I might evaluate pediatricians based on the visible presence or absence of this in their office. Thankfully journalism on the subject is taking a positive turn if this NPR piece hoping for less parents to opt out of vaccinations is a sign.

Complementary to the first piece about problematic interpretation arrives this study from Michigan State concerning science illiteracy among college students, although this could probably be reproduced among many other populations. The university’s press release presents a nice summary.

These are just a few things I’ve been reading over the break between obligatory holiday gatherings and trying to put together some research of my own over the break. More than anything that first article has been sticking with me, the scientist interpreting an experiment he set up with what seems to be an innovative apparatus through assumptions a few hundred years behind the standards of the discipline he is writing on, makes me wonder what I as an aspiring librarian/educator can do to take steps to promote scientific literacy. Additionally to, in my work avoid lapses through which I may inadvertently promote poor research methods.

Any thoughts or comments?

Highland has a history of strong municipal utilities providing water and electricity to the city, and the new communications utility is positioned to serve Highland’s needs in ways that have been met by incumbent providers with often disappointing results. In the past it has been an infrequent but unfortunate reality that when the single cable providing Highland’s roughly 10,000 is damaged that phone service to the community has been interrupted for the several hours necessary for the cable to be repaired. After each of these incidents the city’s desire for a more robust connection to the national network the the redundancy to maintain connectivity in the event of damage to this single line has fallen of the indifferent ears of incumbents. In light of Frontier’s recent acquisition of Verizon’s telephone lines in Highland concern would not be unjustified considering Frontier’s history with smaller municipalities on the edges of metropolitan areas. The incumbent cable television provider has downsides as well.

The growing phenomenon of municipal broadband providers has attracted some attention in media including coverage of specific projects. Though Highland’s project hasn’t attracted much attention outside the local area, the city is on the leading edge of a growing movement to improve the quality of and access to internet services.

Highland Communication Services

No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.

seems like an anachronism given Facebook’s current business model that encourages sharing with Third-Party applications and sites. While Facebook’s future redefinitions of privacy may only be speculated by those outside of the company, the framework for the site’s ongoing reconstructions of privacy’s meaning comes through in the 2006 privacy policy.

We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about.

The idea of reasonable community limitations is the key to understanding this shift, as is Facebook’s assertion that they will tell you what community limitations are. communities have always been the determining factor behind standards of privacy much as they are of obscenity. In much the same way that the standards for language in a kindergarten are more stringent from those in a bar, expectations of privacy vary between the relative anonymity a large city allows compared to the environment present in a college dormitory.

Google hasn’t been a force strengthening a strong concept of privacy online either, especially in light of the way that Buzz was rolled out or considering Eric Schmidt’s comments on the matter. In a piece highlighting aspects of life on the Google campus, Valleywag offers some of the more disturbing bits from a Googler’s blog. But are they intrinsically disturbing? My life and the community standards that I have picked up lead me to be put off by some aspects of the Google lifestyle, but I could probably adapt to them. Most people could. The question is should we? To what extent should we be adapting our standards of privacy? These aren’t empty questions as the people working to decide prevailing standards or privacy are in large part going to be working in environments like Google’s new implementation of the company town.

Links: [EFF Facebook Timeline] [Googleplex Life]

As an additional note for those wishing to opt out of Facebook’s Instant personalization feature the EFF has a guide to disabling it.

A Predicament

Today at Facebook’s f8 (pronounced “fate” developer conference the social networking Goliath unveiled an new system for following their users outside of the Facebook site, and it could end up making the internet a very ugly place. In the wake of their privacy overhaul last December Facebook announced an expansion of the class of information to be considered public by default including a user’s hometown and current city. They also lifted the 24 hour restriction on how long application developers could hold on to user information allowing them to store user information they collect indefinitely.  Expanding what they consider public information and allowing partners to hold on to users personal information longer is just the tip of the iceberg.

Connections

In a change announced earlier this week on the Facebook blog activities and interests listed on a user’s profile information will be linked to “community pages” centered around those interests. The EFF covers implications of this new connections system very well on their Deeplinks blog.

Facebook follows you on the internet

Thanks to Social Plugins website operators now have the ability to embed “like” buttons on their own websites. No longer do they need you to be on the actual Facebook site to like the wares that they pedal on Facebook. Prompted by a post on the Facebook blog I went to Levis.com in order to bring back evidence of the feral “like” buttons in the wild.

Exhibit A: Twelve pants each with a “like” button

Exhibit B: Product page for a pair of pants

Clicking any of these like buttons produces the same result as clicking a “like” button on the main Facebook site, which as it turns out does something differently now than it would have a week ago. Clicking a “like” button now does what becoming a fan of something of Facebook used to do. On Facebook Pages instead of displaying fans of the pages topic it displays people who like the page’s topic. It was announced a while ago that this change was happening, but now its in place and judging from how many times Facebook has reverted major changes this is how things are going to stay unless it gets replaced with something newer.

Facebook Applications Leave Facebook

Perhaps the biggest announcement at f8 was Microsoft’s new collaborative office web application Docs.com. This new application uses Facebook as its sign in rather than any of Microsoft’s existing sign in services and represents the most dangerous potential outcome for the Internet at large to arise from Facebook’s expansion, the possibility that Facebook could become the single sign on service for most of the internet’s largest sites.

Yelp and Pandora are also involved in this pilot effort to expand Facebook applications outside of Facebook, but the also appear to be maintaining their existing sign in systems, as is probably necessary to keep their user base intact. The move here though is to allow your signed in Facebook session to follow you across the internet to other sites which would interact with you information in the manner that existing applications for Facebook already do, but without being Facebook applications per se. Depending on how far this spreads beyond the three sites involved in this pilot this could make Facebook the big thing that Google has been afraid of. Considering that Google is beginning to be targeted with calls for anti-trust investigations. Facebook might not be far behind.

As far is I know Anil Dash’s question as to why the default privacy settings aren’t good enough for Mark Zuckerberg remains unanswered.