Potential Roles of ListServs and Blogs and Wikis
Getting More Than We Give

Bob Jensen

ListServs

Blogs

David Pogue's Advice

Giving Stuff Away Free on the Internet

Note the excellent tutorial course at http://newmediaocw.wordpress.com/

 

ListServs

Accountancy Discussion ListServs:

AECM (Educators)  http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/ 
AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
CPAS-L (Practitioners) http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ 
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments, ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed. Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or education. Others will be denied access.
Yahoo (Practitioners)  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
 This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything  from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA.
AccountantsWorld  http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation.
Business Valuation Group BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com 
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] 

FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm

FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board on this financial reporting blog from Financial Executives International. The site, updated daily, compiles regulatory news, rulings and statements, comment letters on standards, and hot topics from the Web’s largest business and accounting publications and organizations. Look for continuing coverage of SOX requirements, fair value reporting and the Alternative Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such as the subprime mortgage crisis, international convergence, and rules for tax return preparers.

 

I'm active on two accounting ListServs called the AECM and CPA-L, both of which were formed many years ago by Barry Rice. I was asked recently by someone close to Barry to comment on these ListServs. Below is my response including why the medium is much more than the message in the case of a ListServ:

Hi XXXXX,

I did not know Barry Rice when he started up the AECM and CPA-L Listservs. I got to know him better by email and met him quite a few years later. Barry is a world class accounting teacher with administrative skills as well. I now consider him a great friend.

ListServs are much like forums except that a forum usually has an assigned leader or group of leaders with their own agendas. ListServs are totally voluntary and spontaneous communities. Forums often have invited memberships, whereas most ListServs can be freely joined by any person on the world’s Internet. When a message is sent to a forum, the sender generally knows where it is going. When a message is sent to a ListServ, the sender has some idea of a few people who will receive it but no idea about all the people in the world who are lurking for messages. 

Off the top of my head, I would say that a ListServ aids in the following:

A ListServ does not generally do all of the things listed above, although the AECM initiated by Barry comes about as close as possible to doing all those things mentioned above. The CPA-L list that Barry also formed is primarily a Q&A List that does none of the other things listed above. Practitioners on the CPA-L generally raise a question (often a tax question) and others provide answers. There’s almost nothing in the way of daily news, debates, sharing of research/scholarship, entertainment, building of friendships, or building of reputations.

The AECM somehow evolved into a multi-purpose ListServ that accomplishes all of the things mentioned above. Its international success was primarily timing and leadership and luck. Barry offered up this service when there was very little else for accounting educators on the Internet. There were at least three other early competitors, and I honestly cannot say why the AECM emerged as the main ListServ for accounting educators around the world. I do think that time is too valuable for people to join in on very many active ListServs. Hence it’s not likely that all competitors early on would’ve flourished. Why the AECM emerged as the main general-purpose higher education ListServ for accounting educators is indeed a mystery. The American Accounting Association for a time offered another alternative, but I think bad timing and bad luck destroyed its efforts. The AAA was too late on the scene. There was also the stigma, not a fact, that the AAA’s effort was only for members of the AAA.

I have to say that Barry’s leadership in communicating on the AECM was probably not the crucial factor at the germination stage. After a very short time Barry became more of a lurker. It was about a dozen accounting educators who emerged out of nowhere to make the AECM germinate. Then more leaders and lurkers evolved like wild flowers in a worldwide field.

Keep in mind that Barry did not begin the AECM as a general-purpose accounting educator ListServ. In the beginning it was primarily intended for messaging about computers and multimedia technologies that could be used in new ways by teachers of accountancy. In fact the acronym “AECM” stands for “Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia.” Today the AECM ListServ is much more than its title. Why this happened is complicated to answer, but the title is unfortunate today whenever someone is looking for the main accounting education ListServ and naively thinks that the AECM is restricted to messaging about computers and multimedia.

A better name for the AECM as it evolved is the Internet’s “Accounting Education Communications Medium.” And the “medium is the message.” I am forever grateful to Barry for letting the original AECM evolve into what it is today. He could’ve jumped on every message that was not deemed “on topic” in the context of “computers and multimedia.” Instead he let the AECM messaging follow their own serendipitous meanderings. And he forgave us for some of the dumb things we messaged.

In this regard we were lucky. AECM participants had the good sense to avoid some turn-off topics like politics, advertising, religion, and too much humor. But the messaging did follow many serendipitous paths that were not tied to computers and multimedia, including topics of accounting theory, fraud, student cheating, professorial cheating, plagiarism, pedagogy in general, research methodologies, and learning theories. These evolved into topics that AECM subscribers wanted to learn more and more about.

ListServs are fragile things that in general do not work well. Leaders either emerge out of nowhere and keep a ListServ going or it dies from lack of participation. Participants must find rewards or ListServs simply fade away. Most participants in a ListServ are “lurkers” who often “listen in” but rarely if ever contribute to the membership. This puts the burden on “actives” to evolve as leaders. These actives can either be terrific and draw new ListServ members wanting to listen to what the actives have to say or ListServs can become very tedious and/or boring and causing members to resign from the ListServ.

ListServs have interesting behavioral dynamics that emerged with newer technology. This is an interesting topic to study and needs to be studied in much greater depth. The medium is much more than the content of the messages.

ListServs provide wonderful and unique opportunities to make a difference. For example, an accounting educator and world leader who I supremely respect is Dennis Beresford. Denny is a popular Accounting Hall of Fame speaker at academic, business, and accounting profession conferences. But a speech is a speech and is limited to a given audience and a given point in time. Denny’s published a lot of papers, but a paper is a paper that is a bleep at a fixed point in time.

Remember that “the medium is the message” as discovered by Marshall Mcluhan many years ago. AECM messages are bleeps that resurface in new and different ways repeatedly over time on the AECM. Denny has probably had more impact on changing accounting education via the AECM than in all his speeches and all his publications combined. His messaging to the AECM is continuous over time and reacts to concerns of accounting educators around the world. His AECM audience is unlimited in terms of size and scheduled times.

And we learn a lot about Denny just by learning when he messages. Keep in mind that I’m talking about one of the busiest accountants in the world. He teaches at the University of Georgia full time and is an extremely popular consultant and on the boards of directors of several worldwide corporations. He’s even head of the Audit Committee and a Board member for Fannie Mae after this trillion-dollar company hit the rocks. And yet he seemingly keeps his eye on AECM communications 24/7. What impresses me most is when I send messages out to the AECM at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings I have them answered within minutes by Denny Beresford. Hence I learned a whole lot more about the man beyond the content of his excellent messages. I also learned that he’s respectfully a very humble man.

Denny does not want more money or more trophies. What Denny wants is to make a lasting difference for the betterment of the accounting profession and accounting education. And he’s proved this countless times to all of us on the AECM. Those many other accounting leaders and educators who failed to grab this AECM brass ring missed out and continue to miss out of the opportunity to make a continuous and lasting difference.

I’m also a 24/7 AECM active like Denny. And I’m certain that Denny, like me, will say that he tries to make a difference. But the AECM is so rewarding that in the end he, like me, got more than he received. That is why we’re on the AECM.

We get more than we give no matter how much we give. That’s because so many scholars big and small contribute to our learning and loving. The Internet forever changed research and scholarship and learning. ListServs are a lasting part of this process.

Bob Jensen

April 5, 2007 reply from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]

Bob,

Thanks for your kind comments below.  And thanks to Barry for getting this whole thing started.  AECM is a wonderful learning opportunity for me and I'm just glad that you and many others are willing to share so much knowledge.

Denny

A prominent librarian utters dire warnings about new media

"Mass Culture 2.0," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, June 20, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/06/20/mclemee

This month, Encyclopedia Britannica’s blog is serializing a commentary on the cultural effects of Web 2.0. The author, Michael Gorman, is dean of library services at California State University at Fresno and a former president of the American Library Association.

About two years ago, Gorman published a memorable essay in Library Journal. In it, he referred to “the Blog People,” expressing doubt that they were “in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts.” The immediate occasion for this remark was the public reception of one of Gorman’s own complex texts, about which uncomplimentary things had been said by bloggers (some of them, in fact, being his colleagues in the library world). “It is entirely possible,” he continued, “that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.”

There were other zingers of the same general sort. And so it has not escaped notice, much of it sardonic, that his most recent effort to win friends and influence people is taking place at a blog. His Britannica series consists of three chapters, each in two parts. Something of the flavor of the whole work may be gleaned from the phrases heading up its various segments. So far, “The Sleep of Reason” and “The Siren Song of the Internet” have been published, and may be consulted here. The final portion, “Jabberwiki,” will run next week

. . .

The tone of Gorman’s remedial lecture implies that educators now devote the better part of their day to teaching students to shove pencils up their nose while Googling for pornography. I do not believe this to be the case. (It would be bad, of course, if it were.)

But the idea that new forms of media require training in new kinds of literacy hardly counts as an evasion of the obligation to cultivate critical intelligence. Today the work of acquiring knowledge on a given subject often includes the burden of evaluating digital material. Gorman may pine for the good old days — back when literacy and critical intelligence were capacities to be exercised only upon artifacts made of paper and ink. So be it. But let’s not pretend that such nostalgia is anything but escapism at best.

What really bothers the neo-Luddite quasi-Mandarin is not the rise of digitality, as such. The problem actually comes from “the diminished sacredness of authority,” as Edward Shils once put it, “the reduction in the awe it evokes and in the charisma attributed to it.”

But it’s not that all cultural authority or critical intelligence, as such, are vanishing. Rather, new kinds are taking shape. The resulting situation is difficult and sometimes unpleasant. But it is not exactly new. Such wrenching moments have come repeatedly over the past 500 years, and muddling through the turmoil does not seem to be getting any easier.

Continued in article

Accountancy Discussion ListServs:

AECM (Educators)  http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/ 
AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
CPAS-L (Practitioners) http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ 
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments, ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed. Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or education. Others will be denied access.
Yahoo (Practitioners)  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
 This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything  from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA.
AccountantsWorld  http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation.
Business Valuation Group BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com 
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] 

Blogs/Listservs Versus Scholarly Journals:  Bob Jensen's secrets about blogs and listservs

Recently I encountered criticism that blogs and listservs providing public information that allegedly is not refereed and misleading relative to scholarly journals. First I would like to point out that this is not an either/or choice between blogs/listservs versus journals. Fortunately in this age of technology we can learn from both outlets.

The term "blog" evolved out the term "Weblog" that is defined more formally at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Weblog
A blog is like a scrapbook of knowledge on a subject that is maintained by an individual or an entire organization. For example, Jim Mahar maintains an excellent finance professor blog at http://www.financeprofessor.com/ .
The University of Illinois Library maintains a great blog at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/

Listservs are defined at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Listserv
My advocacy of listservs for scholars can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Some Advantages of Scholarly Journals
Journals have some comparative advantages over blogs/listservs in that journal articles published are carefully crafted and generally subjected to blind reviews by referees that, because they are anonymous, can be quite critical and demanding. Journals articles are generally time tested in that they're not fired off without time to reflect and consider many ramifications before publication.

Some Disadvantages of Scholarly Journals
Probably the biggest myth is that referees are independent reviewers. In my opinion, journal refereeing is often a biased process where all sides of arguments are not given fair tests. Much of the bias centers on allowable research methodologies. For example, leading accounting research journals just do not allow humanities and legal studies research methodologies. Virtually all published articles have to have mathematical analysis and/or rigorous statistical inference testing. One example here is The Accounting Review (TAR), Virtually no Accounting Information Systems  (AIS) papers were published in TAR between 1986 and 2005. The reason is that AIS research methods generally do not entail mathematical modeling. Virtually all TAR referees have required mathematical models for over two decades. Jean Heck and I examined all articles published by TAR 1986-2005 and found less than one percent of the TAR articles that did not have mathematical equations and/or multivariate statistical analyses. Our examination excluded a few articles labeled as book/literature reviews, editorials, and memorials. Thus “…over 99 percent of TAR’s articles contained complex mathematical equations and multivariate statistical analyses…” See  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm

Another problem is that journal editors have only a discrete set of available referees. Expertise needed is a continuum rather than a discrete scale. There is a strong likelihood that for a given submission to a journal, there are no available (known) referees that are as expert on this topic and methodology as perhaps 100 or more experts in the world who are unknown to the journal editor and/or unwilling to take the time and trouble to conduct formal reviews for the journal. Paranoia thereby enters the journal refereeing process. When assigned referees are uncomfortable with their own expertise they are often inclined to be more fault finding and not recommend publication.

Another problem with journal refereeing is that the referees are anonymous and therefore are not held accountable for their decisions. If a referee is superficial or wrong, nobody knows except maybe the unhappy author who receives the rejection notice.

Another problem in some journals, like TAR, is that they do not publish commentaries such that the public in general has no outlet for writing critical, supportive, or expansive comments on a published article. TAR also will not publish replications --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#Replication

Still another problem in some journals is the long delay between when the research was conducted and when the paper is finally published. In accounting this delay can be years. Fortunately some authors provide free working papers or post the papers on something like SSRN where readers can purchase non-refereed working papers for a fee.

Advantages of Blogs and Listservs
The advantages of blogs and listservs is that they can and often do overcome the major disadvantages of the flawed refereeing process and timing delays of scholarly journals. Listservs open to the general public are best in the sense that bias is overcome by allowing anybody to comment on a topic or paper. Blogs are good if the person running the blog will publish comments that are both favorable and unfavorable with respect to the original blog item.

The biggest myth about blogs and listservs is that they published non-refereed items. In fact when an article or tidbit is published on a blog or listserv, the entire world has an opportunity to referee the item. Blogs are deemed the most successful when their items are not ignored by the public.

Disadvantages of Blogs and Listservs
Probably the biggest disadvantage is that there are so many blogs and listservs that it is very time consuming to ride heard on all the ones that touch on topics of interest to you. Secondly, some blogs and listservs post so much material that readers are apt to get information overload from just one blog or listserv.

Another problem is that most readers of a given blog or listserv are "lurkers" who for various reasons are unwilling to submit their own commentaries like the fewer number of "actives" who submit comments, news items, etc. Hence, the world may be open to all persons whereas only a small subset of people are actually willing to share their expertise.

Bob Jensen's Secrets
Since I actively publish what might be termed blogs and actively contribute to some listservs, I will now reveal my secrets for doing so. This is a message that I recently sent out to a listserv called TigerTalk at Trinity University.

Hi XXXXX,

Apology accepted. Now I will let you in on my secrets about blogs.

I find it strange that you’re critical of Tidbits from time to time and, at the same time, brag in public about never reading them. I place more stock in avid readers who weigh them on balance. Of course that’s a biased sample since “avid readers” by definition find them to worthy of the time and effort it takes to read and respond to them. I remind folks once again that my Tidbits are rarely posted to TigerTalk since I retired. Readers must seek them out at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm  or stumble upon them while using search engines.

I might add that I receive many, many replies to Tidbits that I also post in Tidbits when I obtain permission. I might’ve requested to do so in your case had you found errors in the physics of David’s technical explanation. In fact probably more Tidbits are accompanied by replies (critical, supportive, and/or expansive) from readers than the smaller number of Tidbits that elicit no readership response. In fact, one of the real advantages of blogs, listservs, and forums in general is that the whole world can be referees rather than just a few referees that are assigned in scholarly journals. At the time lapse between publishing and critiquing is nearly instantaneous.

Secret One
I’ve always viewed my Tidbits, New Bookmarks, and Fraud Updates "blogs" as my own personal scrapbook archives that I’m willing to share with the world. My first secret about these “blogs” is that they’re invaluable to me when answering the many inquiries I get from students, faculty, and the public in general. When my memory fails, my searching process almost never fails if I’ve posted tidbits about the topic in the past.

Secret Two
Now I will let you in on my second secret about why I really publish my "blogs." My second reason is to learn more about each of the topics. It’s the replies that make the effort really worthwhile. Instead of having to search and struggle to learn more about a tidbit, the world sends value-added information back to me either in public or private communications. For me it’s a great learning experience, especially for technical topics in accountancy, economics, and finance.

Secret Three
My third secret that I will share with you is that I sometimes post a tidbit for purposes of stirring up controversy. My love of academe comes from my love of watching debates by scholars on opposing sides. I often take a side I don’t especially believe just to stir up the pot. And I’m not in general fond of political correctness. PC is dysfunctional to our academic principles and purposes. I miss those “pink pistol” debates between Glen and Harry.

It may sound strange but I’m rather glad that you criticized me on TigerTalk. I’ve long regretted that TigerTalk virtually degenerated to classified advertising and directory requests. When Larry Gindler commenced TigerTalk it was intended to be a listserv where faculty and students actively debated scholarly issues. Sadly there is no longer campus-wide listserv for scholarly debate. There are some specialty listservs, but it’s sad that there’s no longer a listserv for debate that spreads across the entire campus.

David XXXXX who wrote the tidbit that you challenged assumed you were a student Gordon. I subsequently revealed to him that you are a professor. He says he would like to write a more technical rejoinder to your criticisms of his tidbit, but I hope he just lets this one lie.

Having said all this, the May 23 edition of Tidbits (subject to some tweaking) is up and running at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070523.htm
I don’t know if I should be happy or sad that you will not be reading any of these tidbits Gordon.

Bob Jensen
May 22, 2007

May 22, 2007 reply from Paul Williams [Paul_Williams@NCSU.EDU]

There is a substantial amount of misleading information in refereed scholarly journals, particularly ours, as well.

Paul

May 23, 2007 reply from Dan Stone, Univ. of Kentucky [dstone@UKY.EDU]

Good insights gentlemen on blogs vs. scholarly journals. A few more thoughts:

1. academic institutions are conservative and increasing in their conservatism. At this point, posting to or creating blogs brings intrinsic, communitarian rewards to the "poster" or "creator". But my Dean (and most others, I suspect) cares only about my publications in a remarkably small number of scholarly journals.

2. given the mission creep (or should this be "mission crap") of most institutions the end-point of academic scholarship seems to be that only publications in a single U.S. journal will have extrinsic (i.e., careerist) value.

3. reforming the creepy, crappy academic scholarship domain requires bold iconoclasts like Bob and Paul who are willing to note that the Emporers are frequently severely underclothed.

Dan Stone
Univ. of Kentucky

"The Role of Blogs In Studying the Discourse and Social Practices of Mathematics Teachers"
by Katerina Makri and Chronis Kynigos, University of Athens
Journal of Educational Technology & Society, vol. 19, no. 1, 2007 ---  http://www.ifets.info/issues.php?show=current.

Added October 10, 2007

There's another level to "Altruism" (of open sharing) in my case that may be somewhat unique relative to actives on the AECM who do not maintain altruistic open sharing Websites.

In my case the higher level altruism is a desire to maintain an open sharing Website with text and multimedia that helps faculty, students, practitioners, and anybody else around the world. I want this open sharing "knowledge base" to be as huge and as accurate as possible.

My biggest reward comes in the form of thank you messages from virtually every nation of the free world. It makes me think I'm helping many people who have, in some cases, almost no other knowledge base to tap into for such thinks as derivative financial instruments, fraud history, etc.

Years ago I decided to try to set an example of an openly shared knowledge base from a professor who, because of the time flexibility given to tenured faculty, can build such an open sharing knowledge base.

In some cases, the altruism of my Website is rather selfishly served by the seeming altruism of my daily AECM postings. What I'm looking for are the many online and private AECM replies that I can then take to my Website to make it more complete and more accurate. Much of my Website is filled with the great modules submitted by others who read and reacted to my postings to the AECM.

This is what I mean when I said "I get more than I receive" from any listserv, and most especially the AECM.

But I don't feel guilty about getting more than I give to the AECM, because I give it back at my Website. I think the people who supply me with such helpful replies don't really mind because they like having me archive their replies in my open sharing knowledge base.

The time sequence of messaging on the AECM is a lot like a general journal. It's very hard to see the forest for the trees (individual entries in a time sequence). My Website is more like a general ledger in which the journal entries have been posted into accounts (categories) that assist in visualizing sections of the forest.

My sadness is that few, if any, accounting educators have followed my lead in forming the "general ledger" knowledge base from the blog entries they read and write. Jim Mahar for a time was doing this in finance, but now he mainly blogs instead of updating his "general ledger" --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

And my knowledge base is filled with my own commentaries that hopefully have value added to the blogged entries themselves.

Probably the most rewarding responses to your survey come from those who almost hate the AECM because reading the messaging takes so much time, but they read the messaging because so many messages are too "interesting," their word, to delete before reading.

There might be value added if you made your paper available to the AECM by posting it at your Website. Then encourage people to give you feedback either in public (on the AECM) or in private where you can share their feedback as coming from anonymous sources.

What would be value added here is the folder on your Website where you post the subjective feedback. Encourage people to give you added thoughts about enhancing reputation, altruism, etc. Encourage people to state what kinds of changes to the AECM would enhance its value.

And lastly, try to find someone who will take over the postings of AECM modules to an open sharing knowledge base. In other words find somebody who will get the monkey of my Website off my back. Have I sufficiently mixed my metaphors here?

I have and still do truly enjoy serving up a knowledge base that has value added. There really is more reward, in aggregate, in giving more than I receive.

Bob Jensen

Blogs

A growing number of professors are becoming bloggers

Media studies as a discipline has been quick to embrace the potentials of new-media platforms as channels for sharing our research and scholarship. A growing number of junior and senior faculty members in our field are becoming bloggers. At the same time, media scholars are pooling their efforts to contribute to larger projects, such as the biweekly webzine Flow, which runs pieces on many aspects of contemporary television and digital culture, and In Media Res, which each day offers a short video clip and commentary by a leading media scholar. These same strategies can be and are being adopted across a range of academic disciplines, as scholars make a greater commitment to circulate their findings more broadly and to respond to contemporary issues in a thoughtful and timely manner.
Henry Jenkins, "Public Intellectuals in the New-Media Landscape," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b01801.htm

"Blog Comments and Peer Review Go Head to Head to See Which Makes a Book Better," by Jeffrey Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 22, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/free/2008/01/1322n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

What if scholarly books were peer reviewed by anonymous blog comments rather than by traditional, selected peer reviewers?

That's the question being posed by an unusual experiment that begins today. It involves a scholar studying video games, a popular academic blog with the playful name Grand Text Auto, a nonprofit group designing blog tools for scholars, and MIT Press.

The idea took shape when Noah Wardrip-Fruin, an assistant professor of communication at the University of California at San Diego, was talking with his editor at the press about peer reviewers for the book he was finishing, The book, with the not-so-playful title Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies, examines the importance of using both software design and traditional media-studies methods in the study of video games.

One group of reviewers jumped to his mind: "I immediately thought, you know it's the people on Grand Text Auto." The blog, which takes its moniker from the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto, is run by Mr. Wardrip-Fruin and five colleagues. It offers an academic take on interactive fiction and video games.

Inviting More Critics

The blog is read by many of the same scholars he sees at academic conferences, and also attracts readers from the video-game industry and teenagers who are hard-core video-game players. At its peak, the blog has had more than 200,000 visitors per month, he says.

"This is the community whose response I want, not just the small circle of academics," Mr. Wardrip-Fruin says.

So he called up the folks at the Institute for the Future of the Book, who developed CommentPress, a tool for adding digital margin notes to blogs (The Chronicle, September 28, 2007). Would they help out? He wondered if he could post sections of his book on Grand Text Auto and allow readers, using CommentPress, to add critiques right in the margins.

The idea was to tap the wisdom of his crowd. Visitors to the blog might not read the whole manuscript, as traditional reviewers do, but they might weigh in on a section in which they have some expertise.

The institute, an unusual academic center run by the University of Southern California but based in Brooklyn, N.Y., was game. So was Mr. Wardrip-Fruin's editor at MIT Press, Doug Sery, but with one important caveat. He insisted on running the manuscript through the traditional peer-review process as well. "We are a peer-review press—we're always going to want to have an honest peer review," says Mr. Sery, senior editor for new media and game studies. "The reputation of MIT Press, or any good academic press, is based on a peer-review model."

So the experiment will provide a side-by-side comparison of reviewing—old school versus new blog. Mr. Wardrip-Fruin calls the new method "blog-based peer review."

Each day he will post a new chunk of his draft to the blog, and readers will be invited to comment. That should open the floodgates of input, possibly generating thousands of responses by the time all 300-plus pages of the book are posted. "My plan is to respond to everything that seems substantial," says the author.

The institute is modifying its CommentPress software for the project, with the help of a $10,000 grant from San Diego's Academic Senate, to create a version that bloggers can more easily add to their existing academic blogs.

A Cautious Look Forward

Mr. Wardrip-Fruin's friends have warned him that sorting through all those comments will take over his life, or at least take far more time than he expects. "It's been said to me enough times by people who are not just naysayers that it is in the back of my mind," he acknowledges. Still, the book's review process "will pale in comparison to the work of writing it."

He expects the blog-based review to be more helpful than the traditional peer review because of the variety of voices contributing. "I am dead certain it will make the book better," he says.

Mr. Sery isn't so sure. "I don't know how this general peer review is going to help," the editor says, except maybe to catch small errors that have slipped through the cracks. Traditional peer review involves carefully chosen experts in the same subject area, who can point to big-picture issues as well as nitpick details. He bets that the blog reviews might merely spark flame wars or other unhelpful arguments about minor points. "I'm curious to see what kind of comments we get back," he says.

That probably "depends on what you're writing about," says Clifford A. Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, a group that supports the use of technology in scholarly communication. "If, God help you, you're writing about current religious or political issues, you're going to get a lot of people with agendas who aren't interested in having a rational discussion. Some of them are just psychos."

Even without flame wars, Mr. Sery equates the blog review with the kind of informal sharing of drafts that many academics do with close friends. It's useful, but it's still not formal peer review, he argues. Carefully choosing reviewers "really allows for the expression of their ideas on the book," he says. Scholars can say with authority, for instance, that a book just isn't worth publishing.

Ben Vershbow, editorial director at the Institute for the Future of the Book, concedes that comments on blogs are unlikely to fully replace peer review. But he says academic blogging can play a role in the publishing process.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This is one of those experiments that is impossible to extrapolate. Blog comments are totally voluntary and impulsive such that blog comments are going to be highly variable with respect to topics, errors in the original document, and extent of the readership in the blog. Few blog activists are going to give time and attention to reviews that are not going to be widely read.

Peer reviews are likely to be less impulsive since the reviewer generally agrees ahead of time to conduct a review. But they are more variable than blog comments. The reason is that peer reviewers spend less time reviewing manuscripts that are outliers (i.e., those that are so good that there are few recommendations for change or those that are so bad that there's little hope for a future positive recommendation to publish). More time may be spend on manuscripts that need a lot of repair but have high hopes.

The main problem with peer reviews is that there are so few reviewers. Much depends upon which two or three reviewers are assigned to review the manuscript. Three reviewers' garbage may be another three reviewers' treasure. Another problem is that peer reviews are seldom published in the name of the anonymous reviewers. Blog commentators generally do so in their own names and get some reputation enhancement among their blog peers, especially if their are praiseworthy replies on the blog to the blog review. Anonymous reviewers get little incremental reputation enhancement for their unpublished reviews.

Still another problem with peer reviews is that editors and their hand picked reviewers may be a biased subset of a scholarly community. Others in the community may be shut out, which is now a raging problem in academic accountancy --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on oligopoly abuse of scholarly publishing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals

On blogs and Web sites, by e-mail and video, the Iraq war is fought on the Internet
U.S. soldiers return from battle to their rooms or tents, boot up their laptops and log on to let their friends and family know they've made it through another day. If their base is large enough, the Internet service provider offers broadband, and they can make a video call home, watch news reports on the war or post their own versions of life in Iraq to their blogs. ''I blog for the same reasons soldiers wrote letters and diaries during previous wars: to communicate with family and friends, (and) to maintain an honest record of our daily existence,'' wrote 1st Lt. Matt Gallagher, in response to an e-mail about his blog http://kaboomwarjournal.blogspot.com . ''Blogging is simply a 21st century tool for a new generation of soldiers to utilize.''
MIT's Technology Review, March 18, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/20427/?nlid=945

In April 2007 the blog search engine Technorati reported that it was tracking 70 million blogs, with 120,000 new ones arriving every day --- http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/04/328.html
Technorati --- http://technorati.com/

Search for Blogs (Weblogs) ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Blogs

PC World's choices for the Top 100 blogs on June 25, 2007 --- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,133119/article.html 

It's Been Ten Years Since the Blog Was Born Out of Something Called a Weblog --- http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Weblog
Google has a blog search tool --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Blogs

I fit into the category of an original NWAL blogger category meaning that I'm a Nerd Without A Life blogger. Now of course there are millions of bloggers who also have a life. I'm still stuck in the NWAL category.

New Blogs (at least new to me near the end of 2007)

Rate Your Students (be prepared for four letter words and worse) --- http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/
Perhaps this to counter RateMyProfessor --- http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/index.jsp
There is also a Professors Strike Back (largely video) site at http://www.mtvu.com/professors_strike_back/ 

Other blogs --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Blogs
Google's blog search tool is at http://blogsearch.google.com/
(For example, search "Student Examination" at the above Google site)
(Accountants may want to search for "Accounting" at the above Google site)
(More serious accountants may want to search "FAS 133" or "IAS 39" at the above Google site.)

Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

To celebrate this tenth "blogiversary" on July 14, 2007, The Wall Street Journal on Pages P4-P5 ran a special column by Tunku Varadarajan that highlighted some of the leading blogs ---
http://blogs.wsj.com/onlinetoday/2007/07/14/pursuits-extras-for-saturday-july-14-2/

The WSJ blogiversary highlights the impact of some of selected blogs.

Christopher Cox, Chairman of the SEC, recommends searching for blogs at Google and Blogdigger ---  http://www.blogdigger.com/index.html
He points out that Sun Microsystems CEO Jack Schwartz in his own blog challenged the SEC to consider blogs as a means of corporate sharing of public information.
Jensen Comment
But more recently CEO John Mackey of Whole Foods got in trouble with the SEC for his anonymous blog.
See "Mr. Mackey's Offense," The Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2007; Page A12 --- Click Here

Christopher Cox, a strong advocate of XBRL,  gives a high recommendation to the following XBRL blog:
For fast financial reporting, a recommended blog is Hitachi America, Ltd XBRL Business Blog --- http://www.hitachixbrl.com/

One of the great bloggers is one of the all-time great CEOs is Jack Bogle who founded what is probably the most ethical mutual fund businesses in the world called Vanguard. He maintains his own blog (without a ghost blogger) called The Bogle eBlog --- http://johncbogle.com/wordpress/

Nobel laureate (economics) Gary Becker runs a blog with Richard Posner called the Becker-Posner Blog --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Actress and humanitarian Mia Farrow maintains blogs on her visits to troubles pars of the world.
See  http://www.miafarrow.org/
One of her favorite blogs (not one that she runs) is BoingBoing.net --- http://www.boingboing.net/
She is also a heavy user of satellite phones --- http://www.gpsmagazine.com/

James Toranto discusses the powerful impact that blogs have had on politics and government.
He recommends the following political blogs:
KausFiles.com from the liberal/progressive UK media outlet called Slate --- http://www.slate.com/id/2170453/
InstaPundet.com from a liberatarian law professor --- http://www.instapundet.com/
JustOneMinute.typepad.com --- http://www.justoneminute.typepad.com/

Jane Hamsher founded a political blog at http://www.firedoglake.com/
She recommends the following leftest-leaning blogs:
CrooksAndLiars.com --- http://www.crooksandliars.com/
TBogg.blogspot.com --- http://www.tbogg.blogspot.com/
DigbysBlog.blogspot.com --- http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com/

General Kevin Bergner is a spokesman for the Multi-National Force in Iraq and generally gives straight talk a world of distorted and biased media --- http://www.mnf-iraq.com/
Some of his favorite blogs are as follows:
Small Wars Journal --- http://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php
Blackfive --- http://www.blackfive.net/
The Mudville Gazette --- http://www.mudvillegazette.com/

Newt Gingrich recommends the following conservative-politics blogs:
RedState,com --- http://www.redstate.com/
Corner.NationalReview.com --- http://corner.nationalreview.com/
Powerline Blog --- http://www.powerlineblog.com/

Dick Costolo is a Group Product Manager at Google. He likes the following blogs:
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs by an imposter --- http://www.fakesteve.blogspot.com/
New Media and the Future of Online Publishing --- http://publishing2.com/
Photo Blogs --- http://www.photoblogs.org/

Tom Wolfe (popular novelist) grew "weary of narcisstic shrieks and baseless information."

Xiao Qiang, the founder of Chna Digital Times, recomments the following blogs:
ZonaEuropa for global news with a focus on China --- http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm
Howard Rheingold's tech commentaries on the social revolution at http://www.smartmobs.com/
DoNews from Keso (in Chinese) --- http://blog.donews.com/keso
(Search engines like Google will translate pages into English)

Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist recommends the following blogs:
One of the first tech blogs --- http://slashdot.org/
Metafilter (a wiki community blog that anybody can edit) --- http://www.metafilter.com/
Tech Dirt --- http://www.techdirt.com/

Elizabeth Spiers is the founding editor of the news/gossip blogs called Gawks/Jossip and the financial blog Dealbreaker.. She recommends the following blogs:
The liberatarian Reason Magazine blog --- http://www.reason.com/blog/
MaudNewton blog on literature and culture (and occasional political rants) --- http://maudnewton.com/blog/index.php
Design Observer --- http://www.designobserver.com/

How did they fail to overlook the following NWAL blogs?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Bob Jensen's favorite free blogs (other than major newspaper, magazine, and  accountancy blogs that I track):
Aljazeera --- http://english.aljazeera.net
Commentary --- http://www.commentarymagazine.com/
New Republic --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
Inside Higher Ed --- http://www.insidehighered.com/ 
The Finance Professor --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
Financial Rounds --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Consumer Reports Web Watch --- http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/
Issues in Scholarly Communication --- http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/
Knowledge@Wharton --- http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/
Multi-National Force --- http://www.mnf-iraq.com/
NPR --- http://www.npr.org/
PC World --- http://www.pcworld.com/columns/
PhysOrg --- http://physorg.com/ (Good coverage of happenings in science and medicine)
WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/
Wired News --- http://www.wired.com/  (not as good as it used to be)
WorldNetDaily --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/  (watch for bias and the mixing of adds with news)
Y-Net News --- http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3083,00.html

I will probably be adding the following blogs on a less regular basis:
The Bogle eBlog --- http://johncbogle.com/wordpress/
Becker-Posner Blog --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
CrooksAndLiars.com --- http://www.crooksandliars.com/
Small Wars Journal --- http://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php
Blackfive --- http://www.blackfive.net/
The Mudville Gazette --- http://www.mudvillegazette.com/
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs by an imposter --- http://www.fakesteve.blogspot.com/
New Media and the Future of Online Publishing --- http://publishing2.com/
Photo Blogs --- http://www.photoblogs.org/
Tech Dirt --- http://www.techdirt.com/

For Newspapers and Magazines I highly recommend Drudge Links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/DrudgeLinks.htm
In particular I track Reason Magazine, The Nation, The New Yorker, Sydney Morning Herald, Sky, Slate, BBC, Jewish World Review, and The Economist

For financial news I like The Wall Street Journal and the Business sub-section of The New York Times

For Book Reviews I like --- http://www.booksindepth.com/period.html
Also see the blog of the national book critics circle board of directors ---
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/

Much more of my news and commentaries comes from online newsletters such as MIT's Technology Review, AccountingWeb, SmartPros, Opinion Journal, The Irascible Professor, T.H.E. Journal, and more too numerous to mention.

And I also get a great deal of information from various listservs and private messages that people just send to me, many of whom I've never met.

A Blog for Students of Investment Strategies --- http://bonasimm.blogspot.com/

Association of Government Accountants Blog
Inside Government Accounting --- http://aga.typepad.com/
There's quite a lot here on fraud and forensic accounting

Deloitte's International Accounting Blog --- http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
Thanks to Paul Pacter this is probably the best site in the world for international accounting news

A Very Successful Blog
Stuff White People Like --- http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

"Stuff White People Like," by Evan R. Goldstein, Chronicle of Higher Education's The Chronicle Review, April 18, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i32/32b00401.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

What do the Sunday New York Times, Barack Obama, knowing what's best for poor people, having gay friends, and arts degrees have in common? According to Christian Lander, they are all "stuff white people like." A mere three months ago, the 29-year-old Internet copywriter started a blog by that name with a post satirizing white people's affinity for coffee, noting that they are fond of sayings like, "You do NOT want to see me before I get my morning coffee" and are happy to pay a premium for fair-trade coffee because "the extra $2 means they are making a difference."

That item struck a nerve. Stuff White People Like averages around 300,000 hits a day, and its numbered catalog of the cultural, political, and social predilections of highly educated, middle-class, liberal, white people is nearing 100 items. At the end of March, Random House announced that it had signed Lander, who is himself white, to a book deal widely reported to be worth around $300,000.

The blog's emergence as a cultural phenomenon has triggered a wide-ranging discussion about race, humor, and whether Stuff White People Like is a trenchant critique of white cultural mores — or a backhanded celebration of white cultural superiority.

Gary Dauphin, writer and blogger: Stuff White People Like … smells like a classic racial con job. It goes without saying that the specific entries (Oscar parties?) don't really apply to anyone. That makes Lander's overall pose — and the uncritical response to it — the real action. You'd think from the approving hubbub that SWPL had discovered (white) America or something, but white comedians, academics, and artists have been thinking and cracking wise about "white" culture since before Lander was in, well, the short pants he's posted about. Usually even jokey talk about whiteness has a whiff of danger to it, but SWPL is likely the safest, most-affable racial satire ever, a loving high-five between friends passing as critique. (The Root)

Dean Rader, associate professor of English, University of San Francisco: One more reason SWPL has resonated is due to its very smart awareness of what I call "Overculture," which is the subject of my next book. Stuff White People Like is fantastic at mapping the icons of Overculture — those popular texts that indicate a ubiquity in American consumer and popular culture. For example, Starbucks plays music heard on The Wire, which gets written about in Slate, which has an agreement with NPR, which reviews books available in Borders, which sells coffee and expensive sandwiches. Overculture is a new kind of cultural map that circumscribes everything that has hit a tipping point, everything educated people should either consume or be aware of. (The Weekly Rader)

Gregory Rodriguez, senior fellow, New America Foundation: As unusual as Lander's site is, it is also part of a sociological trend among whites who live in increasingly non-Anglo cities and regions: their transformation into a minority group. Whites used to think of themselves as standard-issue American — they had the luxury of not having to grapple with the significance of their own racial background; they were "us" and everyone else was "ethnic." Not anymore. (Los Angeles Times)

Adam Sternbergh, editor at large, New York: Even as an admitted yoga-practicing, public-radio-listening, Wrigley Field-visiting, Wes Anderson-movie-watching, Arrested Development-championing white dude — i.e., someone squarely in the targets of Stuff White People Like — I don't feel even mildly chastened about yoga, NPR, Wes Anderson, or Arrested Development after reading this blog. In fact, all the site's entries, while superficially chiding, can actually be divided into three very comforting categories:

1) Entries that don't reflect your lifestyle choices … and therefore make you feel superior.

2) Entries that do reflect your lifestyle choices … and therefore make you feel like you're in on the joke.

3) Entries that nod to commonly held comic stereotypes … and therefore, because you recognize them, make you feel superior. (The New Republic Online)

David Mills, screenwriter: The No. 1 biggest thing white people like is pretending to poke fun at themselves. … Here are a few things that white people don't like:

1. Black bosses.

2. Mexicans.

3. Being told they're wrong.

4. Panhandlers.

5. Black people on magazine covers.

6. Islam. (Undercover Black Man)

Megan McArdle, associate editor, The Atlantic: All right, let me add myself to the list of white people who don't like Stuff White People Like. Leave aside the arrogance of declaring "white people" to be equal to a rather small group of self-satisfied, overeducated, affluent poverty vultures. And I actively applaud its purpose — my demographic is a rich vein of humor. One that should be strip mined.

Unfortunately, SWPL just isn't very funny. How can you take a target as rich and inviting as people who deliberately buy ugly shoes and produce … a dull thud? (Asymmetrical Information, The Atlantic Online)

Alex Jung, blogger: Its cleverness is getting stale because it hasn't exhibited ways to think differently; one can predict the rest of the posts — white people also like to dress their pets … and watch Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and think about how "real" it is. [Lander] recognizes the dumb things white people do, such as believing they know what's best for poor people, but just as he will still spend 10 bucks on a sandwich, white people will still think buying a Gap T-shirt will end poverty in Africa. It's a critique followed by a shrug. (Race Wire, Colorlines)

I would love to learn about your favorite blogs!

From The Washington Post on July 23, 2007

What was the name of a technique invented in the early 1970s that often used reverse-chronological blog-like ordering?

A. talk.text
B. .plan file
C. net.log
D. .me folder
 

Anita Campbell's Small Business Blog on the AccountingWeb --- http://www.accountingweb.com/blogs/anita_campbell_blog.html

Bob Jensen's small business helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness

From the Financial Rounds Blog on April 21, 2008 --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/

The latest new finance blog note is titled Empirical Finance Research, which is intended to (in the authors' own words):

It's authored by three guys (two of which are currently pursuing Ph.D.s in finance), and focuses on applications of current academic finance research. Good job, gentlemen, and keep up the good work. The world needs more blogs by finance PhDs.

The Empirical Finance Research blog is at http://empiricalfinanceresearch.blogspot.com/

"Favorite Education Blogs of 2008," by Jay Mathews, The Washington Post, April 7, 2008 --- Click Here

Early last year, as an experiment, I published a list of what I and commentator Walt Gardner considered our favorite education blogs. Neither Gardner nor I had much experience with this most modern form of expression. We are WAY older than the Web surfing generation. But the list proved popular with readers, and I promised in that column to make this an annual event.

Bernstein: The name is obviously a takeoff on the foregoing. The author of this one occasionally posts elsewhere as well. This site often provides some incisive and clear explanations of the key aspects of educational policy.

Mathews: I agree, but have a bias here, too. This is an Education Week blog, and I am on the board of trustees of the nonprofit that publishes Ed Week.

My promise was actually more specific: "Next year, through bribery or trickery, I hope to persuade Ken Bernstein, teacher and blogger par excellence, to select his favorite blogs and then let me dump on his choices, or something like that." As I learned long ago, begging works even better than bribery or trickery, and Bernstein succumbed. Below are his choices, with some comments from me, and a few of my favorites.

They are in no particular order of quality or interest. Choosing blogs is a personal matter. Tastes differ widely and often are not in sync with personal views on how schools should be improved. I agree with all of Bernstein's choices, even though we disagree on many of the big issues.

Bernstein is a splendid classroom teacher and a fine writer, with a gift for making astute connections between ill-considered policies and what actually happens to kids in school. He is a social studies teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Prince George's County and has been certified by the prestigious National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. He is also a book reviewer and peer reviewer for professional publications and ran panels on education at YearlyKos conventions. He blogs on education, among other topics, at too many sites to list. He describes his choices here as a few blogs he thinks "are worthwhile to visit."

 

· Bridging Differences. blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/

Bernstein: Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch in the past have had their differences on educational issues. They both serve at the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University, and this shared blog is as valuable as anything on the Web for the insights the two offer, and for the quality of their dialog.

Mathews: I have a personal bias about this blog. I know Meier and Ravitch well, consider them the best writers among education pundits today and frequently bounce ideas off them.

 

· Eduwonk. www.eduwonk.com/

Bernstein: I often disagree with Andrew J. Rotherham, but his has been an influential voice on education policy for some years, and even now, along with all else he does, he serves on the Virginia Board of Education.

Mathews: I often agree with Rotherham, and my editors sometimes complain that I quote him too much. But the guy is only 37 and is going to be an important influence on public school policy for the rest of my life and long after.

 

· Edwize. www.edwize.org/

Bernstein: The site is maintained by the United Federation of Teachers, the New York affiliate of American Federation of Teachers. They have a number of authors, many active in New York schools, but they occasionally have posts from others. Full disclosure: I have been invited to cross-post things I have written elsewhere.

Mathews: A nice mix of both comment on policy and inside-the-classroom stuff from teachers.

 

· Education Policy Blog. educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/

Bernstein: The site describes itself as "a multiblog about the ways that educational foundations can inform educational policy and practice! The blog will be written by a group of people who are interested in the state of education today, and who bring to this interest a set of perspectives and tools developed in the disciplines known as the 'foundations' of education: philosophy, history, curriculum theory, sociology, economics and psychology." Most of the participants are university professors. I am a participant from time to time in this blog.

 

     Eduwonkette. blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/ 

Continued in article

 

David Pogue is one of my technology heroes --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pogue
Vidya Ananthanarayanan called my attention to his recent keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference
"Five ways to improve technology in education," by Todd Ritter, DownloadSquad, February 12, 2008 --- Click Here

Stay informed
Use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to keep up with technology news and events. To use RSS you'll need an RSS reader like Google Reader, NetNewsWire (Mac), or FeedDemon (Windows) to read RSS feeds. An RSS feed is basically a dynamic link that updates your RSS reader when new content is posted to a website (click the "RSS Feeds" button under our search bar to see examples).

You can also subscribe to technology newsletters, and talk to students about websites and web services they use on their own. A majority of teachers do not know what Stickam or Meebo are, yet these sites are used daily by many of their students.

Focus on the learning process, not the end product
When little Susie uses iMovie to create a video of her class field trip to Cape Canaveral, she should be evaluated on what she's learned through the creative process, not how many wipes and sound effects she used in her final movie file. The quality and relativity of the still pictures she took by learning how to use a digital camera, or video footage from a well-designed storyboard are better barometers of a successful project.

Work with IT professionals who understand education
I work on the IT side of education daily, and I know it's important to unfetter technology at a school to stimulate the learning process. IT staff must be willing to bend on certain security measures and trust students with equipment so that they can be creative and not boxed in. We let students take laptops home to work on approved projects, which ultimately motivates their peers to do the same. We also have a dedicated instructional adviser who helps teachers integrate technology into their lesson plans. This often helps ease the teachers' modification of antiquated lessons.

Become a user
Make a Facebook account so you can understand the allure of social-networking sites. Add some information about yourself. Locate former school pals. Join some groups. This will let you see sites like Faceook from a student's perspective.

To collaborate and share course materials, you can create a Moodle site for your class, or start a class blog. Students benefit more from teachers who collaborate and less from teachers who force-feed lectures. Also, it's much easier to teach about something that you've actually used in depth. It's time to break the stigma of "those that can, do; those that can't, teach."

Don't be afraid of change
Some teachers think that upgrading from Office 2003 to 2007 is using the latest technology. However, a Word document is still words and formatting meant for someone to read. Instead of being satisfied with word processing in a new version of software, why not let students create a school "newspaper" on something like Joomla. The news could be updated in seconds, it could be interactive (comments, updates, etc.), and it could be include user-submitted media. Google Earth could be used to give an elementary student global perspective by flying in from a world view down to the roof of his home.
 

Jensen Comment
There are other things that I would recommend. I think joining listserv of other educators is important, especially educators in your discipline --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

It is exceedingly important to know what knowledge is being freely shared by professors and universities --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
I hope that you will one day share your own knowledge with us.

I think becoming a user of important technologies is important, especially video recording using Camtasia --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
Also see the 50Camtasia.ppt file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/

Following the tools of technology in education in general is important --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

 

Giving Stuff Away Free on the Internet

Bob Jensen's take on blogs and listservs and Wikis --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
The tidbit below is consistent with what I’ve written many times.

From the Author of "Dilbert"
"Giving Stuff Away on the Internet," by Scott Adams, The Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2007; Page A19 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119388143439778613.html

I spend about a third of my workday blogging. Thanks to the miracle of online advertising, that increases my income by 1%. I balance that by hoping no one asks me why I do it.

As with most of my life decisions, my impulse to blog was a puzzling little soup of miscellaneous causes that bubbled and simmered until one day I noticed I was doing something. I figured I needed a rationalization in case anyone asked. My rationalization for blogging was especially hard to concoct. I was giving away my product for free and hoping something good came of it.

I did have a few "artist" reasons for blogging. After 18 years of writing "Dilbert" comics, I was itching to slip the leash and just once write "turd" without getting an email from my editor. It might not seem like a big deal to you, but when you aren't allowed to write in the way you talk, it's like using the wrong end of the shovel to pick up, for example, a turd.

Over time, I noticed something unexpected and wonderful was happening with the blog. I had an army of volunteer editors, and they never slept. The readers were changing the course of my writing in real time. I would post my thoughts on a topic, and the masses told me what they thought of the day's offering without holding anything back. Often they'd correct my grammar or facts and I'd fix it in minutes. They were in turns brutal and encouraging. They wanted more posts on some topics and less of others. It was like the old marketing saying, "Your customers tell you what business you're in."

At some point I realized we were collectively writing a book, or at least the guts of one. I compiled the most popular (mostly the funniest) posts and pitched it to a publisher. I got a six-figure advance, and picked a title indirectly suggested by my legion of accidental collaborators: "Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey-Brain!"

As part of the book deal, my publisher asked me to delete the parts of my blog archive that would be included in the book. The archives didn't get much traffic, so I didn't think much about deleting them. This turned out to be a major blunder in the "how people think" category.

A surprising number of my readers were personally offended that I would remove material from the Internet that had once been free, even after they read it. It was as if I had broken into their homes and ripped the books off their shelves. They felt violated. And boy, I heard about it.

Some left negative reviews on Amazon.com to protest my crass commercialization. While no one has given the book a bad review for its content, a full half of the people who comment trash it for having once been free, as if that somehow mattered to the people who only read books on paper. In the end, the bad feeling I caused by not giving away my material for free forever will have a negative impact on book sales.

I've had mixed results with giving away content on the Internet. I was the first syndicated cartoonist to offer a comic on the Internet without charge (www.dilbert.com). That gave a huge boost to the newspaper sales and licensing. The ad income was good too. Giving away the "Dilbert" comic for free continues to work well, although it cannibalizes my reprint book sales to some extent, and a fast-growing percentage of readers bypass the online ads with widgets, unauthorized RSS feeds and other workarounds.

A few years ago I tried an experiment where I put the entire text of my book, "God's Debris," on the Internet for free, after sales of the hard copy and its sequel, "The Religion War" slowed. My hope was that the people who liked the free e-book would buy the sequel. According to my fan mail, people loved the free book. I know they loved it because they emailed to ask when the sequel would also be available for free. For readers of my non-Dilbert books, I inadvertently set the market value for my work at zero. Oops.

So I've been watching with great interest as the band "Radiohead" pursues its experiment with pay-what-you-want downloads on the Internet. In the near term, the goodwill has inspired lots of people to pay. But I suspect many of them are placing a bet that paying a few bucks now will inspire all of their favorite bands to offer similar deals. That's when the market value of music will approach zero.

That's my guess. Free is more complicated than you'd think.

Mr. Adams is the creator of "Dilbert" and author of "Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey-Brain!" (Portfolio, 2007).

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing and open courseware --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 

Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Emeritus Accountancy Professor from Trinity University
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone:  603-823-8482 
Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu