templatedata

If you're a research student who also blogs, or even a fully-fledged researcher, the Third Carnival of GRADual Progress may be of interest to you. (Don't know what a blog carnival is?)

Check out the last carnival to get an idea of what it's all about.

Thanks to Zoe for the heads-up.

Much excitement.

Every year Beloit College produces a ‘Mindset List’. It is meant to illustrate the forces, ideas and events that shaped the minds of the incoming batch of students. Whether you teach, design for or otherwise work with students, envisaging their point of view and mindset is essential.

A few of us read the latest Mindset List and felt we ought to ‘Ostrayanise’ it a bit. We acknowledge that we may have made gross and unfair generalisations in our list. But us oldies have to have some fun sometime. And being old means you have to dis your younger colleagues at every opportunity. That’s life kids.

So, Jo, David, Rachel and myself give you: 50 things about the 2006 first-years that you may or may not know.

Politics
1. They don’t remember Czechoslovakia or the USSR
2 They think Pauline Hanson was the drag-queen from a reality TV dancing show
3. They don't realise John Howard stole his best ideas from the reality TV dancing show drag queen when she was still a politician.
4. There has only ever been one Germany.
5. They have never known a Labor Federal Government
6. They think the Cold War has something to do with those Herron ads where they dis Panadol and Neurofen.
7. They don't realise John Howard stole his look from Mr Sheen.
8. They don’t know John Howard lived with his mother until he was 36.
9. And when they do find out they don't see any problem with it.
10. The ‘Dismissal’ is what happens at 3.20pm on a school day.
11. They know only one Gulf War.
12. They know only one Bush.

Media and language
13. They never got to see Fat Cat on television.
14. Khe Sahn is their summer break not a rockin’ tune.
15. They don't like vowels: kwl, yr, ltr, g8t, dnt
16. But they do like acronyms: lol, lmao, imho, idc, omg (FFS!)
17. Wikipedia is a perfectly acceptable reference text.
18. The Croc Hunter is Steve Irwin not Mick Dundee
19. They think reality TV started with Big Brother, not Sylvania Waters.
20. They can't remember television without the Simpsons.
21. Kurt Cobain has always been dead.
22. Kylie has always been a 'recording artist', not a soap star.
23. Triple J has always been broadcast in the country.

Fashion
24. They think they created punk fashion.
25. They think thongs and jeans are the height of fashion, when said combination used to identify westies, bogans and day-release prisoners.
26. They're too young to remember the 80s so they are doomed to repeat it.
27. They think they can be a punk rocker with flowers in their hair, that the Ramones just made t-shirts and that The Jam is a hip abbreviation for Pearl Jam.
28. And they never use words like ‘hip’.

Technology
29. When you say Commodore 64 they say wha?
30. They’ve spent their entire schooling life with a mobile phone.
31. They don't know what to do with a round-dial telephone.
32. They met some of their best friends online.
33. They don't remember life without the internet, let alone life without computers.
34. They quite possibly have never hand-written a letter and actually mailed it.
35. They have never held a camera to their eye to take a photo.
36. They never got to wallow in the smell of a page fresh from a Gestetner.
37. They have never had to get out of their chair to change channels.
38. They never mowed the lawn with a ‘pushie’.

Society
39. Smoking indoors has never been acceptable (except for drinking holes)
40. Religion is cool, especially huge, non-denominational churches.
41. They don't know a world without AIDS.
42. They don't realise Mardi Gras is actually a protest march.
43. And is full of 'gays'.
44. They think feminism has achieved its aims and is now obsolete.
45. The hole in the ozone layer has always been there and is therefore ‘normal'.
46. They've never looked forward to the Queen's birthday firecracker night (or spent half of it in casualty).

Consumerland
47. They think TAA is a retro satchel bag maker, not a defunct airline.
48. They never had a passbook to use their bank account.
49. Flying has always been an affordable option, even on short trips.
50. They think Atari is a T-shirt brand sold exclusively at second hand shops and market stalls.

Sounds like a few of the Uni's librarians are having a ball in Perth at the ALIA conference. They're blogging their way through the conference with aplomb.

Two quick links: Yale are set to post some courses on the web for free.

The 18-month pilot project will provide videos, syllabi and transcripts for seven courses beginning in the 2007 academic year. They include "Introduction to the Old Testament," "Fundamentals of Physics" and "Introduction to Political Philosophy."

The courses cannot be counted toward a Yale degree, and educators say they are no substitute for actual teaching.

Everyone knows about Wikipedia but there are who lot of other 'wikithings', including Wikiversity.

Wikiversity is a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Wikiversity is a multidimensional social organization dedicated to learning, teaching, research and service.

This piece was labelled "What web developers can learn from Paris Hilton" in the reddit charts. I don't know about that but it's an entertaining read. Paris is, apparently, not a product but a platform.

I've chopped it into lines but the words are straight from some email spam:

They Meet the Wooden Gargoyles
Another breathless climb brought our adventurers to a third landing
where there was a rift in the mountain
We escaped by clinging to a bit of wreckage and floated to this island,
where we have nearly starved to death.

Sure beats the usual rubbish...but I'm still not going to click on their link. It's probably ripped off from somewhere, a pat on the back and a pretend-medal for anyone who can identify it.

The good people at A List Apart have produced a Primer for those new to their site. Even if you're familiar with the site, it's worth taking a look.

If you’re going to build a house—or a website—you need the right tools. A List Apart offers hundreds of articles on design, markup, style, accessibility, usability, and more. We’ve selected a few that you might want to start with. (Think of this guide as one of those reassuring brochures from Lowe’s or Home Depot, but about websites instead of ceramic tile.)

stu.dicio.us is a rather 'web 2.0' tool that allows students to take notes online and share them with others. You can nominate your institution, class and teacher. There's also a whole lot of other add-ons such as auto-linking to wikipedia (!??!) and the ability to build todo lists.

A lot of these sort of things have sprung up lately and withered away, who knows if this will take off.

And in case you were wondering:

Sharing notes is not cheating. Everyone should have every advantage possible in increasing individual knowledge.

How many of the top students would want to put their notes online?

Google has announced an extension to their news search: the news archive search.

News archive search provides an easy way to search and explore historical archives. Users can search for events, people, ideas and see how they have been described over time. In addition to searching for the most relevant articles for their query, users can get an historical overview of the results by browsing an automatically created timeline. Search results include both content that is accessible to all users and content that requires a fee. Articles related to a single story within a given time period are grouped together to allow users to see a broad perspective on the events.

• In 1998 the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Monica Lewinsky was visiting Sydney, perhaps to see her 'Australian flame', an academic from Sydney.


• In 1993 a study to be carried out by Sydney academics on brain damage and drinking was big news.


• In 1966 the Oakland Tribune led with a story reporting "A SYDNEY UNIVERSITY physicist said today the United States, Britain and Russia are studying the possibility of using a nuclear rocket to prevent an asteroid from smashing into Earth." (His name is Prof. Stuart Thomas Butler).

While cleaning out my inbox this morning I noticed an email from the CHI-WEB list that I had previously missed entitled Blogs and Netiquette. After the interesting and very welcome response to the previous post on the new-look Uni site I thought it was timely to have another look at it. With the blogs dots usyd stable of blogs growing steadily I thought it might also be useful to look at a few of the issues.

The discussion in the email was related to the pros and cons of starting an in-house blog for employee feedback. If you're interested in starting a blog aligned to an organisation I encourage you to have a look at the email.

The relative issues for the University I see are as follows: