Domain: oomind.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to oomind.com.
Comments · 32
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Arbitrary!!!
Any sort of editing (including no editing) is essentially arbitrary. I run an educational web site that allows anyone (registered) to post content. In my terms of use when people register, I basically say that the line between appropriate and inappropriate is arbitrary and determined on a case-by-case basis. This is the only true answer. Even slashdot has removed a small number of posts. My system (Oomind) has a complex moderation mechanism and complex lameness filters. I use 10 dimensions of moderation so that people can filter based on a pretty sophisticated set of interests. The lameness filters include the usual "bad words" and "bad html" but also include post length, and a few other nifty things. So far the Oomind moderation system and lameness filters have not been pushed hard enough to really know if it "works", but hey, here's hoping
:-) Blatant plug: Oomind is to education as open source is to commercial software: -
We're switching to JBoss
This isn't a big deal, but I've been very wary of J2EE app servers. I've been working with server-side Java for about 4 years now, and previously with EOF (Nextstep/Webobjects). EJB is incredibly broken compared to EOF/WebObjects. But my online educational system Oomind is running on Tomcat right now, and needs a more complete platform. So we are moving. And after some careful analysis and real world experience, we're choosing JBoss. Frankly, it being open-source is a very significant factor. Kudos to JBoss and its developers!
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Oomind Open Education Community
(I just posted a shorter version of this - this provides more info.) I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind [oomind.com] for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it!
Oomind Open Education Community So basically it works like this: the units of educational material are called Courselets. Each courselet is like an article writen about a specific subject. There's lots of flexibility here so even a poem can be a courselet. A courselet has ratings in ten different attributes including Beauty, Creativity, Insightfulness, Theoretical, etc. Registered users can moderate these ratings on a courselet. The ratings change based on a weighted average taking into account a user's level of influence. Courselets also have quiz questions. The questions can be written by anyone, not just the author of the courselet. The questions also have a score which is just a weight, and a price (!) which is in "oo-points". Oo-points are Oomind's internal unit of currency. They are purchased and redeemed for cash. When you answer a question and get it correct then the price of the question is taken from you and distributed three ways: 40% to the courselet author, 40% to the question author and 20% to the system. Oh: authors can use multiple aliases. When you answer the question correctly you also get "credit" - the 10 scores of the courselet are modified by the weight of the question and added to your "Portrait". Therefore your academic credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. It is also dynamic: as the scores of the courselets change, so do your learner scores. You also have educator scores which are the sum of the scores of all the courselets you have contributed (also dynamic). Courselet are free to be read by anyone and can be linked too from external sites - "knowledge wants to be free". In progress: group and messaging features. I really hope that people check it out and sign up. Right now there are about 80 registered users. The next 20 get 1000 oo-points free, and after that it is just 100 oo-points free. Also there aren't that many courselets right now (maybe about 100) and not too many questions on courselets. Please contribute! Thanks and please mod this up. I know this is blatant but I think it is of real interest for the Slashdot community. -
Oomind Open Education Community
(I just posted a shorter version of this - this provides more info.) I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind [oomind.com] for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it!
Oomind Open Education Community So basically it works like this: the units of educational material are called Courselets. Each courselet is like an article writen about a specific subject. There's lots of flexibility here so even a poem can be a courselet. A courselet has ratings in ten different attributes including Beauty, Creativity, Insightfulness, Theoretical, etc. Registered users can moderate these ratings on a courselet. The ratings change based on a weighted average taking into account a user's level of influence. Courselets also have quiz questions. The questions can be written by anyone, not just the author of the courselet. The questions also have a score which is just a weight, and a price (!) which is in "oo-points". Oo-points are Oomind's internal unit of currency. They are purchased and redeemed for cash. When you answer a question and get it correct then the price of the question is taken from you and distributed three ways: 40% to the courselet author, 40% to the question author and 20% to the system. Oh: authors can use multiple aliases. When you answer the question correctly you also get "credit" - the 10 scores of the courselet are modified by the weight of the question and added to your "Portrait". Therefore your academic credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. It is also dynamic: as the scores of the courselets change, so do your learner scores. You also have educator scores which are the sum of the scores of all the courselets you have contributed (also dynamic). Courselet are free to be read by anyone and can be linked too from external sites - "knowledge wants to be free". In progress: group and messaging features. I really hope that people check it out and sign up. Right now there are about 80 registered users. The next 20 get 1000 oo-points free, and after that it is just 100 oo-points free. Also there aren't that many courselets right now (maybe about 100) and not too many questions on courselets. Please contribute! Thanks and please mod this up. I know this is blatant but I think it is of real interest for the Slashdot community. -
Oomind Open Education Community
(I just posted a shorter version of this - this provides more info.) I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind [oomind.com] for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it!
Oomind Open Education Community So basically it works like this: the units of educational material are called Courselets. Each courselet is like an article writen about a specific subject. There's lots of flexibility here so even a poem can be a courselet. A courselet has ratings in ten different attributes including Beauty, Creativity, Insightfulness, Theoretical, etc. Registered users can moderate these ratings on a courselet. The ratings change based on a weighted average taking into account a user's level of influence. Courselets also have quiz questions. The questions can be written by anyone, not just the author of the courselet. The questions also have a score which is just a weight, and a price (!) which is in "oo-points". Oo-points are Oomind's internal unit of currency. They are purchased and redeemed for cash. When you answer a question and get it correct then the price of the question is taken from you and distributed three ways: 40% to the courselet author, 40% to the question author and 20% to the system. Oh: authors can use multiple aliases. When you answer the question correctly you also get "credit" - the 10 scores of the courselet are modified by the weight of the question and added to your "Portrait". Therefore your academic credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. It is also dynamic: as the scores of the courselets change, so do your learner scores. You also have educator scores which are the sum of the scores of all the courselets you have contributed (also dynamic). Courselet are free to be read by anyone and can be linked too from external sites - "knowledge wants to be free". In progress: group and messaging features. I really hope that people check it out and sign up. Right now there are about 80 registered users. The next 20 get 1000 oo-points free, and after that it is just 100 oo-points free. Also there aren't that many courselets right now (maybe about 100) and not too many questions on courselets. Please contribute! Thanks and please mod this up. I know this is blatant but I think it is of real interest for the Slashdot community. -
I'll be getting this book...
I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it!
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I'll be getting this book...
I am trying to build a community educational web site. The idea is pretty basic: open up education so that people can participate fully as learners, educators and "accreditors". I've taken inspiration from slashdot as well as other community web sites. Problem is: it's not very "sticky" and this is because its kinda complicated and a tiny bit hard to use. I don't have the resources right now to totally fix that, although I have ideas. Please check it out: Oomind Open Education Community. I've even got an e-commerce aspect so that once it gets going a bit, people can actually earn money from their contributions. Check out The Philosophy of Oomind for some background thoughts as well. This is a blatant plug: I would really love to get lots of people using it, and particularly contributing to it!
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Economics of Open Source Software
Since the last time this article was posted, I have worked out my comments a little more completely and posted them to Oomind. Basic summary: recession is bad for capitalist enterprises relying on OSS business models, but good for the community aspect of OSS.
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Learn about eXtreme Programming
Honestly, I was starting to feel the same way in the work world. I've been a software engineer professionally for about 10 years. Extreme Programming (XP) is the twitch in your fingers when the meetings get long, it is the surge of pride when software works first time round. Check it out: http://www.extremeprogramming.org or for a business-level summary: executive summary of XP. Good luck! Don't give up just yet. School can be stultifying, and so can work. But if you are talented, there will always be good opportunities. Also consider starting your own business. There are lots of programs for supporting small business in most countries - it is very exciting and great experience. Or work for a startup doing cool stuff (not many of those around anymore, but still).
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Dating Accuracy
One thing this article fails to mention is that when these dating techniques are used, they often give wildly varying results for a single sample often with a spread of 2 orders of magnitude!!! Another interesting point is that all the radioactive dating methods are based on critical assumptions about our earth which in some cases (Carbon-14 in the atmosphere) have been proven wrong. I'm _not_ a creationist - I believe that if anything the creation story is meant to be an allegory of some sort. So I don't pay much attention to creationist rants. I have read several good books which address these issues, particularly as the related to evolution and archaeology. On is: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism (thats a review of it). It discusses in scientific detail what is wrong with the radioactive dating methods both theoretically and in their application. I highly recommend the book even though I am not truly qualified to assess its arguments (IANAS(cientist)).
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An Alternative Educational System for Communities
MIT's stuff is really cool by virtue of its name. MIT is respected, well known, etc. All the course materials are also a great store of knowledge. But...
I've been working on a community educational system called Oomind. The great thing about oomind is that people are not just passive recipients of knowledge. You can also contribute your knowledge, and evaluate the quality of others' contributions. And, you can answer quiz questions to develop an academic record which is cumulative rather than percentage based.
You can find more about the philosophy of Oomind, and an introduction to how Oomind works. The basic idea is that educational material is in the form of courselets. These courselets have scores in ten different attributes including practicality, creativity, and beauty. The scores are based on a weighted average of user's evaluations of the courselet. These scores help in two ways: searching for information, and determining dynamically the academic value of the knowledge. Each courselet can have quiz questions submitted by any user. The questions also have a weight based on users' evaluations. When you answer a question correctly, the weight is used to add a percentage of the courselet's attribute scores to your academic record as a learner.
Anyway, it is very dynamic, but it is still new so there isn't too much content. Please join up and submit courselets!!!
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An Alternative Educational System for Communities
MIT's stuff is really cool by virtue of its name. MIT is respected, well known, etc. All the course materials are also a great store of knowledge. But...
I've been working on a community educational system called Oomind. The great thing about oomind is that people are not just passive recipients of knowledge. You can also contribute your knowledge, and evaluate the quality of others' contributions. And, you can answer quiz questions to develop an academic record which is cumulative rather than percentage based.
You can find more about the philosophy of Oomind, and an introduction to how Oomind works. The basic idea is that educational material is in the form of courselets. These courselets have scores in ten different attributes including practicality, creativity, and beauty. The scores are based on a weighted average of user's evaluations of the courselet. These scores help in two ways: searching for information, and determining dynamically the academic value of the knowledge. Each courselet can have quiz questions submitted by any user. The questions also have a weight based on users' evaluations. When you answer a question correctly, the weight is used to add a percentage of the courselet's attribute scores to your academic record as a learner.
Anyway, it is very dynamic, but it is still new so there isn't too much content. Please join up and submit courselets!!!
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An Alternative Educational System for Communities
MIT's stuff is really cool by virtue of its name. MIT is respected, well known, etc. All the course materials are also a great store of knowledge. But...
I've been working on a community educational system called Oomind. The great thing about oomind is that people are not just passive recipients of knowledge. You can also contribute your knowledge, and evaluate the quality of others' contributions. And, you can answer quiz questions to develop an academic record which is cumulative rather than percentage based.
You can find more about the philosophy of Oomind, and an introduction to how Oomind works. The basic idea is that educational material is in the form of courselets. These courselets have scores in ten different attributes including practicality, creativity, and beauty. The scores are based on a weighted average of user's evaluations of the courselet. These scores help in two ways: searching for information, and determining dynamically the academic value of the knowledge. Each courselet can have quiz questions submitted by any user. The questions also have a weight based on users' evaluations. When you answer a question correctly, the weight is used to add a percentage of the courselet's attribute scores to your academic record as a learner.
Anyway, it is very dynamic, but it is still new so there isn't too much content. Please join up and submit courselets!!!
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Peer Review Online
The internet/www is one of those really nifty technologies that changes the whole way of doing many things. Because the internet allows for incredible amounts of interactivity (not taken advantage of by most sites), peer review suddenly becomes much more "real". Traditional journals have a small number of peers who serve to review any given article, and constant discussion is not generally published.
The internet of course can completely change that where any peer can review any work. And why stop at scientific publishing? And why stop at publishing for that matter. Much published work serves an educational purpose as well as a documentary purpose.
So, here is a plug for my online educational community, Oomind. It allows anyone to publish, and to review, and to have that review reflected in an educational context. Basically, you can write a "courselet", and post it on Oomind. The courselet is initially given an evaluation by yourself, the author based on 10 attributes including practicality, information content, beauty and creativity among others. Once the courselet is on the system, others can also review it and the attributes have scores based on a weighted average of all the evaluations. The educational part comes in when you or others add quiz questions to your courselet. These questions are also weighted based on peer evaluations, and those weights determine how much credit one gets for the courselet when the question is answered correctly. Your educational credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. There are many other features to the system as well which create a democratic and more importantly meritocratic system.
If you are interested, you can check out: the main oomind site, the philosophy of oomind, and a general introduction to oomind.
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Peer Review Online
The internet/www is one of those really nifty technologies that changes the whole way of doing many things. Because the internet allows for incredible amounts of interactivity (not taken advantage of by most sites), peer review suddenly becomes much more "real". Traditional journals have a small number of peers who serve to review any given article, and constant discussion is not generally published.
The internet of course can completely change that where any peer can review any work. And why stop at scientific publishing? And why stop at publishing for that matter. Much published work serves an educational purpose as well as a documentary purpose.
So, here is a plug for my online educational community, Oomind. It allows anyone to publish, and to review, and to have that review reflected in an educational context. Basically, you can write a "courselet", and post it on Oomind. The courselet is initially given an evaluation by yourself, the author based on 10 attributes including practicality, information content, beauty and creativity among others. Once the courselet is on the system, others can also review it and the attributes have scores based on a weighted average of all the evaluations. The educational part comes in when you or others add quiz questions to your courselet. These questions are also weighted based on peer evaluations, and those weights determine how much credit one gets for the courselet when the question is answered correctly. Your educational credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. There are many other features to the system as well which create a democratic and more importantly meritocratic system.
If you are interested, you can check out: the main oomind site, the philosophy of oomind, and a general introduction to oomind.
-
Peer Review Online
The internet/www is one of those really nifty technologies that changes the whole way of doing many things. Because the internet allows for incredible amounts of interactivity (not taken advantage of by most sites), peer review suddenly becomes much more "real". Traditional journals have a small number of peers who serve to review any given article, and constant discussion is not generally published.
The internet of course can completely change that where any peer can review any work. And why stop at scientific publishing? And why stop at publishing for that matter. Much published work serves an educational purpose as well as a documentary purpose.
So, here is a plug for my online educational community, Oomind. It allows anyone to publish, and to review, and to have that review reflected in an educational context. Basically, you can write a "courselet", and post it on Oomind. The courselet is initially given an evaluation by yourself, the author based on 10 attributes including practicality, information content, beauty and creativity among others. Once the courselet is on the system, others can also review it and the attributes have scores based on a weighted average of all the evaluations. The educational part comes in when you or others add quiz questions to your courselet. These questions are also weighted based on peer evaluations, and those weights determine how much credit one gets for the courselet when the question is answered correctly. Your educational credit is cumulative rather than percentage based. There are many other features to the system as well which create a democratic and more importantly meritocratic system.
If you are interested, you can check out: the main oomind site, the philosophy of oomind, and a general introduction to oomind.
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One Problemwith university education / technical college training etc. is that it is single purpose (for the most part). University education is about theory, not practical application whereas technical college is about practical application only. Even the "well-rounded" education of a liberal arts degree is still almost completely focussed on the theoretical side of things. But in reality, there are many aspects to learning which we absorb throughout our lives, but are often unacknowledged. For example, every single human being learns about beauty. Very rarely is beauty approached directly in educational systems, or in job "requirements", or in civic responsibilities. Another example is creativity. There is an educational system which does account for these things explicitly: the Oomind educational system (www.oomind.com). It accounts for educational material having the following attributes:
- Beautiful
- Creative
- Empowering
- Entertaining
- Informative
- Insightful
- Inspirational
- Practical
- Theoretical
- User Friendly
You can also check out the philosophy behind Oomind and a general introduction to Oomind.
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One Problemwith university education / technical college training etc. is that it is single purpose (for the most part). University education is about theory, not practical application whereas technical college is about practical application only. Even the "well-rounded" education of a liberal arts degree is still almost completely focussed on the theoretical side of things. But in reality, there are many aspects to learning which we absorb throughout our lives, but are often unacknowledged. For example, every single human being learns about beauty. Very rarely is beauty approached directly in educational systems, or in job "requirements", or in civic responsibilities. Another example is creativity. There is an educational system which does account for these things explicitly: the Oomind educational system (www.oomind.com). It accounts for educational material having the following attributes:
- Beautiful
- Creative
- Empowering
- Entertaining
- Informative
- Insightful
- Inspirational
- Practical
- Theoretical
- User Friendly
You can also check out the philosophy behind Oomind and a general introduction to Oomind.
-
One Problemwith university education / technical college training etc. is that it is single purpose (for the most part). University education is about theory, not practical application whereas technical college is about practical application only. Even the "well-rounded" education of a liberal arts degree is still almost completely focussed on the theoretical side of things. But in reality, there are many aspects to learning which we absorb throughout our lives, but are often unacknowledged. For example, every single human being learns about beauty. Very rarely is beauty approached directly in educational systems, or in job "requirements", or in civic responsibilities. Another example is creativity. There is an educational system which does account for these things explicitly: the Oomind educational system (www.oomind.com). It accounts for educational material having the following attributes:
- Beautiful
- Creative
- Empowering
- Entertaining
- Informative
- Insightful
- Inspirational
- Practical
- Theoretical
- User Friendly
You can also check out the philosophy behind Oomind and a general introduction to Oomind.
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Reflections on The Terrorist Attacks
I have written Reflections on The Terrorist Attacks on New York and Washington.
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C++, Java and Objective-C
I have used Java and Objective-C professionally in a very extensive manner, and a little bit of C++. I think they are all great, but I feel more friendly to Objective-C
:-) It is great to see that the IVM people have bothered with it. It would be really fantastic if they made it so that you could inline any language inside any other. The big difficulty with this is that the three languages (C++, Java, Objective-C) have fundamentally different ways of "implementing" objects, particularly method calls, but other aspects as well. Objective-C provides more flexible run-time typing and meta-class objects. Java has decent security, exception and threading built in (decent, not great). C++ has operater overloading, friends, etc.
Check out my Courselet: Architectures with XML Documents -
Mozilla vs. Communicator
I've been using Netscape Communicator 4.72 for the last X years. Why? I have over 82000 email messages that I have kept! I do not want the hassle of moving over to Outlook or some other platform for email - lots of filters to set up, _lots_ of folders to set up, and many many thousands of messages to transfer. So I've been waiting for Mozilla to mature. I have tried it a few times over the last two years - and always it has not quite made the cut. In particular, importing the huge number of messages and folders has been a real hassle (often crashing). I'm getting close to switching. This release seems much better. We'll see...
"Blade Runner" the Comic Noir, "Akira" the Film -
Telecommuting and Politics
During the glory days of the
.com boom, I was working for a company in the bay area - telecommuting 100% of the time. I was responsible for the development of the company's first product to launch. I did extensive market analysis, requirments analysis, architecture, design, development, testing etc. all from my home in small-town Ontario in Canada. Tools? CVS and email and telephone. Daily status reports. But. After a couple of months, one of the founders got it in his head that I was evil incarnate and lazy and incapable to boot. The next year was hell for me. I had to work 80 hour weeks to keep up the tiny fraction of political good-will left to me. And because I was out of sight (site), he had all the opportunities in the world to slander me, but noone thought to check with me to see my side of the story. I would hear about accusations weeks after they had been made and been allowed to fester. Suffice it to say: there are some personal risks involved with telecommuting. The good side? Lots of flexibility to get up for a few moments and hang out with my family, doing errands was usually okay in the middle of the day. Good luck - and keep in mind the political side of telecommuting if you do convince your bosses! Architectures with XML Documents -
Hmm.Well, I was in a dot-com that crashed. I invested in it (foolishly, fully aware that I would likely never see the substantial sum of money ever again). Luckily I picked up a contract just before things really started to go south in 2000. But the contract has ended and now I'm pounding the keyboard searching for work. Sucks.
But, I managed some really cool stuff in the last several months - I started Oomind.com which is a pretty cool educational concept. The idea is to "open" education: anyone can be a learner and an educator and an accreditor using a sophisticated (some might say complicated) moderation system.
So if any of you out there are thinking about education instead of work, please check out oomind.com. It is set up so that you might even make a little money for your contributions to the system. Check out the following links for more info:
The Philosophy of Oomind
Introduction to Oomind
Thanks for taking the time to read my little blatant self-promotion. If anyone has suggestions about the Oomind system, I would love to hear them. -
Hmm.Well, I was in a dot-com that crashed. I invested in it (foolishly, fully aware that I would likely never see the substantial sum of money ever again). Luckily I picked up a contract just before things really started to go south in 2000. But the contract has ended and now I'm pounding the keyboard searching for work. Sucks.
But, I managed some really cool stuff in the last several months - I started Oomind.com which is a pretty cool educational concept. The idea is to "open" education: anyone can be a learner and an educator and an accreditor using a sophisticated (some might say complicated) moderation system.
So if any of you out there are thinking about education instead of work, please check out oomind.com. It is set up so that you might even make a little money for your contributions to the system. Check out the following links for more info:
The Philosophy of Oomind
Introduction to Oomind
Thanks for taking the time to read my little blatant self-promotion. If anyone has suggestions about the Oomind system, I would love to hear them. -
Hmm.Well, I was in a dot-com that crashed. I invested in it (foolishly, fully aware that I would likely never see the substantial sum of money ever again). Luckily I picked up a contract just before things really started to go south in 2000. But the contract has ended and now I'm pounding the keyboard searching for work. Sucks.
But, I managed some really cool stuff in the last several months - I started Oomind.com which is a pretty cool educational concept. The idea is to "open" education: anyone can be a learner and an educator and an accreditor using a sophisticated (some might say complicated) moderation system.
So if any of you out there are thinking about education instead of work, please check out oomind.com. It is set up so that you might even make a little money for your contributions to the system. Check out the following links for more info:
The Philosophy of Oomind
Introduction to Oomind
Thanks for taking the time to read my little blatant self-promotion. If anyone has suggestions about the Oomind system, I would love to hear them. -
Please please pleaseCheck out Oomind.com. This is the kind of thing where you can search based on qualities that are important not just keywords - and when you read something, you are also _learning_ it and this can be validated. It's a cool site.
Sorry for the shameless plug, but it seemed really appropriate.
http://www.oomind.com/ -
Open Journal and Education
There are lots of interesting things going on with publishing and the web. The thing that traditional journals have is that the editor and the editorial board are all acknowledged experts in the field of the journal. This has benefits and drawbacks obviously: crap is usually weeded out, but radical ideas are also often weeded out. Journals are not "open" or "free". The web on the other hand is a very open and free publishing media. This has reciprocal benefits and drawbacks to the journal system.
So that is all stuff everyone knows.
What is really interesting are those web environments that try to balance openness with peer review. Slashdot is obviously one such environment, everything2 is another, etc. But what they lack is subtlety and organization.
So, even though it's probably a karma bad, I'm going to do a blatant self promotion: oomind is a web system that balances openness and peer review but also provides subtlety and organization. It is brand new, so there isn't much content yet, but please check it out. Here is the philosophy of oomind, and here is the more functional introduction.
Thanks.
http://www.oomind.com/ -
Open Journal and Education
There are lots of interesting things going on with publishing and the web. The thing that traditional journals have is that the editor and the editorial board are all acknowledged experts in the field of the journal. This has benefits and drawbacks obviously: crap is usually weeded out, but radical ideas are also often weeded out. Journals are not "open" or "free". The web on the other hand is a very open and free publishing media. This has reciprocal benefits and drawbacks to the journal system.
So that is all stuff everyone knows.
What is really interesting are those web environments that try to balance openness with peer review. Slashdot is obviously one such environment, everything2 is another, etc. But what they lack is subtlety and organization.
So, even though it's probably a karma bad, I'm going to do a blatant self promotion: oomind is a web system that balances openness and peer review but also provides subtlety and organization. It is brand new, so there isn't much content yet, but please check it out. Here is the philosophy of oomind, and here is the more functional introduction.
Thanks.
http://www.oomind.com/ -
Open Journal and Education
There are lots of interesting things going on with publishing and the web. The thing that traditional journals have is that the editor and the editorial board are all acknowledged experts in the field of the journal. This has benefits and drawbacks obviously: crap is usually weeded out, but radical ideas are also often weeded out. Journals are not "open" or "free". The web on the other hand is a very open and free publishing media. This has reciprocal benefits and drawbacks to the journal system.
So that is all stuff everyone knows.
What is really interesting are those web environments that try to balance openness with peer review. Slashdot is obviously one such environment, everything2 is another, etc. But what they lack is subtlety and organization.
So, even though it's probably a karma bad, I'm going to do a blatant self promotion: oomind is a web system that balances openness and peer review but also provides subtlety and organization. It is brand new, so there isn't much content yet, but please check it out. Here is the philosophy of oomind, and here is the more functional introduction.
Thanks.
http://www.oomind.com/ -
Education vs. everything else
I have to admit, I am not terribly surprised by the trend to get rid of the free stuff. Most products and services are not inherently suited to be sold over the Internet. I'm not going to support that statement too much, except to say that the difficulty in finding a viable business model is a sign of this. But, education is the one thing that I can see as being really good over the web. Obviously I'm not talking about teaching a Drama class
:) But I am talking about that part of a discipline which relates to history, theory or criticism. And in many more intellectual disciplines, the practical aspect can also be effectively provided. The one thing that many dot-com internet businesses failed to take advantage of is the inherent interactivity of the Internet. And it is this inherent interactivity which makes education such a good Internet play. The one big hump that businesses and schools who are doing e-learning will have to deal with is that now old saw "information wants to be free". They have to move beyond selling their content. Sell academic credit - the report card - instead. Now here comes the blatant self-promotion... One site which does all this is called Oomind. It is, as far as I know, the only truly open educational system. Anyone can be not just a learner, but also an educator and an accreditor. The whole point of Oomind, is to democratize education (and make a little money doing it). Please check it out. -
Re:Napster for scientific papers? - done!Coincidentally, I just launched a web app that is almost exactly this. It is called Oomind. It is actually meant to bring research and education back together. People can post articles, papers, essays, stories, in any topic, and they are reviewed. Then there are also quiz questions which can be purchased (you pay for the accademic credit
:).Of course, I'm hoping that this will be the new model for education: everyone is a leraner, an educator, and an accreditor. And therefore anyone who thinks they have a good idea can publish, and it is peer-reviewed to determine quality along a number of attributes.
Check it out: http://www.oomind.com/
PS. Yes this is blatant self promotion. Still, I think it is totally apropriate.