Fair use is also limited in amount and scope of usage. When you *buy* a book, you can fairly use a certain percentage of the book--I believe it's 15%--but if it's a compilation of works, then you can't excerpt a whole short story, for example. In terms of scope, you can use it for personal reasons or for some educational purposes.
Amazon still provides excerpts, Search Inside, and Look Inside for many books. You can many times at least see the table of contents, selection from the introduction or first chapter, and index.
Also, see the above comments.
Would it hurt conference proceedings or help them? If before I wouldn't buy a compendium for $50, but now I can buy a few choice papers for $15, there's now money that previously the conference would not have received.
It's similar to an argument for iTunes, that people aren't willing to buy 10 tracks of music when they really want 1. But if you give them the option, they will buy that 1.
After spending some time in Eastern Africa, at times dealing with technology concerns, most villages don't have the resources to take advantage of software applications in reality. For example, what good is OpenOffice if they don't have a printer, toner cartridges, and paper? Also, climate control might be difficult for them, so just keeping any of this stuff operational is going to be a huge undertaking.
Maybe give them an archive of Wikipedia or HowStuffWorks would even be better! What good is Celestia when they need to learn how to fix a motorbike or a radio? Or health information?
Especially if the equipment isn't being sent to a *large* city, then the dust, humidity, shipment, and general treatment is going to send the equipment to the graveyard pretty soon anyways.
I concede that I used the wrong words for the wrong reasons--I should have said "hunger" instead of "starving" and "significant" instead of "large." But I also believe that as a distributed percentage, the numbers don't look so bad, but in a localized sense, it can look very bad.
There are anomalies like in Apalachian regions of poverty, but there are also less anomalous cases such as the South Side Chicago (on the outskirts of Cicero), many places in the Deep South, and Mexican border towns. Anecdotally, teaching in an urban school, it's startling to hear all the cases of students who eat a single meal a day (free school lunches), and who have no support in any sense at home. This is a huge (in the sense of factors, while maybe not numbers) sociological phenomena, based upon class (income, race, and education), and not clearly connected to the issue of capitalism, but it's all part of the same picture.
Again I sincerely apologize for my misuse of terms, but I think it's important to consider that though a rosy point-of-view is part of the American success story, it's not always true.
The argument is in the context of the article, asking whether you, as an individual, should prioritize helping out others in a manner that doesn't provide for your own personal needs-fulfillment.
In modern capitalism, most people profit from fulfilling needs of others--that's how demand is created. But there's an understanding that no *sacrifice* is made--it's a generalized quid pro quo. In the context of the article, there is no quid pro quo.
Famine is usually not caused by your economic system. It's usually environmental. In America, we don't have famine, but we do have people starving--in large percentages--due to the dog-eat-dog criteria of capitalism. There are many artifical methods that our govenment still employees to ensure that the capitalism around farming stays alive: such as government subsidies, which work into the capitalistic model, but muck around with the basic supply/demand model. They're props and kludges because the capitalism *didn't work*.
Pure-bred capitalism is also a cultural thing. We're good at it--others are not. Look at the history of economic bubbles and see how they almost destroyed nations. It's arguable whether capitalism is working in Southeast Asia or in regions of Africa. Our hope is that after time, things will "even out" and things will start working, but we're not sure because we actually haven't seen anything that has lived up to what our ideal as to how capitalism should be--yet.
It might work; it might not. Neither model--capitalism or any kind of backward capitalism--has been proven to work, but capitalism is the rules of the system we're currently in. An issue is that it *is* the survival of the fittest, and in a capitalist world those who care and are willing to sacrifice their own needs-fulfillment for the needs-fulfillment of another should lose and die. They don't deserve, by the rules of the game, to pass on their genes.
But it's a healthy dynamic to have those who buck the system. Everyone can't be a winner. Maybe the non-capitalists *will* survive as the fittest; maybe capitalism is here to stay and the wealthy will live at the top of the heap. I've made the decision that my time and resources are best served helping other help themselves (not *just* helping others); others should and will make their own personal decisions about the resources appropriately. I can generate sufficient wealth to succeed in the system, but I can also generate sufficient (unquantifiable) personal wealth in terms of goodwill, friendship, gratitude, and loyalty through my sacrifice--and these are elements of a "morality" that makes me happy. Perhaps this morality is weak, and so I'll die off and my genes will disappear. But it doesn't hurt to try.
This is all fine and good because that is the nature of capitalism, but you also then have to believe that capitalism works. I'm not sure if it does, and I see that when I look at the world economy and then the injustices of wealth distribution in America. Granted, it's not pure apocalypse, but it's not great.
I like to see a marketplace of ideas where, by virtue of a capitalistic metaphor, the economic system can be improved. It's not just a simple "I make my money for me" model, and I'm sure that a lot more goes into that calculation... Including a social element. Also the beauty of markets is that there HAS to be people who follow one model and don't follow another, there must be competition, so that there should be people who say "my money for me" and people who say "my money for everyone."
Again, it's a good place to start. But it needs to be connected to the real world - you have to make sure that the subtleties, nuances of actual human interaction aren't forgotten... It's important to not gloss over how complicated humanity is.
Definitely true. This is a start. A way to show that kids can methodically approach real-world (or virtually real-world:) ) decisions and that they're not just running willy-nilly as life speeds by.
Because of this desire to have kids "step back" and look at their world again, I like this approach of modeling the natural world in a virtual environment so you can attempt to reduce the variables, tweaking and experimenting it in the process. So maybe the just the idea of Pensky's to "learn... but with games!" is too simplistic a model. But it must be made clear that the simplification is a clear limitation of the method--and sometimes with science in general!
Any suggestions of other environments besides the Sims that might be effective in this manner?
As a middle- and high-school teacher, I'm working on integrating the Sims in a learning environment, similarly to how Prensky proposes in What Kids Learn that's POSITIVE..., but in a slightly different way.
With the Sims, students can experiment with modelling a different personality or type of interaction with other characters, and formally analyze how you learn about other peoples' wants and/or needs.
I feel that if I had the training to formally analyze social situations, even at the most superficial, it would have made my own social maturation a bit easier from the start.
If you focus and guide the lesson and not just give them a "game to play," these can be used very effectively.
Now, I have to figure out how to get the money to *buy* the Sims... (Teacher salaries + school district budgets) is basically adding zeroes.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair use is also limited in amount and scope of usage. When you *buy* a book, you can fairly use a certain percentage of the book--I believe it's 15%--but if it's a compilation of works, then you can't excerpt a whole short story, for example. In terms of scope, you can use it for personal reasons or for some educational purposes.
Amazon still provides excerpts, Search Inside, and Look Inside for many books. You can many times at least see the table of contents, selection from the introduction or first chapter, and index. Also, see the above comments.
Would it hurt conference proceedings or help them? If before I wouldn't buy a compendium for $50, but now I can buy a few choice papers for $15, there's now money that previously the conference would not have received. It's similar to an argument for iTunes, that people aren't willing to buy 10 tracks of music when they really want 1. But if you give them the option, they will buy that 1.
After spending some time in Eastern Africa, at times dealing with technology concerns, most villages don't have the resources to take advantage of software applications in reality. For example, what good is OpenOffice if they don't have a printer, toner cartridges, and paper? Also, climate control might be difficult for them, so just keeping any of this stuff operational is going to be a huge undertaking.
Maybe give them an archive of Wikipedia or HowStuffWorks would even be better! What good is Celestia when they need to learn how to fix a motorbike or a radio? Or health information?
Especially if the equipment isn't being sent to a *large* city, then the dust, humidity, shipment, and general treatment is going to send the equipment to the graveyard pretty soon anyways.
damnsmallinux.org
Move your life towards simplicity!
I concede that I used the wrong words for the wrong reasons--I should have said "hunger" instead of "starving" and "significant" instead of "large." But I also believe that as a distributed percentage, the numbers don't look so bad, but in a localized sense, it can look very bad.
http://www.hungerfreeamerica.com/facts/statisticsThere are anomalies like in Apalachian regions of poverty, but there are also less anomalous cases such as the South Side Chicago (on the outskirts of Cicero), many places in the Deep South, and Mexican border towns. Anecdotally, teaching in an urban school, it's startling to hear all the cases of students who eat a single meal a day (free school lunches), and who have no support in any sense at home. This is a huge (in the sense of factors, while maybe not numbers) sociological phenomena, based upon class (income, race, and education), and not clearly connected to the issue of capitalism, but it's all part of the same picture.
Again I sincerely apologize for my misuse of terms, but I think it's important to consider that though a rosy point-of-view is part of the American success story, it's not always true.
The argument is in the context of the article, asking whether you, as an individual, should prioritize helping out others in a manner that doesn't provide for your own personal needs-fulfillment.
In modern capitalism, most people profit from fulfilling needs of others--that's how demand is created. But there's an understanding that no *sacrifice* is made--it's a generalized quid pro quo. In the context of the article, there is no quid pro quo.
Famine is usually not caused by your economic system. It's usually environmental. In America, we don't have famine, but we do have people starving--in large percentages--due to the dog-eat-dog criteria of capitalism. There are many artifical methods that our govenment still employees to ensure that the capitalism around farming stays alive: such as government subsidies, which work into the capitalistic model, but muck around with the basic supply/demand model. They're props and kludges because the capitalism *didn't work*.
Pure-bred capitalism is also a cultural thing. We're good at it--others are not. Look at the history of economic bubbles and see how they almost destroyed nations. It's arguable whether capitalism is working in Southeast Asia or in regions of Africa. Our hope is that after time, things will "even out" and things will start working, but we're not sure because we actually haven't seen anything that has lived up to what our ideal as to how capitalism should be--yet.
It might work; it might not. Neither model--capitalism or any kind of backward capitalism--has been proven to work, but capitalism is the rules of the system we're currently in. An issue is that it *is* the survival of the fittest, and in a capitalist world those who care and are willing to sacrifice their own needs-fulfillment for the needs-fulfillment of another should lose and die. They don't deserve, by the rules of the game, to pass on their genes.
But it's a healthy dynamic to have those who buck the system. Everyone can't be a winner. Maybe the non-capitalists *will* survive as the fittest; maybe capitalism is here to stay and the wealthy will live at the top of the heap. I've made the decision that my time and resources are best served helping other help themselves (not *just* helping others); others should and will make their own personal decisions about the resources appropriately. I can generate sufficient wealth to succeed in the system, but I can also generate sufficient (unquantifiable) personal wealth in terms of goodwill, friendship, gratitude, and loyalty through my sacrifice--and these are elements of a "morality" that makes me happy. Perhaps this morality is weak, and so I'll die off and my genes will disappear. But it doesn't hurt to try.
This is all fine and good because that is the nature of capitalism, but you also then have to believe that capitalism works. I'm not sure if it does, and I see that when I look at the world economy and then the injustices of wealth distribution in America. Granted, it's not pure apocalypse, but it's not great. I like to see a marketplace of ideas where, by virtue of a capitalistic metaphor, the economic system can be improved. It's not just a simple "I make my money for me" model, and I'm sure that a lot more goes into that calculation... Including a social element. Also the beauty of markets is that there HAS to be people who follow one model and don't follow another, there must be competition, so that there should be people who say "my money for me" and people who say "my money for everyone."
Again, it's a good place to start. But it needs to be connected to the real world - you have to make sure that the subtleties, nuances of actual human interaction aren't forgotten ... It's important to not gloss over how complicated humanity is.
Definitely true. This is a start. A way to show that kids can methodically approach real-world (or virtually real-world :) ) decisions and that they're not just running willy-nilly as life speeds by.
Because of this desire to have kids "step back" and look at their world again, I like this approach of modeling the natural world in a virtual environment so you can attempt to reduce the variables, tweaking and experimenting it in the process. So maybe the just the idea of Pensky's to "learn... but with games!" is too simplistic a model. But it must be made clear that the simplification is a clear limitation of the method--and sometimes with science in general!
Any suggestions of other environments besides the Sims that might be effective in this manner?
As a middle- and high-school teacher, I'm working on integrating the Sims in a learning environment, similarly to how Prensky proposes in What Kids Learn that's POSITIVE..., but in a slightly different way.
With the Sims, students can experiment with modelling a different personality or type of interaction with other characters, and formally analyze how you learn about other peoples' wants and/or needs.
I feel that if I had the training to formally analyze social situations, even at the most superficial, it would have made my own social maturation a bit easier from the start.
If you focus and guide the lesson and not just give them a "game to play," these can be used very effectively.
Now, I have to figure out how to get the money to *buy* the Sims... (Teacher salaries + school district budgets) is basically adding zeroes.