Peter Rock has been graciously helping me continue to think about copyright over on his blog.  It started with his post "sharing denies nothing" in which he says:
Most certainly, file sharing does not include payment (hence “sharing”), but that’s very different than an active “denying” of payment. While the difference is subtle, it is significant [...]

If you haven’t already heard, some exciting news (and two clarifications) from Dan Cohen:
I’m pleased to announce a major alliance between the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and the Internet Archive.
The Zotero-IA alliance will create a “Zotero Commons” into which scholarly materials can be added simply via the Zotero client.

Cohen’s [...]

The Freakonomics Blog (hosted by the New York Times) held a quorum on standardized testing and posted the contributions yesterday. The questions were:
Should there be less standardized testing in the current school system, or more? Should all schools, including colleges, institute exit exams?
Of the five responses, W. James Popham and Thomas Toch had the [...]

I’m still reading Larry Lessig’s Free Culture, which is excellent so far. In the meantime, while following the Lane Hartwell controversy, I found a link to Lessig’s March, 2007 talk at TED (posted Nov. ‘07).

He ends with a strong emotional appeal about how this controversy is affecting and will continue to affect “kids”:
We made [...]

Over the last week or so, reading and the role of books have been popping up everywhere, it seems:

Reading is getting a lot of play in the press: the NEA warned that Americans are reading less and their proficiency is declining, though it appears the NEA needs to learn how to read data. Then, [...]

More teachers resigned during the last school year than at any time in recent history, according to figures released yesterday by the United Federation of Teachers …
The good news is that the UFT could be making it all up.  That’s also the bad news.

Of course, I haven’t read this book, but PW’s review of Pierre Bayard’s How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read claims the central thesis is that “the act of reading is less important than knowing the social and intellectual context of a book.”1
That argument sounds a lot like Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy, in which he [...]

Education Sector has posted the text of a presentation1 delivered by co-founder and co-director Thomas Toch. In it, Toch gives a brief but helpful recap of recent educational policy struggles, defines three main areas of tension, and suggests the likely outcome of each:

National vs. local authority in school reform; verdict: national standards are inevitable
Low-performing [...]

Gary Stager, in a few recent posts, has been stirring the pot by confronting some popular “Web 2.0″ ideas, like the digital immigrants/digital natives divide, the concept of the flat world, and the latest Michael Wesch video. Ultimately, Stager is serving as the voice of caution, warning pro-tech educators not to become enamored with [...]

Google and Weekly Reader’s Writing for Teens magazine have put together a few lesson plans for to help teachers and students use Google Docs for collaborative writing. The lessons provide instructions for using Google Docs, student-oriented suggestions, tips, and checklists for working through an online, collaborative revision process, and an educator’s guide. Helpful [...]