Knowledge Handler

Information Sources & Information Sifting Techniques

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Location: Independence, Ohio, United States

I am a retired librarian, most recently serving at Indiana Wesleyan University's Cleveland Education Center.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Where Good Ideas Come From

Steven Johnson's thesis in Where Good Ideas Come From is that interactions amid diversity causes new ideas to be applied. Throughout the book he uses the image of a vibrantly alive reef amid an ocean desert to represent the colonies of thinkers in cities (or now connected on the World Wide Web). Johnson extended Stuart Kauffman's concept of biological evolution to "adjacent possible" niches, applying the concept to technological evolution.

-DD

 

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Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Google Favors Mobile Sites

Sharon Gaudin offers tips to Web designers and SEO specialists who want to obtain a top Google ranking by offering a mobile-oriented site . At minimum a minimum, test your Web site using Google's test suite.

-DD

 

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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Miocrosoft Excel

JD Sartain offers Excel tips .

-DD

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Monday, April 27, 2015

Internet Explorer

Rey Bango tells web designers how to test Internet Explorer pages even if using a competitor's operating system.

-DD

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Saturday, April 25, 2015

Artistry Demands Technical Skills

Richa Jain shares insights on programming for web designers. Jain encourages designers to obtain as much control of their site display as possible through knowledge of the technlogy behind the site.

Jain admits that on a large Web team everyone has to be a specialist. However, obtaining a little knowledge can pay dividends to any artist. She quotes a letter from Vincent VanGogh:

‘I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.'

-DD

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Friday, April 24, 2015

World Changing Technologies

Top 10 Media presents Ten Technologies That Will Change the World .

-DD

 

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Thursday, April 23, 2015

Zombie List

Natalie Houston suggests making an action-oriented to-do list (which she dubbed a "zombie list") in order to be productive when harried or tired.

-DD

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Creating Chrome Extensions

John Sonmez shares how to create a Chrome extension. .

-DD

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Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Display Technology

Mike Elgan muses on the future of computer displays. Elgan shares plans by technology companies to incoporate virtual reality and display technologies in devices such as windows.

-DD

 

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Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Web Accessibility

Lyza Danger Gardner discusses how Web designers should assign role categories to sections of the documents they create. This makes it easier for those who must use adaptive technology to use the Web page.   The article has links to resources that teach how to create accessible websites, including the Web Accessibility Checklist and the more detailed Web Accessibility Initiative.

-DD

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Monday, April 20, 2015

Call To Action Buttons

Gabrielle Gosha explains how to use call to action buttons on a website.

Gosha refers to other resources, include Michael Aagaard's 10 case studies dealing with the placement and design of call to action buttons.

-DD

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Sunday, April 19, 2015

Smartphone Keyboards

Daniel Dern reviews four keyboards for smartphones . The reviews suggest what to seek in a small keyboard for a phone powerful enough to serve as a wearable computer.

-DD

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Saturday, April 18, 2015

Making Meetings Valuable

Peter DeWitt observes that administrative presentations to faculty are generally a waste of time . I am fortunate that the meetings I attend generally have truely multi-directional information sharing, inasmuch as the lowest staff member can suggest ideas or concerns to the Dean. This is a great improvement over the unilateral administrative presentations described by DeWitt.

-DD

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Friday, April 17, 2015

Data Sharing Between Universities

David Raths reports on efforts of large universities to share data using a common cloud technology .

-DD

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Thursday, April 16, 2015

LinkedIn Buying Lynda.com

Andy Thomason reports that LinkedIn is buying Lynda.com . Lynda.com is an online training site that began teaching technology skills using video. LinkedIn, which is career and employment focused, seems a good fit for those who need to training in the latest technologies or business concepts.

-DD

 

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Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Data Delivery Costs

"What Does My [Web] Site Cost? " is Tim Kradlec's tool to determine the cost of tranporting your Web page's data to another nation.

-DD

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Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Online Learning and Elite Universities

Steve Kolowich reports on what elite universities are doing with online learning . The comments pose various outlooks on the future of online learning in academia.

-DD

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Monday, April 13, 2015

HyperText Transfer Protocol Being Revised

Matt Wilcox observes that improvements in the HyperText Transfer Protocol will result in some current web page design practices being outmoded . The HTTP protocol assembles webpage components from servers for use on Web documents, and the tricks page designers have used to speed page loading may now impede the loading of page.

-DD

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Sunday, April 12, 2015

PowerPoint URLs for Cooperation

Michael Ricnas reports that Microsoft has purchased LiveLoop to add its web retrieval technology to PowerPoint. It will allow presenters to distribute a URL with a presentation to remote collaborators, allowing them to edit video presentations remotely.

-DD

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Saturday, April 11, 2015

Security Foolishness

Ryan Francis presents ten employee security errors which confound the efforts of a corporate information professional

. -DD

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Friday, April 10, 2015

Librarians Are A Valuable Resource

Shannon Mersand extols the service of librarians in helping students and teachers with technology. The post includes charts showing the distribution of services librarians provide.

-DD

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A Consequence of Free Information

Mark Buchanan suggests that the concept that "information is free" is impoverishing the middle class artisans who create information, while concentrating a great deal of wealth in the hands of those few who own server platforms (Facebook, Google, etc.) which distribute that information and then distribute in turn the behavioral data about the information users.

Buchanan suggests that nanopayments should be distributed to all information providers, providing economic benefit to largely middle-class information contributors.

It is my belief that a micropayment requirement might succeed in a "walled garden" nation such as China, a nation which can control the distribution of information to citizens. Micropayments probably would not be equitable in an environment where some nations require micropayments, and other nations do not. -DD

 

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Thursday, April 09, 2015

Passive Tense

Geoffery Pullum argues for relaxing any inflexible rejection of using the passive tense in formal writing.

-DD

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Cheating on Campus

Gary Thomason reports that Stanford is investigating increased cheating. Stanford Provost John Erchemendy says that as many as 20 percent of students in a large introductory course may have cheated. "“With the ease of technology and widespread sharing that is now part of a collaborative culture,” he wrote, “students need to recognize and be reminded that it is dishonest to appropriate the work of others” (Erchemendy, as cited by Thomason, 2015).

-DD

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Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Virtual Reality's Markets

Sharon Gaudin suggest the following five markets for virtual reality:

  1. Training
  2. Pulling in remote workers
  3. Less travel
  4. Interactions with products
  5. Interactions with staff

-DD

 

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Tuesday, April 07, 2015

Trade Secrets and Public Record

Andy Thomason reports that the National Association of College Stores is suing Purdue University because it wants full disclosure by Purdue of its contract with Amazon. Amazon negotiated with Purdue to provide bookstore services to the university, and required that large segments of its contract with this public university be redacted in public disclosure as "trade secrets."

In my experience working in a public library, book sellers often asked that their negotiated discounts be kept private. The National Association of College Stores seems to feel that contractual discount rates are a public record. The unintended consequence may that discounting is reduced or eliminated, decreasing the buying power of libraries in a time of financial restrictions.

-DD

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Monday, April 06, 2015

Student Exchange Programs

A student exchange program is a positive step toward world peace, as in my experience such a program helps people accept diversity in culture and race.

-DD

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Sunday, April 05, 2015

London Tube Map

Alex Walker explores the graphic design of the London Tube map . He notes it is a very inaccurate presentation of London geography, but it captures the relationship between stations in a comprehensible way.

-DD

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Saturday, April 04, 2015

Study What You Love

Dora Zhang meditates on studying what you love even if it is not highly marketable.

-DD

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Friday, April 03, 2015

Finnish Education Practices

Cathy Davidson reports on Finnish efforts to eliminate teaching by subject as a means of eliminating silos in learning.

-DD

 

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Thursday, April 02, 2015

Google Search Tips

Tips for limiting Google search results are provided by this presenter.   The utility Google for educators and students is highlighted.

-DD

 

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Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Bing Translate for Mobile

Bing Translate has been compressed to fit on a mobile phone.

-DD

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