Monthly Archives: August 2014

Best Southern Novels Ever Written | Flavorwire

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The American South has long been seen as the focus of the country’s Civil Rights Movement, carrying with it the stigma of poverty, racism, and anti-intellectualism. Yet the region has also produced a disproportionate number of intellectuals, poets, and writers, possibly because of the complicated and layered identities each Southerner holds within him- or herself. The South has begotten some of our nation’s most important authors, including prize winners like William Styron, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison, Harper Lee, and that titan of American letters, William Faulkner. These 50 novels are a reminder that the South cannot be defined solely by its failings; it is also responsible for shaping the minds of countless thinkers who offered to American literature essential insights about not only their region but the world at large.

REVIEW: Best Southern Novels Ever Written | Flavorwire.

Best Southern Novels Ever Written – Flavorwire

16 Conference Networking Tips for Educators and Librarians | OEDB.org

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Summer is conference season for many in the library and educational fields, and there’s no better time to make new contacts and network than at a conference. Not all of us are natural networkers however, myself included!, so I’ve gathered some tips and tricks for conference goers that you may find useful. What I’ve found most helpful personally is preparing before the event so that I have a plan and some groundwork already in place. And I can’t stress enough how handy social media is with regard to event networking so be sure to take advantage of social tools such as Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. to make yourself more visible and also for interacting with others at the conference.

READ: 16 Conference Networking Tips for Educators and Librarians | OEDB.org

AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs | Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life Project

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The vast majority of respondents to the 2014 Future of the Internet canvassing anticipate that robotics and artificial intelligence will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service, and home maintenance. But even as they are largely consistent in their predictions for the evolution of technology itself, they are deeply divided on how advances in AI and robotics will impact the economic and employment picture over the next decade.

READ MORE: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs | Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life Project.

Duke’s Legacy: Video Game Source Disc Preservation at the Library of Congress | The Signal: Digital Preservation

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Duke’s Legacy: Video Game Source Disc Preservation at the Library of Congress | The Signal: Digital Preservation

Several months ago, while performing an inventory of recently acquired video games, I happened upon a DVD-R labeled Duke Nukem: Critical Mass PSP. My first assumption was that the disc, like so many others we have received, was a DVD-R of gameplay. However, a line of text on the Copyright database record for the item intrigued me. It reads: Authorship: Entire video game; computer code; artwork; and music. I placed the disc into my computer’s DVD drive to discover that the DVD-R did not contain video, but instead a file directory, including every asset used to make up the game in a wide variety of proprietary formats. Upon further research, I discovered that the Playstation Portable version of Duke Nukem: Critical Mass was never actually released commercially and was in fact a very different beast than the Nintendo DS version of the game which did see release. I realized then that in my computer was the source disc used to author the UMD for an unreleased PlayStation Portable game. I could feel the lump in my throat. I felt as though I had solved the wizard’s riddle and unlocked the secret door.

READ MORE: Duke’s Legacy: Video Game Source Disc Preservation at the Library of Congress | The Signal: Digital Preservation.

MIT Develops a Phone Screen That Corrects Poor Vision | WIRED

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Researchers from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley have created a prototype for a new display technology that can automatically correct for vision defects. Think of it as glasses for your iPad. Or your phone, or your car dashboard or any number of screen-based devices you have in your life. The point being, someday in the not too distant future you won’t need to wear glasses anymore to do certain tasks.

READ MORE: MIT Develops a Phone Screen That Corrects Poor Vision | Design | WIRED.

20 Things Educators Need To Know About Digital Literacy Skills | InformED

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Teaching digital literacy is about more than just integrating technology into lesson plans; it’s about using technology to understand and enhance modern communication, to locate oneself in digital space, to manage knowledge and experience in the Age of Information.

These are vague descriptions, as are most of the descriptions you’ll find of digital literacy in blog posts and journal articles online. What teachers need, more than a fancy synopsis of how digital publication affects the meaning of a text, is a practical and applicable guide to helping students think productively about the digital world.

[These are] the top do’s and don’ts we’ve come across–in research and in our own experience–when it comes to making students digitally literate. The post reviews 5 Teaching Practices That Destroy Digital Literacy (e.g. criticizing digitalk) and 15 Habits to Cultivate in Your Students (e.g. get used to multiple literacies).

READ: 20 Things Educators Need To Know About Digital Literacy Skills | InformED

Social Media for Recruitment – Infographic | Staff.com

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Social Media for Recruitment – Infographic | Staff.com Blog
Social Media for Recruitment - Infographic
Staff.com – Connecting Great Companies with Global Talent

Top 30 Applications of Google Glass in Education [Interactive Infographic] | OpenColleges

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The future is now. With Google Glass, teachers and students alike can display information in a smartphone-like hands-free format, while interacting with the Internet via natural language voice commands. With limitless possibilities at its fingertips, the education community can build closer working relationships with students, and allow children to get more involved with their learning experience. Open Colleges takes a look at how Google Glass might be used in education.

Click the link to EXPLORE all the possibilities illustrated within this interactive infographic: Top 30 Applications of Google Glass in Education  | OpenColleges


How Google Glass might be used in Education – An infographic by the team at Open Colleges

Absolutely fabulist: The computer program that writes fables | CNET

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Forget a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, researchers have created a computer program that writes fables by itself.

It might be a long way from “A Tale of Two Cities”, but researchers at Australia’s University of New South Wales have developed a computer program that is capable of writing its own fables.

The Moral Storytelling System, known as MOSS, has been developed by Margaret Sarlej, a PhD candidate at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW, led by Australian Research Fellow and artificial intelligence expert Dr Malcolm Ryan.

While humans are capable of creating simple or complex stories without a second thought, Sarlej said this is a skill that computers can’t easily emulate.

READ MORE: Absolutely fabulist: The computer program that writes fables | CNET.