Links for 2011-02-01

“[…]Al-Jazeera! Al-Jazeera, with its mysterious (sinister!) agenda, its undisclosed connections, its desire to influence events!

As opposed to what? The New York Times, the Washington Post, the major US TV network news operations, with their still-largely cozy relationship to undisclosed inside sources, their unabashed mouthpiecing for American policy elites, their protected stable of hack editorialists and pet experts? Why is anyone still talking about Martin Peretz, for example, let alone as lovingly as Stephen Rodrick does? He isn’t even worth getting angry about: he is, or ought to be, an irrelevance.

But this is what mainstream American journalism has been doing for so long: talking to the same small circle of people as if they were the whole wide world.”

“While some colleges have long taught study skills, some institutions are experimenting with efforts to teach much more than how to study: they are looking for ways to grow their students’ metacognition. Many of these projects are still small and don’t have years of data to report, but on Friday, several of those involved in the efforts shared their enthusiasm for the approach in a session at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The projects discussed here were from members of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, which received support from the Teagle Foundation to coordinate the efforts.

So how does this work?”

“We’re now taking submissions for pieces for the first issue of sciartica! Submit any kind of experimental science communication or printable documentation of your communication by the end of February to be considered.

For this first issue, we’re likely to take pretty much everything that is submitted as long as it meets some minimum standards of quality as the magazine itself is an experiment of experimental communication. Ouch, getting too meta for my head.”