raspberry pi and kano

kano858_2740798b“Kano kit offers an easier way to make a low-cost Raspberry Pi computer. Raspberry Pi provides an inexpensive way for aspiring computer scientists to start hacking, but its bare-bones offering can be intimidating to a newcomer. Kano is a forthcoming open-source computer kit designed to make coding as easy as assembling Legos. Among other projects, Kano can be used to build simple games, like Pong or Snake, or create music, sounds, and HD video. The kit runs a variation of Linux and includes visual coding software called Kano Blocks that outputs Python and Javascript. A Kano keyboard costs $49 more; you’ll need to bring your own monitor.” [link to read more of this article]

 

EFF urges court to to affirm libraries’ right to digitize books

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged an appeals court today to affirm that the fair use doctrine protects the creation of an invaluable digital library.

For the past eight years, major university libraries have collaborated with Google to digitize their collections. One result has been the HathiTrust Digital Library (HDL). Via the HDL, more than 60 university and research libraries can store, secure, and search their digital collections. With the exception of some patrons who have disabilities, HDL does not allow users to access the digitized books in their entirety – it merely does a keyword search and delivers titles and page numbers as results, enabling students and others to find the book at a library or to purchase a copy.

Read more on EFF site

new platforms for education – unstable platforms

New Platforms for Education
Andrea Mangiatordi et al, Facebook Influence on University Students’ Media Habits
Mary Leigh Morbey, Metamedia Immersive Environments: Transitions in Digital Learning
Andi Sciacca, The Digital Kitchen
Young Song, Lisa Donovan, Kristina Sansone, Multiple Layers of Learning through Digital Transition: VoiceThread
moderator: Chris Gerben

Mangiatordi: frivolous content is the norm. It is seen as a sort of strategy to protect privacy. Use of facebook is mainly instrumental: used to orchestrate face-to-face hangouts. Students tend to deprecate it, mostly for contents and private issues [but web 2.0 is all about sharing, above all, are our students being too serious?]. Media platforms have swithced: students appear to be very savvy in finding the entertainment they want. Digital skills are not so common: many of the interviews saw themselves as digital immigrants. So what? Facebook didn’t probably change the habits. It most likely changed interpersonal communications quantitatively. Redefining other media or formats uses. Read More …

businesses and social media.. why should they use them?

Fiona McQuarrie: Can social media mobilize audiences and consumers for non-commercial purposes?

Social media promoted as a way to create new relationship between producer and consumer. It looks at building relationships and creating consumer motivation to buy/use produce.

Business and social media use:

What difference does it make if they use it or not? There are four existing research:

  • they can use it for product development or pilot projects. A source of free market research information.
  • they can facilitate consumer flocks and swarms
  • social media facilitates community
  • reasons why consumers use social media.

Read More …

cult of Hatsune Miku – unstable platforms

Digital Culture in Transition: Open source culture and the cult of Hatsune Miku

alexleavitt [ at ]gmail [dot] com

Alex Leavitt

Toyota commercial that partners with Cryptone and this character vocal series. The first is Hastune Miku and a few others. They upgraded and released new audio for them. Miku uses a voice actress. The vocaloid franchise series are proprietary software. The commercial videos boosted her popularity. The vocaloid software creates actual music rather than just a monotonous voice.

What does it mean to have open source culture, social media and cultural salience [how does something become so important or a celebrity]. Open source is hybrid economies – according to Lessing. Software that is being shared by people because there it is not proprietary. Read More …