Mickey Schafer › Comments

Hmm. Given the work I am currently doing, most of this site would not answer the questions people have. Manuscript prep, for instance, does not explain how to write an article; it does advertise for an English-language editing service. I don't see where most of the links add much of anything that cannot be found in the author guidelines. It does create a nifty platform for self-advertisement, though. Sort of like cigarette companies who sponsor quit-smoking programs. - Mickey Schafer

Oh I wasn't at all intersted in the site, which as you say is basically promotional but in the message, which is at odds with some publisher rhetoric about publication being divorced from the research process. - Cameron Neylon

FB is going public -- it is hardly a "safe" place to be given that it will now be subject to investor-driven concerns. True, you can still set privacy settings well enough that casual browsers cannot find you. I like that! But it's true about Twitter -- I've gotten several followers often to do things with me or allow me to do unto them activities I've neither the interest or anatomy to follow up on! - Mickey Schafer

Posted via email from The Backstop (alias L'esprit de l'escalier) - Jason Miller from Posterous

How about the road;-)? Sigh. I reacted to that statement as well. I am wondering if we (the US) needs to develop a system where the undergrad degree and grad/research paths are simply not at the same institutions -- I know this would suck for promising undergraduates (I work with bunches of them), but the clear, spoken and printed message by our administration is that we will be... more... - Mickey Schafer

Amen, Sister! I have an assignment in my thesis class where students are required to subscribe to RSS feeds and report back on the experience. Every year, there are always students who have never heard of RSS -- and this year, a student who is openly ticked off that she's spent two years working in neuroscience labs and no one ever told her how to aggregate science news. I just don't... more... - Mickey Schafer

The decision of browser-makers to drop the RSS icon on the address bar hasn't helped. I suspect a lot of sites have RSS feeds and relied on that icon rather than having on-page links. - Walt Crawford

Yes -- I've had several points of mild embarrassment this week when students have pointed to the tiny little letters in a menu bar for the RSS feed. Sigh. - Mickey Schafer

Email http://is.gd/fH7i please - Sally Church

rec'd TYVM - Sally Church

Email http://is.gd/fH7i please - Sally Church

sent. - Mickey Schafer

Rec'd many thanks, Mickey - Sally Church

the seminars/workshops: http://www.dontgetcaught.biz/p... - Mickey Schafer

http://eloquentwoman.blogspot.com/2011... - Mickey Schafer

http://shr.aaas.org/newslet... -- this is the link to the story referenced in above blog post - Mickey Schafer

From a non-public discussion related to http://ff.im/NEFAA : "The issue that I am finding that scientists should be aware of and cautious is the level of information and details provided in open applications. Otherwise their ideas could be easily stolen by those who miss ideas but have easier access to other fundings (although, indeed, something like that can also happen in closed application procedures)." - I know there are numerous good rebuttals out there but can't find one right now. Pointers appreciated. - Daniel Mietchen

Thanks, Daniel, for remembering that post! It's quite interesting for me to re-read and remember me being a different me. My thoughts on the risk of scooping remain very similar. I still think the more open, the more defense against scooping (both accidental and purposeful). It's still factual that if you're closed and traditional, you still disclose your best ideas to your fiercest... more... - Steve Koch

I live in a geodesic dome; had a romantic vision of doing so when I was around 10 and encountered "Bucky's" work for the first time. Reality is better than the fantasy, though the sound dynamics are bizarre:-0! - Mickey Schafer

"Todd Park has served as HHS’s Chief Technology Officer since August 2009. In this role, his mission is to be a change agent and “entrepreneur-in-residence,” helping HHS harness the power of data, technology, and innovation to improve the health of the nation. Prior to joining HHS, Mr. Park co-founded Athenahealth and co-led its development into one of the most innovative health IT companies in the industry. He also cofounded Castlight, a web-based health care shopping service for consumers. Mr. Park has also served in a volunteer capacity as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on health IT and health reform policy, and as senior health care advisor to Ashoka, a leading global incubator of social entrepreneurs, where he helped start Healthpoint Services, a venture to bring affordable telehealth, drugs, diagnostics, and clean water to rural India. Mr. Park graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with an A.B. in economics. " - Mickey Schafer

"jump the shark now" ?? - Mickey Schafer

Finally I just want to comment that I'm working on ways to improve my notebook and very much welcome any and all suggestions. - Anthony Salvagno

Pull quote: "E-books priced more than their print edition. How could this possibly be? Paper costs more than electrons, so surely e-books should be cheaper, right? Believe it or not, this isn't a glitch. And it's not happening because publishers are asleep at the wheel either. Come down the rabbit hole with me into the wholesale/agency tunnel, and I'll tell you why this is happening." - Peter Murray

Agreed -- the pricing model is very weird...as this post shows, it is as weird as the relationship between the publishers and the booksellers. I, too, balk at $10 prices for e-books because of all of the inherent disadvantages. (And I also snapped up a bunch of summer reading material during Amazon's sale last month.) - Peter Murray

Except some people communicate out loud much more fluently than in writing. Not that I resemble that remark or anything. - RepoRat

depends heavily on the discipline. at ASIST there are papers in a proceedings and they are almost like journal articles. Panels you have to be there. For AGU (geosciences) there's nothing but abstracts in the proceedings - no papers. - Christina Pikas

Interesting insight about how student interest interest in having student-written reviews on library resources relates to the way students think about "evaluation of sources." Pull quote: "I think about how students evaluate information when I see their interest in the library website providing reviews of books, articles, and other materials that they can access in our collections. They want an Amazon.com-style service whereby they can see what previous users of the materials have said about the materials, so that the students can make an informed decision about the utility of the materials for their purposes. - Stephen Francoeur

I am so glad this was pointed out "...Amazon-style reviews, (see, for instance, the reviews of this Economics textbook), you see that the reviewers writing the "most useful" reviews are explicit about what they wanted out of the book, how the book met their needs (or didn't), and allow the reader of the reviews to evaluate the extent to which the reviewer's standards are the reader's... more... - Mickey Schafer

I like that FWK is allowing students to keep their e-textbooks as one of the options. What I dislike most about rental texts is their impermanence. What's the point of taking notes on a text if the student cannot keep the original? I guess programs like Evernote might get around that, but it still divorces the notes from the context. I guess that's an old-fashioned notion, though --... more... - Mickey Schafer

lol: "As an antidote to Beloit College's annual Mindset List (the latest version is being released this week), designed to orient faculty and administrators to the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of incoming freshmen, I hereby offer, for the benefit of students and administrators, a similar list of characteristics of faculty members who were born before 1980 and who teach at public institutions. Are faculty members' mind-sets less important than students'? If you prick our mind-sets, do they not bleed?" - Mickey Schafer

love this line: "The smallest things – a book the catalog says is available that’s not on the shelf where it’s supposed to be, a link that no longer works, a search box that has gone into hiding or acts differently – can let slip the dogs of war, or at least the puppies of profound irritation." - Mickey Schafer

I hope so! - Mickey Schafer

Interesting -- the first half of this summer, I started a project for our department called the "Writing in the Disciplines Knowledge Base" -- it's a wiki whose purpose is to bring together in one place all of the stuff we do and how we go about doing it. I chose a wiki to make it searchable and create various entrance points. (It isn't public yet -- but I will open it up by the end of September -- I haven't been able to put any work in for 5 weeks now and am frustrated by this). - Mickey Schafer

The hardest part so far has been planning the project itself -- how should I bring all of this information together? How do I get faculty to participate so that their tacit knowledge becomes known? How and the hell do you MAKE tacit knowledge known? A wiki was a logical object to choose, but I am still unsatisfied -- I want the object itself to be more dynamic. I don't have the... more... - Mickey Schafer

"heir findings, published this month in the journal PLoS One, may help scientists derive better hypotheses to determine what contributes to coral disintegration." Woo hoo! - Mickey Schafer

Many of these are excellent. - Michael Nielsen

great tips, but not a beginner's list! - Mickey Schafer

Okay -- unless I am missing something really obvious, this so-called "networking" and "collaboration" tool doesn't even allow you to mark the people/pages that you are interested in! I find no way of creating groups, a "people of interest" file, nothing. I can find none of the simplest tools for social interaction. I am currently on the page of someone in "clinical and transformational research informatics", thinking what a great find this person is considering I was just playing around with links, but there's no box to check, no way to do anything other than bookmark the page. What a freaking waste of $$!! - Mickey Schafer

And here is what I wondered: were they cheating, or were they making use of available resources to their best advantage? - Mickey Schafer

at UF, our student honor policy states the "unauthorized collaboration" is cheating. I am puzzled by the word "collaboration" in this policy. I saw kids openly collaborating to everyone's advantage, making use of individual strengths. Yes, it can be argued that they were not learning to play the game better as individuals; but that POV seems so "not the point". - Mickey Schafer

And, as I think about this, "Walt Crawford" is not my "real name"--that is, it's not the name on my driver's license, passport or airline tickets. (There's a missing "er" and perhaps a missing "C." for sticklers.) She makes excellent points. - Walt Crawford

Mickey, like you I use a nickname. Few people in the information community have any idea of my legal name; my employers of course have it but if that name were to be called out in a ballroom of 200 people from this sector, there would be scads of people who would be surprised when I walked up to the front of the room. I use Jill for both personal and professional interactions and expect... more... - Jill O'Neill

Yes, though "harder" can be defined in a couple of ways. First, it can means stiffer bristles. Second, it can be a toothbrush whose actions are "harder" b/c of something it does, such as spin or vibrate. The experience using it feels harder even if the bristles are not. - Mickey Schafer

I love the concept of making money with principles -- I can buy that, and sell that personally as well. - Mickey Schafer

love the idea: medicine is a generalists profession -- or something like that! - Mickey Schafer

LOVE THIS: not once did he mention "external funding" -- it was all about individuals making principled decisions about how to invest their intelligence. What an awesome way to start the morning:-). - Mickey Schafer

"After spending a tremendous amount of time fighting and pursuing all the cheating cases, I decided that it makes no sense to fight it. The incentive structures simply do not reward such efforts. The Nash equilibrium is to let the students cheat and "perform well"; in exchange, I get back great evaluations." - Björn Brembs from Bookmarklet

I am likewise distressed by the higher ed post linked by John. We've had a special task force at UF looking at cheating in general; I was in one of the focus groups. My impression was that cheating was well-known, actively despised, but the solutions come up against the most precious resource: time. Research profs, particularly those at the beginning of their careers, were overwhelmed... more... - Mickey Schafer

to ross.mounce (at) gmail.com please - Ross Mounce

no dice with my Athens - Graham Steel

30 minute discussion with Don Tapscott on Talk of the Nation. Well-worth your listen. "We need to move toward a collaborative model of learning that's student focused, [that's] highly customized and that is a model appropriate for a new generation that learns differently," says Tapscott. He warns that universities are ignoring the changing needs and desires of young people — and they're doing so at their own peril. - Heather Braum

I'm sorry, but I heard the first five minutes, and Tapscott had so many universalisms, unsourced assertions and other Tapscottisms that I had to turn it off. - Walt Crawford

There seems to be a ridiculous assumption that b/c students hook up in groups on FB, they are somehow super-trained in group communication. As someone who works every semester with really smart students, I can attest to the opposite: they require as much training in group work as any of us from the dark, pre-digital ages did. I've also watched as my kids get put into groups for... more... - Mickey Schafer

"our culturals need to be supported"? Let's go back to that education thingy... - Walt Crawford

I've lived in Buffalo. Nearly 20 years later, and I still actively detest the place. Oh well. I am doomed to un-hip-ness. - Mickey Schafer