Month: March 2012

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Worth a Look: Learning Analytics

Worth A Look

Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising learning and the environments in which it occurs [1]. A related field is educational data mining.

Phi Beta Iota:  The obvious deficiency is that most projects are generally focused on retro learning environments.  The better idea would be to unleash student-driven education, empower every student with free cell phones, call centers, and access to desktop analytic toolkits, and see where it goes.  A better approach would be to do a comprehensive design intended to liberate human minds, access to all possible information in all languages, and responsive provision of information tools, all in the context of focusing students on the real world and the top challenges to humanity as a whole.  In our view, education, intelligence (decision-support) and research all need to be integrated and re-designed from bottom-up, blending all three into a DNA-like spiral that achieves M4IS2 (Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making).

Wikipedia / Learning Analytics

2011 Horizon Report: Four to Five Years: Learning Analytics

Learning analytics need not simply focus on student performance. It might be used as well to assess curricula, programs, and institutions.

1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge

February 27-March 1, 2011  in Banff, Alberta

Learning Analytics – 51 Resources

EVENT: Learning Analytics – ELI 2012 Online Spring Focus Session. April 11-12, 2012.   Register Now and explore learning analytics' potential for positively impacting student learning and instructor effectiveness.

Analytics Today: Getting Smarter About Emerging Technology, Diverse Students, and the Completion Challenge, EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, October 2011. This video provides an overview of the increased use of blended learning, mobile learning, gaming, personal learning networks, augmented reality in higher education. And asks pointedly  that  If we want these technology “power tools” to have a real and lasting impact on the challenges of college completion, then anchoring these efforts in on-target analytics that serve not only policy but also core practice will be essential.

Learning and Knowledge Analytics

Several briefings and graphics of note.

Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR)

The Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) is an inter-disciplinary network of leading international researchers who are exploring the role and impact of analytics on teaching, learning, training and development.

DuckDuckGo on Learning Analytics

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Review: Cyber-War – The Next Threat to National Security and What To Do About It

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War
Amazon Page

Richard Clarke

4.0 out of 5 stars Clarke is Always Worth Reading–and Always 20 Years Behind, March 31, 2012

I wrote the original letter to Marty Harris at the National Information Infrastructure, it–and the attachments developed with Winn Schwartau, Jim Anderson, and Bill Caeli–are easily found by searching for < 1994 Sounding the Alarm source=phibetaiota >. The US Government, in its ignorance and arrogance, refused to listen and continues to be dangerously corrupt in its business practices.

This book is worth reading and buying–anything Richard Clarke writes about has the benefit of deep experience and broad access. I've been on this stuff since 1992 and have neither the time nor the money to indulge in this book, but I certainly recommend it to all who are new to this issue.

Here's the bottom line: the US Government is corrupt at the top — the elected and appointed officials and the senior flag officers and civil servants that “go along” in violation of their Oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies domestic and foreign. We who have striven to inform the public all these years face many obstacles, not least of which include a corrupt Supreme Court bought and paid for through the campaign led by Lewis Powell; a Congress that betrays its Article 1 responsibilities every day of the year; a national media that is owned by five legalized crime families; and a school system including universities that have lost their integrity and no longer even pretend to search for the truth.

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Marcus Aurelius: Richard Clarke Sounds Off on Cyber-Stuff

IO Deeds of War
Marcus Aurelius

 

Richard Clarke on Who Was Behind the Stuxnet Attack

America's longtime counterterrorism czar warns that the cyberwars have already begun—and that we might be losing

By Ron Rosenbaum

Smithsonian magazine, April 2012

EXTRACT:

I had come to talk to him about what’s been done since the urgent alarm he’d sounded in his recent book, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It.  The book’s central argument is that, while the United States has developed the capability to conduct an offensive cyberwar, we have virtually no defenseagainst the cyberattacks that he says are targeting us now, and will be in the future.

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Mini-Me: Leon Panetta on Dysfunctional Government + Meta-RECAP

Corruption, Government, Military
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Panetta: Political dysfunction threatens security

The Washington Post, 30 March 2012

(J. Scott Applewhite — Associated Press) “Dysfunction in Washington … threatens our security and raises questions about the capacity of our democracy to respond to crisis.”

That warning came from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta Thursday night at a dinner sponsored by Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, which had just given him its Eisenhower Award for excellence in leadership.

He called the dysfunction “a political crutch” and “not a part of the American spirit.”

Behind Panetta’s remarks is the frustration he feels looking at the current political deadlock in Congress over deficit reduction. He has been there before — as chairman of the House Budget Committee, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and chief of staff at the White House.

“One thing that I’ve learned over my career is that governing requires people coming together to get things done, not to pound their fists on the table and stand in the way,” he told an audience that included present and former government officials, members of Congress, defense industry representatives and dozens of college students.

Read the puke in the middle.

Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates, last December gave the same type of lecture, in which he talked about Washington’s short supply of “civility, mutual respect, putting country before self and country before party, listening to and learning from one another, not pretending to have all the answers and not demonizing those with whom we differ.”

Gates, too, talked about politicians’ inability “to sustain bipartisan strategies and policies needed to address our very real and serious problems.”

There must be something good in the Pentagon’s water.

Phi Beta Iota:  Pincus is the low-rent version of Ignatius.  This article so lacking in intelligence and integrity as to be the epitome of Washington–bottom feeders “honoring” bottom-feeders.  Panetta and Gates are both unethical toadies for the military-industrial-congressional complex.  They dishonor the Constitution, the Republic, and the flag.  All those associated with this charade are in betrayal of the public trust.  If they were *only* betraying the US public trust, that would be one thing — when combined with the global war crimes and other atrocities done “in our name,” all of this qualifies Leon Panetta for an appearance before the International Tribunal, along with the CIA drone team, the four service chiefs, and the chains of command for Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen, inter alia.

See Also:

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Berto Jongman: Various National Security Contributions

Articles & Chapters
Berto Jongman

Brief History of Hactivism

Bruce-Hoffman Super-Author per Routledge

Cyber Articles from Routledge 2012

Cybercrime Dominated By Organized Gangs, Academic Study Finds

Engineers rebuild HTTP as a faster Web foundation

Militarization of Cyber-Security

Social Networking Risks

Terrorism as Manageable Risk

US counterterrorism policy

US outgunned in hacker war

VIDEO on Brain Structure

War porn: The new safe sex

We are all luddites

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2012 Integrity, Reflexivity, & Open Everything – Presentation to the Washington Academy of Sciences

Briefings & Lectures

washington academy of sciencesBriefing as Presented 31 March 2012 to the Washington Academy of Sciences 22 Slides PDF 1MB words in Notes format, as delivered.

Steele at WAS on Reflexivity 1 MB

SHORT URL for This Post: http://tinyurl.com/WAS-Steele

Abstract & Full Text Brief Online Below

UPDATED 23 April 2014 to add new references with analytic and technical thrust.

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IVN Steele on Electoral Reform Part 9: Funding

Access
Robert David STEELE Vivas
Robert David STEELE Vivas

Steele on Electoral Reform – Part 9: Funding

Qualifying candidates will receive public funding in equal amounts. Political campaign committees are made illegal and lose their public charters. For the purposes of this Act corporations are not people and may not contribute nor cause to be contributed, any campaign funds. Issue advocacy and advertising are not tax-deductible. Air time and media print space for all candidates is free and equal.

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