Google Plus Promotes Open Education Resources

Helps students, teachers, and schools gain access to educational resources

Open Education Resources (OER) “are teaching and learning resources that anyone can share, reuse and remix” and it is predicted that they will play a huge role in helping students gain the skills they will need in the 21st century. Google has been very proactive in “increasing access to a cost-effective, high-quality education” by supporting “the OpenCourseWare Consortium—a collaboration of higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating OER—in organizing Open Education Week 2012, which begins today.”

In the following video, Cable Green, Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons, explains the importance of changing policies to ensure that teachers and students will have the resources necessary to legally access textbooks, courses, and find resources for research without having to pay any additional fees. Green ties the spirit of Open Education Week to an ongoing project in which educators are developing “a vast pool of resources on the internet open and free for all to use.” He also emphasizes the importance of increasing the amount of “publicly funded education resources that operate on an open license allowing the public to revise, reuse, remix, and redistribute those materials.”

To increase awareness about Open Education, the U.S. Department of Education will belaunching a video competition that highlights how the movement to publicly funded education that uses open policies will benefit Americans: “The competition will award cash prizes for the best short videos that explain the use and promise of free, high-quality Open Educational Resources—or “OER”—and describe the benefits and opportunities these materials create for teachers, students and schools.” Aside from the intrinsic value of making a video about this subject, there are handsome financial rewards for the winners: “Video submissions are accepted until June 5, 2012 and winners will be announced July 18, 2012. Cash prizes, provided by the Open Society Institute, include $25,000 (first), $5,000 (second), and $1,000 (Public Choice Award). Judges include prominent artists and education experts, including Davis Guggenheim, Nina Paley, James Franco, and many others.”

The top prize reflects the average yearly salary for Adjunct instructors working in community colleges (adjuncts make approximately $2,000 per 15 week course) so i wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of educators decided to compete and get the word out.

Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations at Google, explains that Google will “[...] be acknowledging OER week through a panel event in Washington, DC, and over on our+Google in Education page, where we’ll be posting articles, and sharing stories and interviews about the benefits of open education resources. Opening these resources to everyone can improve the quality of education while getting more out of our investments in educational resources.”

Pennsylvania Anti-Texting Law Begins March 8

We fail so much at not texting while driving that we need a law to remind us to drive while they're driving

Texting drivers, take note: in the very near future, your haphazard multitasking of texting while driving will land you a $50 fine should you get caught doing it in Pennsylvania. A new law prohibiting text-based communication while driving in the Keystone State will go into effect exactly one minute after the stroke of midnight, 12:01 AM, March 8.

“Your most important job when behind the wheel is to focus only on driving. Most people would never close their eyes for five seconds while driving, but that’s how long you take your eyes of the road, or even longer, every time you send or read a text message,” Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Secretary Barry J. Schoch said. “It’s not just your own life you’re risking; it’s the lives and safety of every motorist around you.”

The law, while targeting the reckless habit of texting from behind the wheel, doesn’t exclude other smartphone-equipped services like checking your email or even browsing the internet. The new law specifically does the following:

Makes it a primary offense to use an Interactive Wireless Communication Device (IWCD) to send, read or write a text-based message.

Defines an IWCD as a wireless phone, personal digital assistant, smartphone, portable or mobile computer or similar devices that can be used for texting, instant messaging, emailing or browsing the Internet.

Defines a text-based message as a text message, instant message, email or other written communication composed or received on an IWCD.

Institutes a $50 fine for convictions.

Makes clear that this law supersedes and preempts any local ordinances restricting the use of interactive wireless devices by drivers.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s website, the penalty for breaking the anti-texting law is a summary offense but obstinate text-and-drivers will at least get one break should they get caught: the police won’t seize your phone.

Additionally, the law will not prohibit the use of GPS devices.

“This is a serious problem and we are hoping that we can educate citizens on the dangers of texting while driving and prevent future accidents,” said State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan. “Our troopers will attempt to use observations of the driver while the vehicle is in motion to determine if traffic stops are warranted. An example might be the motorist continues to manipulate the device over an extended distance with no apparent voice communication.

“Ultimately, we hope that our enforcement efforts will create voluntary compliance by the majority of motorists,” Noonan said.

In 2010, there were nearly 14,000 crashes in Pennsylvania where distracted driving played a role, with 68 people dying in those crashes.

As if to pronounce the texting-while-driving epidemic, the phenomenon has its own Wikipedia page replete with a list of laws by location around the world. In other words, we officially lose at driving.

Anonymous Declares War On Religion, Attacks Church Sites

Calls religion a sickness to this world

Anonymous attacks a lot of things that they find wrong with the world: corporations, governments and other groups that they feel threaten the freedom of the people. On Friday, they attacked what may be their most controversial target yet – religion.

The AnonymousIRC Twitter account announced on Friday three attacks so far on major church Web sites. These aren’t just regular attacks, however, as they have also defaced the Web sites with anti-religion rhetoric and even a video featuring Richard Dawkins set to auto-play so visitors are forced to see it.

@AnonymousIRC
AnonymousIRChttp://t.co/gWWsJIZ8 HACKED Reason:religious idiocy and foh dah lulz #Anonymous #AntiSec #OWS #ROOTED #DAWKINS 2 hours ago via LulzTweeter ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

Three Web sites that have been attacked so far are Bethel Outreach International Church, theCharlotte International Church, and Crossfire Ministries. All three religious organizations are based in and around Charlotte, North Carolina.

What do you think about Anonymous now targeting churches? Let us know in the comments.

Why did Anonymous hack these particular Web sites? The tweets say, “HACKED Reason: religious idiocy and foh dah lulz.” Sounds like the usual Anonymous reason, but the Web sites defaced message reveal more behind what they’re getting at.

Greetings fellow pirates, hey there religionfags! Guess what? U dun goofed! We rm’d you and your gods and saints neither’t protected you nor casted some awesome thunderbolt onto us.

Let us be clear from the start: any kind of religion is a sickness to this world.
A sickness that creates hate and intollerance,
a sickness that brings people to wage war on their fellow people,
a sickness that has come to this world long time ago, when mankind wasn’t educated,
a sickness that brought false hope and surpression to those who believed
and often even more terror and surpression to those who dared not to believe.
Religions are authoritarian hierarchies, designed to dominate your free
will. Religions are mind control.They’re power structures that aim to convince you to give away your power for the benefit of those who enjoy dominating people. When you subscribe to a religion, you enroll in a mindless minion training program. Religions don’t market themselves as such, but this is essentially how they operate.In case you ever wondered why religious teachings are invariably mysterious, confusing, and incongruent? This is no accident — it’s intentional.

We see religion pretty much the same way as we see many governments. Fearmongering and making lots of money,so a small group of ppl will become insanely rich, while the believing masses can eat dirt.As long as they are afraid that “omgomg god will come and strike great vengeance upon me” all is good.

To quote Encyclopedia Dramatica (bringing you answers to life, the universe and everything since last Thursday) on this issue:

»Religion is a severe mental illness created over 9000 years ago, at the
same time as the Earth. Since then, religion has been one of the biggest sources of drama, faggotry, and unwarranted self-importance in the world today, secondary only to the internet. It is responsible for such insanity as Christfags believing that beating someone half to death with a 2,000 year old book will heal them and Muslims believing that if they blow themselves up they will get 72 virgins. Even atheists are not immune to the psychotomimetic effects of religion; the mere mention of religion is enough to send any atheist into hours of butthurt shitfits.«

So people of the world, don’t let religion control your life. Don’t fight against each other for contrary beliefs.This world and our life can be a wonderful adventure, where you have the unique chance to help mankind and your fellow citizens. Where we can all work together to make this earth a better place for ourselves,our children and all those generations who will come after us. ^(;,;)^

The Web site defacement also includes a video of a Richard Dawkins lecture called, “Richard Dawkins: An Atheist’s Call to Arms.” The video is a 31 minute speech in which Dawkins told atheists to make their beliefs public and combat the “incursion of religion into politics and education.”

It’s strange that Anonymous would denounce major religions, but only target Christian churches. There’s not a lot of info on the churches in question due to their Web sites being down, but we did fine a few things.

We looked through the Google cached versions of the Web sites. While they are a mess, the churches in question seem to have one thing in common – empowering people of all nations and races through Christianity. It’s odd then that Anonymous would attack churches that at least put on a good face instead of much more reviled organizations like the Westboro Baptist Church.

What’s even stranger is that Anonymous has attacked Westboro Baptist Church in the past.Computer World reported last year that Anonymous only took down the church’s Web site after they were issued a challenge. They even said “we don’t war” in response to the church issuing the challenge, but launched the attack because they had had enough.

The hashtags may be the most confusing part of the attacks. They include the #OWS hashtag which is used for the Occupy Wall Street movement. At the moment, once again due to the Web sites being down, I can’t confirm if these were megachurches or not. The churches themselves don’t really appear all that big as Google results only return each respective Web site and not much else.

It definitely seems like more of a case of attacking the for the “lulz” then anything else. Anonymous members and general internet users frequently attack religion with the term “christfag” and other derogatory names. This could just be the group trolling and they just happened to choose these churches as targets.

Why do you think Anonymous attacked the churches in question? Let us know in the comments.

Religion is one of those things, like politics, that you never really openly discuss in public as it leads to everybody just feeling uncomfortable. By taking the fight to the Internet, Anonymous may be opening up the debate for a more thorough discussion. Of course, they could also being doing it just “foh dah lulz.”

We asked if these attacks were part of the planned hacks that the group said would happen every Friday. We have yet to hear back, but we’ll update the story when and if we do.