How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education

As connection speeds increase and the ubiquity of the Internet pervades, digital content reigns. And in this era, free education has never been so accessible. The Web gives lifelong learners the tools to become autodidacts, eschewing exorbitant tuition and joining the ranks of other self-taught great thinkers in history such as Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Paul Allen and Ernest Hemingway.

?Learning is not a product of schooling but the lifelong attempt to acquire it.? -Albert Einstein

10 years ago in April 2001, Charles M. Vest, the MIT President at the time, announced that the university would make its materials for all its courses freely available on the Internet. This initiative, found at OpenCourseWare, has enabled other teachers and lifelong learners around the world to listen and read what is being taught at MIT. 5 years later, in April 2006, UC Berkeley announced its plan to put complete academic courses on Apple?s iTunes U, beginning what is now one of the biggest collections of recorded classroom lectures in the world. One year later, in October 2007, the school launched UC Berkeley on YouTube. According to Benjamin Hubbard the Manager of Webcast at UC Berkeley, the school has had well over 120 million downloads since first sharing videos online, which they began doing in 2001.

He says, ?I think there?s a wide array of reasons why faculty should be engaged in recording and publishing lectures online. The first is wanting students to have access to materials. The second is for cultivating a really great affinity for a public university that?s providing research and community service. The third is closely aligned with this opportunity to provide educational resources all over the world to those from all walks of life, despite what disadvantages they have faced. It?s so important that we recognize as a public institution that this is something people value greatly and has great value for us too.?

Both Yale and Stanford have followed suit, and even Harvard has jumped on board in the last two years. Open Yale features free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars, supported by funding from the William and Flora Hewlitt Foundation. Outside of the U.S., some of the most selective universities in India have created a vast body of online content in order to reach more of the country?s exploding student population. At Stanford, you can freely ?attend? The Stanford Mini Med School featuring 3 year long series of courses by more than thirty distinguished faculty, scientists and physicians.

The world?s encyclopedia is as weightless, free and instantly accessible as Wikipedia, which is quickly gaining legitimacy in the education sphere. Using the Internet, you can learn a new language or delve into the depths of metaphysics with just a click of a mouse. The Web has unlocked the keys to a worldwide virtual school, potentially leveling the playing field for students around the world.

Open Culture

Should knowledge should be open to all to both use and contribute to? Yes, and it?s this intuitive philosophy that forms the base of The Open Education Movement, which has been gaining momentum since 2006, the same year Dr. Dan Colman, launched Open Culture, the greatest free cultural and educational media website I?ve ever come across. Almost 5 years old, Open Culture is the largest database of free cultural and educational media in existence. Open Culture is edited by Colman who received his PhD from Stanford in 1997. After graduating from Stanford he worked at About.com in the early days, then later worked for the Stanford, Oxford, Yale Consortium. He now runs Stanford?s continuing education program and works on Open Culture in his spare time.

?I?m trying to bring the best good ideas to the rest of the world. There currently exists too much of a gap between the university world and the general public.? -Dr. Dan Colman

The site has two dimensions: First, it acts as a portal, collecting external links so users are able to access materials directly from the distributor, whether the media be on a site, YouTube or iTunes. Second, it includes blog-style content with 2-3 posts a day of handpicked media bites like ?The Existential Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vader.? Open Culture features over 350 courses in its collection: links to epic TED Talks, over 380 high quality streams of classic movies and tens of thousands of hours of audio book material. In fact, 50% of Open Culture?s collection is audio content.

In the future, Colman would like to implement a social feature so that users can rate certain classes and share those ratings. Most importantly, he wants to add what he calls ?the critical element? to Open Culture and the Open Education Movement. How can users get feedback as if they were in a classroom? How can they receive due credit? And perhaps, how can we measure learning in this new way?

Khan Academy

With just a computer and a pen-tablet-mouse, one can educate the world! Even better, the content never goes old. My (or your) great-great-great grandchildren could learn from the very same videos! -Sal Khan, Founder of Khan Academy

Khan Academy is an online collection featuring over 2,100 educational videos ranging in intensity from 1+1=2 to college level calculus and physics. Khan Academy includes an important recording feature; every time you work on a problem or watch a video, the site remembers what you?ve learned and where you?re spending your time. It keeps all of this data private but exposes powerful statistics to each user. Coaches or tutors can also log into Khan Academy through Google or Facebook and track their students progress. Khan Academy?s knowledge map shows all of its exercise concepts.

Watch more about The Khan Academy here.

Academic Earth

Academic Earth is working its way up to being the Hulu of academic videos and courses. However, they don?t cover audio, which is a shame because a lot of courses are only taped and released in audio since it?s easier on the budget. Academic Earth features the videos on their site, as opposed to pushing you directly to iTunes if it?s available. How about watching an entire semester?s worth of lectures on Science, Magic and Religion from an esteemed UCLA professor? Check it out here.

P2PU

John Britton, now a developer evangelist at Twilio, spent his first year at RPI studying nuclear engineering, then switched to computer science. He quickly realized he didn?t like school, but not wanting to drop out, he had to game the system. He spent the next year in Spain learning the local language and customs. Upon returning, he set up an internship for himself at a company he launched, ?faking the school out? as he says. Finally, when beckoned back to the books, he spent another year abroad in China; 3 months in Beijing and 9 months in Hong Kong. At the end of it all, with one semester left, he dropped out. He now has $60,000 in loans.

?I don?t like school. It?s why I?m working on starting my own.?
-John Britton, Entrepreneur and Unicycler

Britton now works with the founders of P2PU, ?a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements.? P2PU?s Founders include Philipp Schmidt, Delia Browne, Stian Haklev, Neeru Paharia and Joel Thierstein.

?It?s kind of like couchsurfing but for learning,? says Britton. P2PU started in 2008 and launched its first 6 peer-based, free courses on 09/09/09. The courses had 15-20 people enrolled for 6 weeks. Each subsequent cycle, the number of courses nearly doubled. The most recent, 4th cycle had 60 courses with 20 people in each course. P2PU had to turn down nearly 70,000 additional people who applied.

Learn more about P2Pu here:

In the past year, they teamed up with Mozilla to create the P2PU School of Webcraft, a new way to teach and learn web developer skills. Classes are globally accessible, 100% free, and powered by learners, mentors and contributors. Their goal is to provide a free pathway to skills and certification to help people build careers on open web technology.

Skillshare

We were the first to write about Skillshare when the NYC startup launched in early April 2011. Simply put, Skillshare is a community marketplace that enables users to learn anything from anyone. Teachers can host classes anywhere, literally; classes are happening everywhere from NYC to Boston to San Francisco right now.

At the end of Sir Ken Robinson?s ?Bring on the Learning Revolution? TED Talk, he encouraged everyone in the room ?who represent extraordinary resources in business, in multimedia, and the Internet to combine technology with the extraordinary talent of teachers to revolutionize education. Not for ourselves but for the future of our kids.? I mean? who doesn?t want to make the world better for the kids? After watching this TED Talk it planted the seed and inspiration to really revolutionize education.

Last year, I played in the 2010 World Series of Poker (yes, completely random) for charity. I donated 100% of my poker winnings and got coached by some of the top professional poker players in the world. When I got back to NYC, my friends asked me to teach a class on what I learned, which is when everything clicked. And thus, Skillshare was born.
-Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Founder of Skillshare

So how does Mike K envision the future of education? He says, ?Technology has the opportunity to completely disrupt education by democratizing learning. There?s something fundamentally wrong when a college degree can cost upwards of $100,000 when all of the information can be learned for free on Khan Academy. We need to go back to the true goal of education: learning new skills.? So what are you waiting for? Learn the basics of Ruby on Rails for $50 from the Chief Product Officer of DesignerPages.com or how to make chocolate for $40 from a holistic health and nutrition coach.

?Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent not a singular conception of ability.? -Sir Ken Robinson in his 2010 TED Talk

Scitable

Want to learn about genetics? Cell biology? Ecology? Scitable is a free science social network with a peer-reviewed on library built on top of it. The network, which launched in 2009, is a product of the Nature Publishing Group, one of the largest, most prestigious science publishers in the world. It?s dedicated to encouraging students to take part in science education and science in general, which is a huge problem today. In fact, science high school education has a depressing 40% attrition rate in undergraduate science students. The site, which has just over 1 million users, recently launched The Green Science and Science In Africa sections, as well as a mobile site.

Skype?s Role

As our Midwest Editor Alex Wilhem wrote earlier this year, without a doubt, technology has changed education in the classroom. And Skype?s global platform and massive user adoption makes it one of the most influential technologies in changing the reach of education.

Ever heard of ?The Granny Cloud?? A professor of education technology at UK?s Newcastle University named Sugata Mitra, whose work inspired the film ?Slumdog Millionaire,? decided he could use Skype to improve literacy and education around the globe by getting 200 story telling Grannies to read to children in India over Skype.

Jacqueline Botterill leads Skype?s CSR (corporate/social responsibility) initiatives for Skype in Europe. Skype in the Classroom, which launched March 30th, 2010, is one of the company?s first forays into the education sphere. ?We created Skype in the Classroom to help like-minded teachers collaborate on projects and share resources. Skype can connect children globally for shared learning experiences and is low-cost and simple to use,? she says. Since it?s launch over 12,000 teachers have signed up for Skype in the Classroom.

Betsey Sawyer, a middle school teacher in rural Groton, Massachusetts integrated Skype into her classroom to regularly connect students with an Afghan youth peace volunteer group. As part of her ?Bookmakers and Dreamers club,? students ask questions about Afghanistan to their virtual pen pals, while sharing their own experiences in return. Already, the program of 10-17 year-olds has grown to 125 members.

Teach the World Online is using Skype to give young students in Haiti and Cambodia access to English teachers. The News Literacy Program is also using Skype so journalists can give guest lectures to students all over the world on how to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. At the moment, Skype is speaking with a number of different organizations that are trying to level the playing field of access to education.

Hungry for more? One of our favorite fellow tech reporters, Audrey Watters put together a list of 10 more open educational resources and OCW resources that you should know about including Smarthistory, a free and open multimedia website and OpenStudy, a social learning network.

But can the Internet really replace higher education?

As a journalist, I essentially creates my own courses and earn a living asking smart people provocative questions all day long. At this time, I?ve never been happier or more satisfied that I didn?t pay $150,000 to go to graduate school. However, I would hope that my gynecologist or dentist didn?t feel the same way.

There?s a lot of debate right now about whether or not paying for a degree is worth it, a particular problem facing entrepreneurs. TNW?s U.S. editor Brad McCarty recently wrote a piece titled, ?Stay in or drop out? The entrepreneur?s education fiasco.? [Read it here.]

Entrepreneur Peter Thiel has recently sparked a big debate lately focused on: you don?t need to go to college, smart people should go out in the world and do.

Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced and there must be an intense belief in it. Housing was a classic bubble, as were tech stocks in the ?90s, because they were both very overvalued, but there was an incredibly widespread belief that almost could not be questioned ? you had to own a house in 2005, and you had to be in an equity-market index fund in 1999. Probably the only candidate left for a bubble ? at least in the developed world (maybe emerging markets are a bubble) ? is education.

It?s basically extremely overpriced. People are not getting their money?s worth, objectively, when you do the math. And at the same time it is something that is incredibly intensively believed; there?s this sort of psycho-social component to people taking on these enormous debts when they go to college simply because that?s what everybody?s doing. It is, to my mind, in some ways worse than the housing bubble.

There are a few things that make it worse. One is that when people make a mistake in taking on an education loan, they?re legally much more difficult to get out of than housing loans. With housing, typically they?re non-recourse ? you can just walk out of the house. With education, they?re recourse, and they typically survive bankruptcy. If you borrowed money and went to a college where the education didn?t create any value, that is potentially a really big mistake.

-Peter Thiel

Likewise, innovators such as John Britton, Sir Ken Robinson and Mike K of Skillshare, see the future of education as something of a necessary revolution, thriving on the powers of the Internet.

Education is going to move away from antiquated accreditation systems and towards a focus on real-world skills.  Our vision is to unlock this knowledge and allow people to share their skills with those who want to learn them. Let?s be honest ? by the time a college has a class on how to build an iPhone app or use social media to market your business, it?ll be completely outdated because the world is moving so fast.

-Mike K, Founder of Skillshare

But what do the academics have to say about this?

?I think courses on the Internet are a great way to continue learning and to acquire new information and new knowledge, but they only partially address furthering education. An education is more than just passively listening to lectures.?

-Dr. Dan Colman, Editor of Open Culture

Replace? Oh no. The Internet is an amazing tool. But it?s also a tool that?s built on the capabilities of the people who are using it. The Internet alone won?t be able to replace higher education. I?m looking to enhance the experience of the user whether they are sitting in their dorm room or half way around the world?I wouldn?t say hitting play and pause for an hour can replace the experience of being in the classroom and interacting with a faculty member but perhaps for a larger class size that?s less true?

We need a better integration between the videos we?re capturing in the classroom and the experience learners have when interacting in a social context. Online, you don?t get that same sort of feedback. What are the ways we can take the data about these videos and analyze that and understand if students are having trouble understanding something?

-Benjamin Hubbard, ETS, Manager of Webcast at UC Berkeley

So where does that leave us? To pay or not to pay for a quality education? Much of it depends on the job you want, but then again it always has. If you want to be a fireman, you don?t need to go to graduate school. But if you want to be an orthodontist, please don?t just watch YouTubes and practice pulling out cavities on your dog.

It?s clear that the world is moving faster than it ever has before. As we learn more about ourselves and more about the world around us through massive amounts of data collection and data transfer at ever increasing speeds, surely the foundations of learning must change too.

After all, it?s clear our current education system is broken, from the bottom up. If we?re going to continue to evolve as a species and as a culture, we?re long overdue for an education revolution.

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise ? with the occasion.

-Abraham Lincoln, December 1, 1862

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News Corp. Will Disclose Its Political Donations

The move comes after the company was highlighted for donating $1.25 million to the Republican Governors Association and $1 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ahead of the midterm elections last year.

Critics of the company seized on the donations ? which were made public only in news reports ? as evidence of bias on the part of the News Corporation, which owns the Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal, and Mr. Murdoch, who has long been a supporter of conservative causes.

The News Corporation said at the time that the company?s corporate side had made the donations with no involvement by its news operation, and that the gifts would not have any impact on newsgathering operations. Still, the Democratic Governors Association argued that during the election season, Fox?s coverage of governors and campaigns should include disclaimers about the donations.

After the controversy over those donations, the News Corporation?s board of directors decided to revisit its policies about disclosure, and on April 12 it adopted a policy ?to publicly disclose corporate political contributions annually on News Corporation?s corporate Web site.?

The first such statement will be published by July 15, and later statements will be published each January. A News Corporation spokeswoman declined to comment further.

The decision may have stemmed from shareholders who raised questions about the donations at an annual meeting last October. ?Our concern was not only that shareholders found out not through the standard decision-making process but through media reports, but more importantly that this was shareholder money that was being used ? but it was not being used for a clear rationale for furthering shareholder value,? Laura Shaffer Campos, the director of shareholder activities for the Nathan Cummings Foundation, told The Associated Press.

At the annual meeting, Mr. Murdoch said the donations were ?unusual? and were ?in the interest of our shareholders and the country,? according to the liberal monitoring organization Media Matters, which posted audio clips of his comments. The interest, Mr. Murdoch suggested, was in bringing ?change? to Washington.

The policy statement appears to bring the News Corporation in line with media companies like Time Warner that disclose donations.

The decision was announced on the News Corporation?s Web site toward the end of April, and was noticed by Media Matters on May 4. It gained more attention when The A.P. reported on it recently.

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Obama Shifts to Speed Oil and Gas Drilling in U.S.

It was at least a partial concession to his critics, who say he has shackled domestic energy development at a time when consumers are paying near-record prices at the gas pump. The Republican-led House passed three bills in the last 10 days that would significantly expand and accelerate oil development in the United States, saying the administration was driving up gas prices and preventing job creation with antidrilling policies.

Administration officials said the president?s announcement was intended in part to answer these arguments, signal flexibility and demonstrate Mr. Obama?s commitment to reducing oil imports by increasing domestic production. But in fact the policies announced Saturday would not have an immediate effect on supply or prices, nor would they quickly open any new areas to drilling.

The president?s turn to a domestic pocketbook issue comes after two weeks of intense focus on the killing of Osama bin Laden, terrorism more broadly and the multiple crises in the Middle East.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, the president said the administration would begin to hold annual auctions for oil and gas leases in Alaska?s National Petroleum Reserve, a 23-million-acre tract on the North Slope. The move comes after years of demands for the auctions by industry executives and Alaska?s two senators, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Begich, a Democrat.

The administration will also accelerate a review of the environmental impact of possible drilling off the southern and central Atlantic coasts and will consider making some areas available for exploration. The move signals a change from current policy, which puts the entire Atlantic seaboard off limits to drilling until at least 2018.

The president also said he would extend leases already granted for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean off Alaska that had been frozen after last year?s BP spill. The extension will allow companies time to meet new safety and environmental standards without having to worry about their leases expiring.

The government will also provide incentives for oil companies to more quickly exploit leases they already hold. Tens of millions of acres onshore and offshore are under lease but have not been developed.

The moves come after the House passed a series of bills that would force the administration to move much further and faster to open public lands and waters to oil and gas development. The administration had formally opposed the bills as written, but officials said Friday that the White House might accept some provisions in the bills, like extending the frozen leases in the gulf and in Alaska.

Responding to the shift by the administration, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House speaker, John A. Boehner, said, ?The president just conceded what his party on Capitol Hill still denies: more American energy production will lower costs and create jobs. This reversal is striking, since his administration has consistently blocked American-made energy.?

Although Mr. Buck characterized the policy changes as ?not terribly substantial,? he added that they should ?pave the way for legislation, like the bills the House passed in the past two weeks, to reduce the damage from the restrictions he imposed in the past.?

The president, in his address, said he supported increased domestic oil and gas development, if it was done safely and responsibly. ?Last year, America?s oil production reached its highest level since 2003,? he said. ?But I believe that we should expand oil production in America, even as we increase safety and environmental standards.?

The Alaskan petroleum reserve was set aside in the 1920s as a source of oil for the Navy. There have been fewer than a dozen lease sales there; the most recent one, in 2010, drew only modest industry interest. The government has lowered its estimate of recoverable oil under that vast tract, and the Obama administration is leaving large areas untouched because of their ecological and wildlife value.

Response from environmental advocates was relatively muted. Eric Myers, Alaska policy director for the National Audubon Society, said that conservationists were willing to see an increase in drilling in the Alaskan petroleum reserve as long as it did not threaten wildlife, waters or sensitive lands.

The more environmentally sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska will remain off-limits to oil and gas drillers, administration officials said Friday.

The president noted in his address that the Justice Department had formed a task force to look into potential market manipulation or excessive speculation in oil, and he repeated his call for a repeal of the $4 billion a year in tax incentives the oil industry receives.

?In the last few months, the biggest oil companies made about $4 billion in profits each week,? Mr. Obama said. ?And yet, they get $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies each year. Four billion dollars at a time when Americans can barely fill up their tanks. Four billion dollars at a time when we?re trying to reduce our deficit.?

Next week, the Senate will take up a Democratic bill to remove a portion of those subsides, but it is not expected to become law because of united Republican opposition in both chambers of Congress.

Mr. Obama?s last four weekly addresses have been about oil prices, industry profits and alternative energy programs.

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Gaming 26 - The Showman's Bag

Gaming 26 - The Showman's Bag

Posted on 13th May 2011 at 12:17 by Podcast with 10 comments

This week Paul and Joe were joined by plughead.net founder and former PC Zone writer David Brown. First up on the agenda was the continuing PSN outage, and how the continuing lack of service is starting to affect games developers.

We also attempted to talk about the Witcher 2, but somehow we ended up on the topic of DLC and, unsurprisingly, Mass Effect 2. Joe also got a chance to talk about his experiences with Star Wars: The Old Republic, and why he thought the game deserved the savaging that he gave it.

Finally, we also got a chance to put a few of your questions to David who discussed everything from the future of print publishing to the pressure that games publishers and developers put on members of the games press.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Roccat Vire Gaming Headset. The headset weighs only 15g and comes complete with a carry bag and rubberised ergonomic earplugs.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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U.S. Scrutinized Ensign, but Senate Dug Deeper

Then they charged the aide with breaking the law.

On Thursday, a unanimous Senate Ethics Committee ? in a rare public report that corroborated virtually all of Mr. Hampton?s central assertions ? said it found compelling evidence that Mr. Ensign had not only broken the law, but that he could have been expelled from the Senate had he not made the decision last month to quit first.

But the Justice Department has yet to take any action against Mr. Ensign nearly two years after allegations of impropriety first surfaced. In fact, they told his lawyers last December that they were not pursuing criminal charges against him at the time.

Mr. Hampton, the main witness, who is now awaiting trial, has filed for bankruptcy, lost his Las Vegas home to foreclosure and is going through a divorce from his wife, Cynthia, after Mr. Ensign, once his best friend, admitted having an affair with her.

Legal experts and others interviewed pointed out that prosecutors have a different standard than the Senate committee, which does not have to present a criminal case to a jury. But the Senate?s harsh report ? contrasted with the Justice Department?s inaction ? provided further evidence for those who complain that the agency has seemed skittish about taking on public officials following the fiasco that resulted from the 2008 corruption case against the late Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, which was ultimately dropped amid charges of prosecutorial misconduct.

?They?re more careful now, because they weren?t careful on the Stevens case, and it backfired,? said Richard W. Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, who served as an ethics lawyer in the White House under President George W. Bush.

Stephen M. Ryan, a former federal prosecutor and Senate investigator who now works as a corporate lawyer in Washington, said he was surprised to see that Ethics Committee investigators, despite their relatively meager resources, appeared to have done a more thorough job investigating the case than their counterparts at the Justice Department.

He said the Justice Department?s public integrity section, which handled the investigation, ?has fallen on hard times if this case has no appeal to them. It is pretty easy to get a single count of obstruction or a false statement here. In a salon you could explain this one over a beer.? He added that ?if I were the attorney general, I would have some serious questions about the judgment that the people applied. ?

The Senate also took a far tougher stance than the Federal Election Commission.

Against the recommendation of its lawyer, the election commission also declined to take action against the senator after it said it could not disprove sworn statements from Mr. Ensign and his parents about a $96,000 payment to the Hamptons that they said was a gift. The Ethics Committee said the money in fact appeared to be an ?unlawful? severance payment and that Mr. Ensign made ?false and misleading? statements about it to investigators. It also said the former senator appeared to have destroyed e-mails relevant to the investigation.

An election commission official, who asked not to be identified while the case was pending, acknowledged that the commission took the senator at his word, whereas the Senate dug deeper. This official expressed anger to learn the true circumstances behind the $96,000 payment.

?I hate it when people lie to us,? the official said, adding: ?If somebody submits a sworn affidavit, we usually do not go back and question it, unless we have something else to go on. Maybe we should not be so trusting.?

While the Justice Department would not discuss its evidence in the case, it said Friday it would look at the new allegations.

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Antarctic Ice Divers

Last November, a team of scientists, funded by the National Science Foundation, began using a pair of autonomous robotic vehicles to gather an information from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic.

Credit: Vernon Asper

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Antarctic Ice Divers

Last November, a team of scientists, funded by the National Science Foundation, began using a pair of autonomous robotic vehicles to gather an information from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic.

Credit: Vernon Asper

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Obama Shifts to Speed Oil and Gas Drilling in U.S.

It was at least a partial concession to his critics, who say he has shackled domestic energy development at a time when consumers are paying near-record prices at the gas pump. The Republican-led House passed three bills in the last 10 days that would significantly expand and accelerate oil development in the United States, saying the administration was driving up gas prices and preventing job creation with anti-drilling policies.

Administration officials said the president?s announcement was designed in part to answer these arguments, signal flexibility and demonstrate Mr. Obama?s commitment to reducing oil imports by boosting domestic production. But in fact the policies announced Saturday would not have an immediate effect on supply or prices, nor would they quickly open any new areas to drilling.

The president?s turn to a domestic pocketbook issue comes after two weeks of intense focus on the killing of Osama bin Laden, terrorism more broadly and the multiple crises in the Middle East.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, the president said the administration would begin to hold annual auctions for oil and gas leases in Alaska?s National Petroleum Reserve, a 23-million-acre tract on the North Slope. The move comes after years of demands for the auctions by industry executives and Alaska?s two senators, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Begich, a Democrat.

The administration will also accelerate a review of the environmental impact of possible drilling off the southern and central Atlantic coast and will consider making some areas available for exploration. The move marks a change from current policy, which puts the entire Atlantic seaboard off limits to drilling until at least 2018.

The president also said he would extend leases already granted for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean off Alaska that had been frozen after last year?s BP spill. The extension will allow companies time to meet new safety and environmental standards without having to worry about their leases expiring.

The government will also provide incentives for oil companies to more quickly exploit leases they already hold. Tens of millions of acres onshore and offshore are under lease but have not been developed.

The moves come after the House passed a series of bills that would force the administration to move much further and faster to open public lands and waters to oil and gas development. The administration had formally opposed the bills as written, but officials said Friday that the White House might accept some provisions in the bills, like extending the frozen leases in the gulf and in Alaska.

Responding to the shift by the administration, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, said, ?The president just conceded what his party on Capitol Hill still denies: more American energy production will lower costs and create jobs. This reversal is striking, since his administration has consistently blocked American-made energy.?

Although Mr. Buck characterized the policy changes as ?not terribly substantial,? he added that they should ?pave the way for legislation, like the bills the House passed in the past two weeks, to reduce the damage from the restrictions he imposed in the past.?

The president, in his address, said he supported increased domestic oil and gas development, if it was done safely and responsibly. ?Last year, America?s oil production reached its highest level since 2003,? he said. ?But I believe that we should expand oil production in America, even as we increase safety and environmental standards.?

The Alaskan petroleum reserve was set aside in the 1920s as a source of oil for the Navy. There have been fewer than a dozen lease sales there; the most recent one, in 2010, drew only modest industry interest. The government has lowered its estimate of recoverable oil under that vast tract, and the Obama administration is leaving large areas untouched because of their ecological and wildlife value.

Response from environmental advocates was relatively muted. Eric Myers, Alaska policy director for the National Audubon Society, said that conservationists were willing to see an increase in drilling in the Alaskan petroleum reserve as long as it did not threaten wildlife, waters or sensitive lands.

The more environmentally sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska will remain off-limits to oil and gas drillers, administration officials said Friday.

The president noted in his address that the Justice Department had formed a task force to look into potential market manipulation or excessive speculation in oil, and he repeated his call for a repeal of the $4 billion a year in tax incentives the oil industry receives.

?In the last few months, the biggest oil companies made about $4 billion in profits each week,? Mr. Obama said. ?And yet, they get $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies each year. Four billion dollars at a time when Americans can barely fill up their tanks. Four billion dollars at a time when we?re trying to reduce our deficit.?

Next week, the Senate will take up a Democratic bill to remove a portion of those subsides, but it is not expected to become law because of united Republican opposition in both chambers of Congress.

Mr. Obama?s last four weekly addresses have been about oil prices, industry profits and alternative energy programs.

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Gaming 26 - The Showman's Bag

Gaming 26 - The Showman's Bag

Posted on 13th May 2011 at 12:17 by Podcast with 6 comments

This week Paul and Joe were joined by plughead.net founder and former PC Zone writer David Brown. First up on the agenda was the continuing PSN outage, and how the continuing lack of service is starting to affect games developers.

We also attempted to talk about the Witcher 2, but somehow we ended up on the topic of DLC and, unsurprisingly, Mass Effect 2. Joe also got a chance to talk about his experiences with Star Wars: The Old Republic, and why he thought the game deserved the savaging that he gave it.

Finally, we also got a chance to put a few of your questions to David who discussed everything from the future of print publishing to the pressure that games publishers and developers put on members of the games press.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Roccat Vire Gaming Headset. The headset weighs only 15g and comes complete with a carry bag and rubberised ergonomic earplugs.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Big Omaha: The most important conference you?ve never attended

I?m well aware that the claim of ?most important conference? is a big one. If I didn?t feel that was true, though, I?d have never said it. Big Omaha is, in a few words, what would happen if TED were in the business of technology conferences. Big thoughts, huge calls to action and absolutely zero crap. In a world of bubble rumors, huge egos and even bigger failures, Omaha, Nebraska holds the conference that is the antithesis to all of these things.

Let?s take a look at a bit of history. A few years ago, organizers Jeff Slobotski and Dusty Davidson were given the challenge to take the spirit of entrepreneurship in Omaha and gather it into one motivating place. Taking that challenge to heart in 2008, Big Omaha was born.

World-class speakers come to the stage to talk about ideas, opportunity and what drives them. While that?s not entirely different from what we?ve seen at other conferences, it?s what happens off the stage that truly sets Big Omaha apart.

US CTO Aneesh Chopra speaking with attendees

Tech conferences are typically driven to the direction of startup rallys, competitions and amazing parties to cap off each day. There?s nothing at all wrong with that focus ? heck our own TNW conference follows that same model, and people can?t wait for it to come around every year ? but Big Omaha breeds a different sort of feeling.

If you?ve ever attended a WordCamp, you?ll get the idea. Except you have to add to the mix the fact of having international speakers mingling with the local crowd. You?re also not traveling and picking from session to session. Big Omaha is laid out clearly, in a single large room, with ample spaces to sit and carry on conversations.

I think that this is probably the most striking thing about Big Omaha. Wandering the floor, you?re just as likely to see Gary Vaynerchuk sitting on the floor talking to a startup founder as you are to overhear people discussing the ideas that were just presented on the stage. It?s networking, with a focus on creating and inspiring you to do more and higher quality work.

You don?t attend this conference to learn, and it?s not really an ?educational track? kind of event to begin with. You attend because you want to be inspired to accomplish bigger, better things in work and in life. ? Nathan Wright, Attendee

Mr. Wright states it in the way that I have struggled to do for the past two days. While it?s common to walk away from an event with that ?conference high?, this is the first time that I have seen people start to take action before walking out of the doors on the closing day. Plans were being made, calls were held, emails exchanged. The ideas that were given wings on the stage were given wind in which to fly from the audience.

Though, aside from the stage, nothing about Big Omaha feels like the audience is any less a part of the picture. You can expect random dancing, instructions to move an entire row of chairs from the back of the room to the front and more standing ovations than you?ve ever seen in one place. Expect to be surprised and driven by some unseen force to make plans to attend the following year even before the current one is over.

I was given the opportunity to come to Omaha to find out what?s going on in ?Silicon Prairie?. After the first day I was convinced that Omaha is something special (more on that during my massive weekend post about why you need to know about Omaha). After the first hour of the Big Omaha conference, I was convinced and had already made my decision to return the following year. Even if I?m not invited back as press, I?ll buy my own ticket, and pay my own way. Outside of The Next Web Conference, Big Omaha is the single most important plan that you?ll make for 2012.

But move fast. This year?s conference sold out in 3 days, with a waiting list of over 600 begging for standing room tickets.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/05/14/big-omaha-the-most-important-conference-youve-never-attended/

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