Golder and Huberman conducted research on how social tagging functions on the popular website Delicious.

Differences between social tagging and taxonomies:

1. Taxonomies are administered by some authority; tagging is “democratic” (my scare-quoted term)
2. Taxonomies are usually hierarchical; tagging is “flat”

Semantic and cognitive aspects of classification:

Polysemy – a term describing a word that carries a number of semantic meanings.

Synonymy – multiple words having the same or similar meanings

• This is a huge problem for tagging because the non-standardized or “uncontrolled” vocabularies of user-generated tagging makes for problematic search queries.

“Basic Level” refers to the most common way people refer to a thing. The example they give is a picture of a beagle. Most people see the picture and choose “dog” as most basic level. Though a veterinarian might have “beagle” at is most basic level, because expertise in the relevant field changes one’s “basic level.”

Looking at Delicious, the authors found some interesting results:

There were weak correlations between age of Delicious account and number of tags, and a weak correlation between number of bookmarks and number of tags. One users tag use increased greatly with bookmark increases, while another’s tag use increased gradually as his or her bookmarking increased.

Tags functions:

1. Identifying what or who bookmark is about
2. Kind of thing that is bookmarked, e.g. article, blog, book
3. Who owns the bookmarked thing
4. Identifies qualities or characteristics of bookmarked thing
5. Self-reference – “mycomments”
6. Task organizing – “toread”

Very interesting:

“… it turns out that the combined tags of many users’ bookmarks give rise to a stable pattern in which the proportions of each tag are nearly fixed.”

Works Cited

Golder, S. A. and Huberman, B. A. (2006). “Usage patterns of collaborative tagging systems.” In Journal of Information Science, 32(2): 198-208

Well, it has been a long while since I’ve been able to blog about anything. I’ve been pretty busy with school, work, and then vacation to the beautiful state of Hawaii.  A few things to note.

For those who have followed my post regarding journalists who use wikipedia, and in particular St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell, I was unable to verify the veracity of the Huberman quote.  Neither was the Post-Dispatch.  They issued this addendum to the column:

OCT. 17 EDITOR’S NOTE

A quote in Bryan Burwell’s column Oct. 7 attributed to Rush Limbaugh about the merits of slavery in the United States cannot be verified, and its use did not meet the Post-Dispatch’s standards for sourcing.

Limbaugh said he did not make the statement.

Burwell’s column did not identify the source of the quote, which was Jack Huberman’s 2006 book “101 People Who Are Really Screwing America.” The book provided no details about the origin of the quote. When contacted by the Post-Dispatch, Huberman said that he had a source for the quote but declined to reveal it on advice of counsel. The book’s publisher, Nation Books, did not return calls to the Post-Dispatch.

The Post-Dispatch found references attributing the quote to Limbaugh in other publications and on Internet blogs as far back as 1993, but none of those cited a source.

The Burwell column on this page is an edited version in which the quote has been removed.

I have no idea what actions, if any, Limbaugh intends to take against Huberman.  This should certainly, however, be a valuable learning experience for budding journalists about the sources they use.  Hopefully Burwell and others who attributed the quote to Limbaugh will check more carefully next time.  I do appreciate the feedback I got on this, particularly from noted Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston.

On a lighter note, I did just return from a trip to Maui, and it was simply amazing.  I hope to soon be able to share a few of my experiences there as well as video and pictures.  Hopefully you will enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Also, several things have happened that I would have liked to blog about but due to general busy-ness failed to do so.  One of these was the awarding of the National League Cy Young Trophy to Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum.  While I don’t begrudge Lincecum the trophy (he had a fantastic season), I do believe the voting raised an interesting debate regarding the use of sabermetrics in baseball.  Maybe I’ll devote some time to that in the future. I also hope to continue my discussion of the constitutionality of secession.

Thanks for continuing to check up, and hopefully I’ll have some updates before the weekend is over.

Ich dachte mir ich stelle mal eine Liste über die wichtigsten grundlegenden Studien zum Thema Twitter zusammen…das erspart anderen vielleicht die Suche

Huberman, Bernardo; Romero, Daniel; Wu, Fang:
Social networks that matters-Twitter under the microscope
05.12.2008 [PDF] 

Huberman et al. untersuchen anhand der Anzahl Follower und Following die Art des Netzwerkes, dass sich für Individuen bei Twitter bildet. Sie kommen zu dem Schluß, dass Individuen bei Twitter ein kleines, engmaschiges Netzwerk aus Freunden und ein weit größeres aus Bekannten hat.

Die Anzahl Follower scheint darüberhinaus einen Effekt auf die Aktivität eines Nutzers zu haben oder vice versa…

Aufpassen muss man, wie bei fast allen englisch-sprachigen Studien die man in Deutschland verwendet, bei der Definition des Begriffes Freund. Ein “Freund” in sozialen Netzwerken muss nicht zwangsläufig auch ein Freund im realen Leben sein und ein “Freund” bei Twitter ist wieder etwas anderes, als ein “Freund” bei anderen sozialen Netzwerken.

Naaman, Mor; Boase, Jeffrey; Lai, Chih-Hui:
Is it Really About Me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams
Proceedings of the CSCW 2010 [PDF]

Naaman et al. widmen sich dem Inhalt von Tweets von Individualpersonen. Welche Motive stecken hinter der Nutzung von Twitter, wie wird getwittert, gibt es grundlegende Unterschiede?
Sie finden 2 Gruppen: Informers (20%) und Meformers (80%). In über 3000 Tweets gelingt ihnen darüberhinaus eine Analyse des technischen Ursprungsorts von Tweets: 25% aller Tweets kamen über mobile Applikationen.

Krishnamurthy, Balachander; Gill, Phillipa; Arlitt, Martin:
A Few Chirps About Twitter
Proceedings of the WOSN 2008 [PDF]

In dieser Studie sind Hinweise über Nutzungsverhalten und Motive genauso enthalten, wie eine Aufstellung der häufigsten Nationen bei Twitter, Hinweise wie sich die Muttersprache der Twitter-Nutzer auf die Bildung von Communitys auswirkt und wieviele Nutzer Twitter ungefährt haben könnte (genaue Zahlen bleibt Twitter ja bis heute schuldig)
Nicht wundern: das PDF ist etwa grafikgewaltig und kann ein bischen Zeit nehmen beim Ausdruck und Download.

Java, Akshany; Song, Xiaodan; Fini, Tim; Tseng, Belle:
Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities
Proceedings of the Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop 2007 [PDF]

Noch eine grundlegende Studie über Motive von Twitter-Nutzern, geografische Verteilung, Freunde und Follower…

[to be continued...]

HuffPo pulls fake Limbaugh quotes. Not sure if anyone has picked this up yet, but the editors at the Huffington Post have pulled the fake Limbaugh “slavery” quotes from a 2006 Jack Huberman article. Huberman’s book was one of the original sources for the fake quotes, apparently picking them up from the wikipedia entry where they first appeared.
A note at the beginning of the article now states:
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post contained quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh, which Limbaugh has since denied making. As is our policy when a fact in a blog post is called into question, we gave its author 24 hours to substantiate the quote. Since he has not been able to do so, the quotes have been deleted from the post.
So Huberman wasn’t able to back it up, they pulled the quotes. That’s fair enough, I guess. I wonder if the rest of the “fact-check” media will be honest enough to follow their online lead. Don’t hold your breath.

“Wikipedia is the best thing ever.  Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.”  ~ Michael Scott

Unless you’ve been living under a bridge, you have surely heard by now the hullabaloo surrounding conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and his minority partnership in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams.  Limbaugh, along with other investors led by Blues owner Dave Checketts,  approached current Rams ownership to talk about the possibility of purchasing the team.  This, predictably, set off a firestorm of controversy around the country, with columnists, sportscasters, players, and fans weighing in on whether or not the league should allow a controversial public figure like Limbaugh to own an NFL franchise. Limbaugh’s racial views have been bandied about, quotes that he has made in the past have been discussed, and accusations have been made.  The end result was that yesterday, Checketts said that rather than have the attempt to buy and keep the Rams in St. Louis be jeopardized, they were dropping Limbaugh from the group.

I’m not interested in discussion over whether Rush Limbaugh is a racist.  He has a three hour radio show in which he can speak for himself, and plenty of people listen, so the public at large can make those determinations for themselves.  What I am interested in is how this blossoming debate has further exposed the shoddy state of journalism in the twenty-first century.

At the heart of the issue lie a couple of quotes, one in particular, that has been attributed to Limbaugh from a variety of corners, everywhere from Democratic political strategist James Carville, to sports columnists Bryan Burwell and Jason Whitlock, to NBC journalist David Shuster.  The primary quote under discussion is said to have been uttered by Limbaugh in 1998:

“Let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

The second quote, which has gotten less attention but is no less inflammatory, is this:

“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray (Dr. King’s assassin). We miss you, James. Godspeed.”

Obviously, if Limbaugh had actually uttered these quotes, one touting the benefits of slavery and the second honoring James Earl Ray, this would likely be enough to end his illustrious (or infamous, depending on which view of Limbaugh you have) career.

There’s one problem.  No one can seem to ascertain whether he actually said it.

Burwell, a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was one of the first to strike by touting the slavery quote.  In a column on October 7th, he chided the NFL for their greed and conservative politics, and advised them to think twice before agreeing to allow Limbaugh to even obtain minority ownership in the Rams.  Along the way, he quoted Limbaugh comparing the NFL to the Crips and the Bloods, and says those are “Limbaugh’s words.”  Which they are.  But he then goes on to say, “So are these” and gives the slavery quote.

The problem is that Burwell did not do his research when it came to the slavery statement.  In his latest column, he defends the quote, stating that it was reported in a 2006 book called  “101 People Who Are Really Screwing America” by Jack Huberman.  He goes on to state that the quote was in line with other things Limbaugh had said, so he didn’t bother to verify the quote anywhere else.  There are so many problems with this that I don’t know where to begin.  The first is that Huberman is an author who is the polar opposite of Limbaugh, an unabashed liberal (and atheist) with a vicious streak.  His written works include “The Bush-Haters Handbook,” “The GOP-Haters Handbook,” and “The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Non-Believers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound.” In his “101 People” book, he includes in his list of people who are “screwing America” a wide variety of subjects, among them J.K. Rowling, Dr. Dobson, people who buy SUV’s, and God.  So it’s not as if this is an objective source.  Using a single source for such a controversial quote is inexcusable in its own right, using a single source with such an obvious bias is doubly inexcusable.

Working in the journalism industry should tip Burwell to the fact that not everything that gets published or goes to press is fact.  Using a little known book by an obscure author with an obvious grudge to prove a point is irresponsible journalism.  Especially, and this is important, if Limbaugh’s racist overtones are so obvious.  If it’s so apparent that Limbaugh is a racist, why, of all the quotes Burwell could have apparently sourced, did he use an unsubstantiated one that could only be found one place?  The same question applies to anyone who has quoted the slavery quote over the last week or so.  If it’s so easy to find racist commentary by Rush Limbaugh, why use this particular quote?  It’s as if those using this quote just went somewhere where there was a list of alleged comments by Limbaugh, and picked a couple of the most compelling without checking to see whether they were accurate or not.

Which brings me to my next point.  What I would really like to know is whether Burwell, Whitlock, and the others who have repeated this actually did so by obtaining a copy of Jack Huberman’s book, reading it, and then quoting it.  Because there are a few other places the quote has been referenced, including a couple of anti-Limbaugh websites….and Wikipedia.

Now we all know what Wikipedia is.  Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which is open to the public, and anyone can log on and make changes to any entry they want.  The first thing you are told by any professor in any college when talking about sources for papers is that Wikipedia is NOT an acceptable source.  That’s because people deliberately fabricate information on Wikipedia, or enter information that is unsubstantiated.  The administrators of Wikipedia try their best to make sure the information is as accurate as possible, but by its very nature, Wikipedia is a breeding ground for biased, unsubstantiated rumors and information without objectivity.  I can think of no reason whatsoever that a credible journalist would use Wikipedia as a primary or secondary source.

Now, I don’t know if Burwell, Whitlock, Carville, Shuster, or anyone else who has repeated the slavery quote got their information from Wikipedia.  Since Burwell’s column went to press, the Post-Dispatch has issued an addendum to the column noting that the quote has not yet been substantiated.  Whitlock, who quotes both the Earl Ray and slavery quote, has since updated his column to note that he got them from Huberman’s book.  Initially, both columns had stated unequivocally that the words did, in fact, belong to Limbaugh.  Once called on it, both issued clarification that they got the quotes from Huberman’s book, and nowhere else.  But color me skeptical.  I doubt Whitlock or Burwell or anyone else who has referenced the quote actually read the Huberman book.  It is MUCH more likely that they either pulled them off a website, or got them from Wikipedia.

Why Wikipedia?  Well, because with the rise of social media, journalists are more and more using unconventional methods in order to obtain information for columns or stories.  Consider this:  According to a new survey by the Middleberg Communications and the Society for New Communications Research, a whopping FIFTY-ONE PERCENT of journalists use Wikipedia to assist in their reporting.  Now, I doubt that means that fifty-one percent of journalists are using Wikipedia as a source.  After all, I’ve used Wikipedia to jump start a search, and many times the entries there contain links to the source material, which is sometimes credible.  I think it’s not unlikely that many people in that fifty-one percent might use Wikipedia in this manner, and I don’t see a particular problem with this.

However, the twenty-four hour news cycle, the flagging paper industry, the explosion of blogs and alternative media such as The Rush Limbaugh Show, have all placed an increasing amount of pressure for journalists to deliver news at breakneck speed.  Add to that the increased rancor that exists in politics today which has bled over into newsrooms, and you have the perfect storm of journalists who have a whole world of misinformation at their fingertips and a motivation to use it.  Over the last five to ten years, we’ve seen plenty of journalistic screw-ups, everything from Dan Rather and the Bush National Guard story to Newsweek’s “Koran flushing” incident, and all of them were completely avoidable.  Obviously all these aren’t connected to Wikipedia, but an over reliance on faulty or contrived sources were to blame.  Combining half of surveyed journalists in this new era of journalism with a flawed research tool like Wikipedia is a recipe for disaster.  Sure, some journalists will know that Wikipedia shouldn’t be used…and others will know that they’ve got a deadline to meet and as long as Wikipedia provides a source, why bother to check it out?

Even when the stories aren’t political, journalists get caught with their pants down (metaphorically speaking) because of their own laziness and inefficiency.  Earlier this year, when French composer Maurice Jarre passed away, Shane Fitzgerald, a student from Dublin University, decided to try an experiment. He went to Wikipedia and posted a false quote which he attributed to Jarre.  The whole process took about fifteen minutes.  And then he sat back and waited.

Wikipedia’s vetting crew found the quote and scrubbed it clean, but not before newspapers worldwide spotted it and decided it sounded plausible enough.  So they added it to obits of Jarre, even though the quote had no sources shown on Wikipedia.  It wasn’t until a month went by, and Fitzgerald finally contacted some of the news agencies responsible, that they realized that the Jarre quote was fabricated.  Only one paper publicly apologized, the Guardian from the UK.  Others either corrected the obit quietly or some not at all (it’s possible that they could have done so since the story broke several months ago).  Regardless, Fitzgerald exposed a crucial flaw in the way some journalists operate.  When in doubt, use the source anyway and apologize later.

The American Journalism Review wrote an interesting piece last year about the use of Wikipedia in newsrooms. It points out the flaws in the database, as well as noting that some journalists use it as a starting point for trying to find more credible sources. There’s some division over whether or not Wikipedia should be used, and some journalists are staunchly against it.

Asked his opinion of Wikipedia, Phillip Blanchard, the Washington Post copy editor who started testycopyeditors, responds, “I’m not sure what I could add, beyond ‘don’t use it’ and ‘it’s junk.’”

Other news rooms, though, are not so discriminating.  For instance, the Los Angeles Times, who has used Wikipedia.

Melissa McCoy, the Times’ deputy managing editor in charge of copy desks, says the paper occasionally allows Wikipedia attribution. “We’re certainly not going to use Wikipedia as a stand-alone news source, but we’re not going to exclude it if it takes us somewhere,” she says. “If a reporter spots something in there and it makes them do an extra phone call, it’s silly” not to use it.

Ultimately though, the AJR piece concludes by  quoting David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter from the New York Times, who says:  “No matter who your sources are, when you sign your name, you are responsible for every word, every thought, every concept.”

Which brings us back to Burwell, Whitlock and company.  Regardless of what you think about Rush Limbaugh, looking at it objectively, the shoddy journalism exhibited ought to bring down serious repercussions and instigate a larger debate about how journalism is conducted in the age of Technology.  Burwell could use this opportunity to admit that he was too lazy to do some digging and find out whether the quote was accurate.  He could admit that his research methods are flawed, that if the quote is left unsubstantiated it will bring further reproach to the Post-Dispatch, and that moving forward, in the future, he’ll try not to be such a lazy, inefficient screw-up.  He could even state that he’s sorry while STILL saying he disagrees with Limbaugh’s inclusion in the ownership group.

Instead, Burwell has this to say:

Fine, let’s play along for the time being and take him at his word that he was inaccurately quoted in the Huberman book. Heck, let’s go along for the full ride and believe that it was all a horrible “fabrication.”

So what are we left with?

Well, essentially, I think we just threw a deck chair off the Titanic.

Fine.  Let’s play along for the time being and pretend that Burwell’s use of the quote wasn’t a shoddy piece of journalism.

What are we left with?

In my opinion, a deliberate and malicious hack job by a loud mouth, know-it-all sportscaster who’s so egotistical that spots for his radio show tell us he’s “completely full of himself.”  A more accurate description of Burwell would be “completely full of crap.”

This is a story about Rush Limbaugh that is not about Rush Limbaugh.

The story is about the dangers of relying on the internet (including this column) as a source of information about anything. Before you venture into this web of deception, you’d better be armed with a well-maintained bullshit detector, a.k.a. an informed, rational, and fully-functional brain.

Good NFL Role Model

Rush and some of his buddies are talking about buying the NFL St. Louis Rams. Apparently there are people out there, including a lot of sportswriters, who don’t like Rush. They think he would be bad for the game unlike, say, Al Davis, Michael Vick, Lyle Alzado, or that paragon of role models, O.J. Simpson.

So, these “journalists” crank up Google and do some in-depth research to prove Limbaugh is a racist, unfit to be an NFL owner.

And they all come up with the same pieces of “evidence:”

“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray (Dr. King’s assassin). We miss you, James. Godspeed.”

“Let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Limbaugh allegedly made both statements on his nationally syndicated radio broadcast. These two quotes are all over the internet and, worse still, have made it into print across the country. Did Limbaugh really say these things? On the radio?

Of course not.

Bad NFL Role Model

I rarely listen to Limbaugh so, if he’d actually said these things, I would not have heard them. Yet I am certain the above two quotes are lies. How do I know? Because I’m armed with a well-maintained bullshit detector that, believe me, gets plenty of exercise every day.

Both quotes come from Jack Huberman’s book, 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America.

Bullshit alert #1. Something about the title of Huberman’s book tells me he has an agenda.

Bullshit alert #2. Huberman’s publisher, Nation Books (The Nation Institute) also has an agenda. You can look Nation Books up for yourself and decide what their agenda is.

Bullshit alert #3. Huberman never provides a source for these quotes other than to say they aired on Limbaugh’s national radio program sometime in 1998.

Bullshit alert #4. Millions of people listen to Limbaugh every day. Many thousands record his program. Not everyone who listens to Limbaugh is a fan. If he’d actually said these things in 1998 he’d no longer be on the radio. There’s not a station in the country that would touch a commentator who had made such tasteless and overtly racist comments.

Bullshit alert #5. Limbaugh made the alleged comments in 1998 but they were not published until 2006. Why did such inflammatory stuff, if true, languish for eight years?

Bullshit alert #6. Even after the publication of Huberman’s book no one, except the very naïve, gave it any credibility. Where were the demonstrations, the boycotts, the congressional hearings, the lynch mobs?

Now, someone somewhere unearths these undocumented quotes and posts them to the internet. In less than 24 hours a Google search on one of the quotes jumped from 6 hits to 8,080. Read most of the references that cite these quotes and you’d think Limbaugh was a direct descendant of Simon Legree.

But enough about Rush, Jack Huberman, and a raft of gullible sportswriters.

The real danger here is to your children. Huh? Well, ever since Al Gore invented the internet there’s been a push to “wire” our schools, to get our kids “connected.” Connected to what? Basically, electronic versions of The National Enquirer, People, Us, and The Weekly World News. And, of course, Jack Huberman.

Vanishing Role Model

Do your kids really need the internet as an information source? What do they gain by having ready access to millions of uncatalogued, undocumented “facts?” Next parent-teacher conference, instead of oohing and aahing over the new computers, “interactive learning modules,” and high-speed internet access, ask the teacher, “What are you doing to teach my child the critical thinking skills he needs to make sense of all this?” “What are you doing to teach him how to express himself clearly, orally and in writing?” “What are you doing to teach him the analytical skills he needs to understand the deluge of numbers we see every day?”

In short, “Are you teaching him to think?”

Talk about dodging a bullet. Chicagoans in the neighborhoods are breathing a little easier this afternoon, now that the IOC decided to screw Rio instead of Chicago.

While boss Daley swore it wouldn’t cost the people of Chicago a dime, who really believed that story.

We see a little taste of what would have been in today’s Sun-Times story on CPS school boss Ron Huberman and his sweetheart deal with Motorola. Millions of dollars for stuff we didn’t want, didn’t need and never got.

Chicago schools chief Ron Huberman — Mayor Daley’s former corruption-fighting chief of staff — is being accused of a “significant management failure” that set the stage for alleged contract irregularities at the city’s 911 center that cost taxpayers $2.25 million.

In an explosive new report, the city inspector general’s office characterizes Huberman as so derelict in the oversight of a contract with Motorola while he was executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications that he should be suspended if he still worked for the city.

It’s really a Fall day today. We ran around doing our Saturday morning stuff with the top down on the Mini, but we were both wearing sweatshirts. What a goofy summer in Chicago as far as the weather is concerned.

We decided to have coffee and oatmeal at home. Bagels are off the menu. I dropped twenty pounds this summer. But still have more to do.

I filled my stove top espresso maker with a good French roast espresso grind and the truth is that nothing tastes as good. We add it to some milk warmed in the microwave and who needs Peets?

Obama. The time is now.

Charles Blow, writing in this morning’s NY Times, speaks for many who busted butt last year to get Obama elected with the expectation that he would pursue an agressive progessive agenda. The polls are showing growing disappointment among our folks.

From the disaster that is Afghanistan, the slow withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the Duncan bullshit in the Department of Ed,  to the better than nothing strategy around health care, Blow says that time is running out.

Most important, this two-year window may be the only time Democrats can push through reform without Republican support. As Nate Silver pointed out on his blog last week, “Without major intervening events like 9/11, the party that wins the White House almost always loses seats at the midterm elections — since World War II, an average of 17 seats in the House after the White House changes parties.” There is no reason to believe that this won’t be the case next year.

A poll released by Rasmussen Reports this week found that on a generic Congressional ballot, Republican candidates hold a 5 percent advantage over Democratic ones.

The time is now. Just do it.

CPS students give Huberman some advice.

ChiTownDailyNews reports that 30 students involved in the Mikva Challenge, a summer program in Chicago, have drawn up a list of suggestions for CPS boss Ron Huberman.

One of the easy ones: The students called for Huberman to bring back the College Bridge program, which got axed last month after state funds were cut.

NEA not pleased with Duncan’s Race to the Top requirements.

Thankfully it appears that there is a growing and more public debate between my union and the Department of Education over charter schools and the linking of teacher evaluations to student test scores.

“Despite growing evidence to the contrary, it appears the administration has decided that charter schools are the only answer to what ails America’s public schools,” the 3.2 million-member union said in its 26 pages of comments.

The union also said: “It is inappropriate to require that states be able to link data on student achievement to individual teachers for the purpose of teacher and principal evaluation …”

The NEA said evaluations are a local function and that the federal rule would interfere with union contracts.

(Source: Newser)

The study from CPS boss Ron Huberman was meant to provide data on how school closings impact actual students.

But the report he issued doesn’t address that issue at all.

Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) would like to know. I bet most parents would like to know.

Well, we thought the point of this report was to monitor any harm that might come to individual students as a result of school closings. For example:

How many students dropped out instead of going to their receiving school?
Did any students lose academic ground as a result of their transition to a different school?
Did any students experience bullying or other acts of violence, or report feeling less safe in their receiving school?
Did students in the receiving schools experience problems?
Where’s the demographic data???

At a time when data driven decision making are the buzz words, where’s the data about kids? Didn’t we get a lecture from EdSec Duncan that schools were about kids?

Illinois ranks 49th in state spending on schools.

While only the wing-nuttiest of conservatives (see Mike Petrilli at Flypaper) think federal dollars for education is a bad thing, the Stimulus money coming to Illinois does not address that ranking, even though EdSec Arne Duncan, CPS boss Ron Huberman and Governor Pat Quinn are trying to sell it as if it does.

Medill:

Duncan said the stimulus money could improve Illinois’ ranking as the second lowest in the nation in state funding for schools. Illinois will receive $3 billion for education through the stimulus package. Money could start coming in within the next two weeks, according to Quinn’s office. Illinois also has a chance to compete for $5 billion more in federal dollars though initiatives that support states making “dramatic progress” in education reform, as well as non-profits and school districts with a history of results.

Duncan said the stimulus money would bring education reform to the state and raise Illinois’ status as one of the lowest spenders on schools.

“Quite frankly children in our state have been poorly served for far too long and that has to change,” Duncan said. “Being 49th of 50 states in education funding is nothing to be proud of. I think collectively this state has a chance to … really move in a dramatically different direction.”

But the state can’t move in a dramatically different direction until the Governor and the state legislature end the perverse system of funding Illinois schools. The reliance on local property taxes to fund schools, rather than on a progressive income tax, means that state funding will remain low and the quality of the education will depend on the zip code of the school district. Rich districts will continue to get more and poor districts will continue to get less.

Why would Duncan try to conceal that fact?

CPS boss, Ron Huberman.

The idea is pretty simple really. If you’re on a campaign to close underused or poor performing schools, you should be able to provide the data that supports your assertion.

I think it’s called “accountability” and “transparency.”

Angela Caputo at Progress Illinois says you won’t find the data coming from the Chicago School System as they continue to shut ‘em down.

For months, school reform advocates have confronted Chicago Public Schools officials with a fairly straightforward request: If they’re going to continue to close down schools in the name of progress, they should be able to demonstrate what progress is or isn’t being made.

The Mayor’s boy, new CPS chief Ron Huberman got his way and the puppets who sit on the CPS school board voted yesterday to close 16 schools as part of Renaissance 2010.

Chi-Town Daily News:

Under the plan approved yesterday, elementary schools Nia, Foundations, Princeton and South Chicago will all close due to low enrollment.

Four more elementary schools — Abbott, Davis Developmental, Medill and Schiller — will consolidate into other schools nearby.

Carpenter, Lathrop and Reed elementary schools will stop taking students and be phased out, as will Best Practice High School.

And Bethune, Johnson and Dulles elementary schools and Fenger High School will have their staffs replaced in last-chance turnaround bids.

Last week the board agreed to remove six schools from the closing list after parents, teachers and community people loudly protested the plan. Many believed the six schools were removed in an attempt to split the anti-school closing movement.

But the community showed up again yesterday.

If Chicago Public Schools officials thought opponents of closures and turnarounds might be at least somewhat satisfied, after the district gave six other struggling and under enrolled schools a reprieve earlier this week, last night’s Board of Education meeting suggested activists will continue to fight.

Evidence of continued community outrage was on display in the form of a list of names Chicago Public Schools officials hand out as you enter the board chambers at 125 S. Clark St.

People on the list have signed up to give testimony during the monthly, two-hour public comment period. One CPS official noted that there were more names on the list than at any other time in the last four years.

Representative Cynthia Soto’s school closing moratorium bill now takes on even greater importance.

New CPS boss Ron Huberman  gave in to parent, teacher and community pressure and is keeping open six schools that were targeted for Ren10 closings. But that decision is raising new questions.

Chi-Town Daily News reports:

Opponents of school closures and turnarounds, fresh off a rare victory, are still expected to show up at tomorrow’s Chicago Board of Education meeting in large numbers to protest the district’s revised plan for under enrolled and struggling schools.

Chicago Public Schools originally wanted to close, consolidate, phase out or turnaround 22 schools.

But late Monday, new schools CEO Ron Huberman removed six schools from the list, citing persuasive arguments in recent public hearings on their behalf by parents, teachers, local school council officials and community leaders.

The six schools had parents and teachers who by all accounts were the most outspoken in opposition to the closing plans. Many in the anti-school closings movement wonder if The Mayor and Huberman were simply giving in a little to keep a lot. Were they hoping to silence the most active opponents so they could then go ahead and close the remaining schools?

PURE suggests that may have been the Mayor’s strategy:

In the case of the six “saved” schools, we have seen the passion and determination of their teachers, staff, parents, and school community members as this fight has worn on. They are true heroes of the movement. We believe that they will remain committed to the overall cause of Renaissance 2010 resistance. But there’s no doubt that it will be more difficult for them to maintain that that high level of activity now that it is no longer so directly personal. Anyway, CPS counts on that.

The growing movement against Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 and school closings won some victories last night when new CPS school boss Ron Huberman conceded to parent and community demands. He will take six schools off the school closing list. Reported the Tribune:

Among the most vocal groups at hearings and news conferences were representatives from Peabody School in the West Town neighborhood. Lillie Gonzalez, a Peabody Local School Council member who has put three generations of her family through the school, broke down in tears when told the news.

The community push back against school closings is also winning the support of state legislators who are considering a bill by Representative Cynthia Soto that would place a one year moratorium on the closures.

New CPS boss Ron Huberman

This is what mayoral control looks like. 

The mayor picks a local political hack to run the Chicago Public Schools.

Run Huberman, former coffee boy for the mayor, former head of the Chicago Transit Authority (which he ran into the ground, making it one of the worst public transportation systems in the country) is now head of the Chicago Public Schools, replacing EdSec Arne Duncan.

Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, a watchdog group, said that when Vallas was selected it was intended to get the district’s financial house in order. Duncan pushed the district toward Daley’s desire to set up schools run by private groups, she said.

 

“It’s a disservice for the city of Chicago,” Woestehoff said. “Data on bus timetables is a whole lot different than student achievement tests.”

 

Huberman became CTA head in May 2007 after serving for about two years in Daley’s office. He previously ran the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications and spent nine years as a Chicago police officer, rising to the rank of assistant deputy superintendent. His appointment to the $225,000 job is expected to be approved at Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting.

 

While Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart has expressed a preference for an educator in the job, she said Tuesday that she hopes to have a good working relationship with Huberman.

“He has to understand that we are working with children with emotional and social issues coming into the classrooms,” Stewart said. “You can’t manage something you don’t understand.”  (source)

This video is an excerpt of the presentation Jonathan Huberman gave yesterday at the EMC Summit in Silicon Valley where he talked about the challenges differentiating in the external disk drive market where all the solutions look very much alike.

The Iomega CEO also talked about its competition (Seagate, Western Digital, Buffalo…), the network storage opportunity as well as the company’s new multimedia drives. Huberman also touched on the SSD opportunity. For more details on what Huberman said yo can also read this previous post.

Jonathan Huberman, CEO, Iomega

Beware Seagate and Western Digital, Iomega is on the come-back!

Speaking yesterday at EMC’s Innovation, Information and Security Summit held at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters in Santa Clara, Iomega CEO, Jonathan Huberman (pictured), predicted a massive consolidation of the consumer portable storage market (think USB hard drives), with only a handful of companies surviving in this cut-throat market largely dominated by the disk drive makers themselves.

“There’s only a handful of companies in this market that can invest as much as we do in R&D and marketing. The disk drive makers are investing a lot in improving aerial density not really in design, packaging, etc.”, explains Huberman.

Inspite of being dependent of disks suppliers like Seagate and Western Digital for its external USB drives, Iomega CEO still think it can compete in the portable storage market with the drive makers themselves.

“Seagate and Western Digital can make money selling portable drives when Iomega can’t. However, EMC is buying a lot of enterprise drives from them too. So it’s not like we don’t have a leverage there”, adds Iomega CEO.

But long term, Iomega is betting on the network storage market, where competition is sparse, rather than the USB drives for growth and profits.

“Consumers with several PCs in their home are the prime target for those network drives. But we have to make those network drives easy to use if we want consumers to buy. It’s going to take some time and our advantage is that we have more than 60 engineers working full time on it. That’s more than anyone else in this industry”, points Huberman.

On the question about Flash drive adoption in the consumer market, Huberman doesn’t see it happening before Christmas 2010… that’s 2 years from now!

Seguramente quien lea el título de entrada se preguntará de manera inmediata, ¿Quién diablos es Joshua Bell? Naturalmente será así. Bell es un mundialmente afamado violinista estadounidense que podría señalarse como el más exitoso de las últimas décadas. Actualmente es el violinista con mayor venta de discos compactos de todo el mundo y solo en el 2003 logró ventas de 5 millones de copias bajo el título de “Romance of the Violin”.

Durante los días previos a las festividades navideñas del 2006 este violinista fue contactado por un periodista del Washington Post, Gene Weingarten, para realizar un ingenioso experimento en un espacio urbano de la capital estadounidense –Washington D.C. – . El plan fue que Bell emprendiera la interpretación de diferentes piezas para violín durante un espacio de 45 minutos como un incognito en la estación “L’Enfant Plaza” del metro de la ciudad. De esta manera Weingarten pretendería abordar el interés del público para apreciar su entorno y en especial a la exquisita interpretación de Bell en plena hora pico.

Weingarten planteó en su escrito –“Peals Before Breakfast” o “Perlas Antes del Desayuno” en castellano-, ¿Qué sucedería si el más afamado violinista del mundo se detuviera de incognito a tocar ante un público de mil personas aproximadamente y en hora pico? Acaso, ¿Estos se detendrían a escucharle? O algo más relevante: acaso, ¿podrían reconocer quién es él?

Los resultados no fueron para nada sorprendentes: unos 1097 pasaron, 27 donaron cerca de US$32 dólares, 7 se detuvieron a apreciarle por unos minutos y únicamente una persona le reconoció. Esta última, una mujer, le obsequió US$20 dólares -adicionales a los primeros US$32-.

Esto hace que cualquiera se pregunte, ¿Qué le está sucediendo a la gente? ¿Cómo les es imposible reconocer el valor de una interpretación musical única y formidable en todos los sentidos? Simplemente es un tema para una intensa reflexión sobre el comportamiento de la sociedad actual, y no únicamente la estadounidense.

Lo curioso era que su violín, el utilizado en el momento del experimento público, le costó al intérprete cerca de US$3.5 millones de dólares, fue pulida en el 1713 por Antonio Stradivari y perteneció al brillante violinista polaco Bronislaw Huberman. Por esto último le llaman a este violín el “ex Huberman”.

El escrito de Gene Weingarten fue reconocido con un Premio Pulizter en el presente año -2008-.

Aquí les dejo con el clip del experimento:

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