The Question Tool (AKA The Question and Answer Tool) is a Berkman-built, JZittrain-invented, open source resource for letting a backchannel come up with, discuss, and rank questions which then might be discussed in the frontchannel. It works well. Now it’s being made available through Sourceforge.net.

Gene Koo blogs about it here. And you can run it as a Web service right now here. [tags: open_source berkman]

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One of my favorite SNL Smigel videos….

[Tags: snl humor christmas ]

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Dave Sifry’s written a simple, clear, personal guide to buying a digital camera outfit. Very helpful. Thanks, Dave!

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Farhad Manjoo at Salon offers a measured take on the iPhone, while still declaring it the Technology of the Year. He says it

marks a new way of living. For some people constant access to the Internet is a pleasant dream, while for others it’s a dreaded nightmare. This year, for all of us, it became a reality, the unavoidable future.

I’m waiting for the gPhone because of its commitment to openness, and also, because, um, I still have time on my indentured servitude to AT&T Cingular AT&T. [Tags: iphone farhad_manjoo gphone tech ]

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Michael Specter’s article in the December 3 New Yorker about the role of viruses in evolution is brilliant, fascinating, clear, and eye-opening, at least for humanities majors like me.

[Tags: science biology retrovirus evolution michale_specter genetics ]

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When I heard that Tech Crunch is going to announce a Tech President endorsement for a presidential candidate, I was confused. Was Mike Arrington teaming up with TechPresident, a terrific site that has been covering the Internet side of the presidential campaign? But, no, it turns out that Tech Crunch has just used the same name.

I’m sure Tech Crunch didn’t realize it was using the name of an established site (although it should…TechPres (the site) is a tremendous resource). But TechPres (the site) has complained [LATER: Second thoughts and a de-escalation here], so TC knows it now. I hope Tech Crunch acknowledges the confusion and puts in a big, fat link to the TechPres (the site). Why not? We don’t need to be any more confused than we already are.

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Someone I know and love is in the hospital. He’s doing well, thank you. But I am confused. They have given him 10 pints of blood to help with a blood disease that results in the destruction of red blood cells. Ten pints is a lot. Yet, his blood pressure has remained steady. As you add fluid to a contained system, shouldn’t the pressure increase? He reports that he is not urinating particularly much. So, where is the blood going? Just curious.

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Recently, I was at a friend’s house for dinner. We basically agree about politics although he is to the left of my leftishness. So we talked for a long time about the Neocons’ real motivations for invading Iraq. He sees more of a direct oil company conspiracy than I do.

But the content doesn’t matter. The point is that I thought we were having a friendly disagreement. So did he. But a few times as the conversation wended on, the friend’s young wife — noticeably younger than he — interrupted, suggesting that we talk about something else. “No, no,” I said, “We’re just talking.”

And yet, we argued ourselves out onto the part of the bridge of friendship where the pavement is thin and the supports are rickety. And then we got within a couple of comments of outright vexation, if not actual anger.

We didn’t know we were headed that way. We thought we were not. We’re adults having an interesting conversation. We can handle it. But my friend’s wife was so empathetic that she could see the future. She knew better.

Moral: Always listen to your empath friends. They are smarter than you, and much smarter than you think you are.

[Tags: empathy emotional_iq ]

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Two completely fascinating presentations on technology and education, from very different points of view.

Dylan William brilliantly advances, step by step, toward concluding that technology has a quite particular role to play in education:

What I’m going to argue is that the role of technology in improving learning is primarily in what I call third generation pedagogies. Where we have automated aggregation technologies, which actually take the responses of different students and do some smart things with those things. And give the teacher advice about what are the sensible next steps. The really brilliant teachers are doing this already. But most teachers can’t do it. And so the challenge of third generation pedagogy is to have the contingencies of teaching—that what you do when you know that the teaching didn’t work quite the way you intended—that is supported by technology.

Google’s Peter Norvig, among other things, adds to the mix the value of having students learning in teams so they can teach one another.

(Many thanks to Seb Schmoller for the pointers.)

[Tags: education teaching dlan_william peter_norvig ]

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Radio Open Source lives, perhaps more naturally than ever, in Web-only form. Chris Lydon has been piling up some terrific interviews. Treat yourself! [Tags: christopher_lydon radio interviews podcasts ]

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