An interesting article in Inside Higher Education's coverage of the APA conference:

Harriet E. Baber of the University of San Diego thinks scholars should try to make their work as accessible as possible, forget about the financial rewards of publishing and find alternative ways to referee each other’s work. In short, they should ditch the current system of paper-based academic journals that persists, she said, by “creating scarcity,” “screening” valuable work and providing scholars with entries in their CVs.

“Now why would it be a bad thing if people didn’t pay for the information that we produce?” she asked, going over the traditional justifications for the current order — an incentive-based rationale she dubbed a “right wing, free marketeer, Republican argument.”

Instead, she argued, scholars (and in particular, philosophers) should accept that much of their work has little market value ("we’re lucky if we could give away this stuff for free") and embrace the intrinsic rewards of the work itself. After all, she said, they’re salaried, and “we don’t need incentives external [to] what we do.”

That doesn’t include only journal articles, she said; class notes fit into the paradigm just as easily. “I want any prospective student to see this and I want all the world to see” classroom materials, she added. [emphasis added]

I am happy to hear that this dialogue has begun.

Labels: publishing, web technology

I wanted to create a basic political timeline for my Politics of South Asia class extending from 1947 to 2007. SIMILIE (Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments) is a free open source program created at MIT, which can be used for this purpose. A tutorial is available for those who have basic knowledge of XML and Javascript.

The site creates two timelines, one divided by months, and the other in years. More detailed sub-divisions of time can be created if necessary. However, I am mainly interested in listing major events.

Once the basic script is dropped into an HTML template, the only thing that needs to be done is to add data to the XML file. Keep in mind that the XML file name has to be changed from "example1.xml" to your xml file (in my case, "southasia.xml"). The code should look like this:

tl = Timeline.create(document.getElementById("my-timeline"), bandInfos);
Timeline.loadXML("soasiatimeline.xml", function(xml, url) { eventSource.loadXML(xml, url); });
}
I should also note that I tweaked the veritical length to better fit into my HTML. The width of the timeline is contained by the "div" tags.

It is possible to distinguish between singular events and durable actions. Clicking on each item in the timeline will open up a tag cloud which can be loaded with data, links, small images, etc.

I am hoping to link some of the entries to specific historical documents, photos, video files, and texts. I also still need to figure out if it is possible to have different colors for different country timelines, since I will need to combine political events from all of the major countries.

At the moment I have only added major events from India, but I will add more details as I have time...

Labels: teaching, web technology

I am still trying to decide what I think of Twitter technology.

I am experimenting with using Twitter because I like the idea of a micro-blog. Since I am accustomed to using a napkin or post-it to write out my thoughts, Twitter seemed like a natural extension of my style of work. I thought I might use the micro-blog to jot down interesting quotes, aphorisms, as well as some cursory observations. (Of course, a real sticky-note has the advantage of letting me draw lots of arrows, symbols, and squiggles...)

But Twitter is not merely a space for jotting down micro-thoughts, it is also a technology that bridges cell phone SMS and desktop IM technology. In most cases, it seems to be used by chronically locquacious socialites to let their friends know what they're up to... a seemingly harmless preoccupation of a generation of kids that views e-mail as too cumbersome.

As with any new media technology, marketing firms, journalists and politicians are quickly finding Twitter useful for their own purposes. For example, Barack Obama, or at least one of his minions, uses Twitter to keep his followers updated on the campaign trail. That is not surprising or even interesting to me.

One troubling aspect of Twitter is the way in which it can be mashed with Google maps to create a rather odd technology of self-confessional surveillance. On a global scale, Twittervision, allows users to passively note the mundane public "tweets" of individuals in real time. Twittermap allows the reader to locate tweets down to the city block level. Of course, the tweets that are visible are only those which the individual willingly provides to the public domain and almost everything I have seen on Twitter is utterly banal. But it is precisely the banality that makes the technology seem so deceptively innocuous.

A rival of Twitter, Dodgeball markets the idea that if users provide their current location, the program will help locate their friends, or the friends of their friends, within a ten block radius. One can even use this software to track (i.e. stalk) "crushes" within a ten block area. I am not sure who would find the transition from Facebook/My Space type trolling to real-life stalking appealing. (No one ever seems to ask themselves whether a technology should be created simply because it is possible to create it).

The technology that is emerging is one that lends itself to social mapping. In this case, however, a network tree of friends and their friends and their friends emerges almost spontaneously from the pattern of communication. The ability to map these networks has existed for sometime in the hands of state officials, but it is now becomming possible to privatize this technology, link it geographically, and move it toward real time surveillance of confessions and persistent memory.

Is this a problem? Obviously, technology is reversible and what is useful for surveillance can also be used to deceive and overthrow the gazers. So I am not sure if this technology is a problem, but I think it is worth watching to see how it evolves...

Labels: web technology

As an academic, with a whimsical and vain desire to be a "public intellectual," I have to admit I like being quoted in newspapers, especially when it is in a foreign language. So I was pretty psyched to see that I was quoted in an arabic language paper. Ordinarily, I would have asked someone to translate the Arabic for me (I can only read street signs and billboards in Arabic), but I did not have the patience, so I decided to give the Internets a spin at translating me back to me.

Here is what I think I said on the topic of a sovereign wealth fund for Saudi Arabia:

It is unclear that sovereign wealth funds are any more adept at investing than any other type of investment fund. As these institutions often operate without transparency, it is difficult to actually assess their performance. Moreover, investments by these funds incur large political costs which can impact the fund's bottom line. For example, Singapore's Temasek Holdings was the center of a political furore after it acquired a stake in Thailand's Shin Corp from the Thai Prime Minister's family. The popular backlash and political turmoil surrounding the transaction resulted in a coup d'etat in Thailand. The incident has strained political relations and resulted in a substantial loss as the share price of Shin Corp has fallen. It does not seem to be wise for the Saudi government to establish a fund on the Singapore model, particularly as Saudi investments abroad will also be subject to significant political scrutiny.

Here it is in Arabian Business.com (the font may not display properly on your computer...)

وقال فيكاش ياداف أستاذ العلوم السياسية في كليات هوبارت أند وليام سمث في نيويورك وأحد الخبراء في الاقتصاد السياسي لسنغافورة أنه:" من غير الواضح ما إذا كانت صناديق الثروة السيادية تملك مهارة في الاستثمار تفوق أي نوع من أنواع أدوات الاستثمار الأخرى. وطالما أن عمل هذه المؤسسات لا يتصف بالشفافية فمن الصعب وضع تقييم واقعي لأدائها ".

وأوضح ياداف أن الاستثمارات المتحققة عن طريق الصناديق السيادية يترتب عليها تكاليف سياسية كبيرة يمكن أن تؤثر في السبب الرئيس وراء إيجاد مثل هذه الصناديق.

وأشار إلى المشكلة السياسية التي واجهتها تيماسيك هولدنجز السنغافورية عندما انصب عليها غضب سياسي بعد استحواذها على حصة في شن كورب التايلندية من عائلة رئيس الوزراء التايلندي.

وقال ياداف لموقع أريبيان بزنس:"أن ردة الفعل لدى عامة الناس والغضب السياسي الذي أحاط بالصفقة أديا إلى حدوث انقلاب سياسي في تايلاند مما تسبب في توتر العلاقات السياسية وأدى إلى خسارة ضخمة نتيجة لانخفاض سعر سهم شن كورب".

وأضاف "لا يبدو انه من الحكمة أن تؤسس الحكومة السعودية صندوق على غرار الطراز السنغافوري لاسيما أن الاستثمارات السعودية الخارجية ستكون هي الأخرى عرضة لقدر كبير من التدقيق الحكومي.

And here is a computer translation:

"He said Vikash Yadav professor of political science at Hobart colleges Land William Smith in New York and an expert in political economy of Singapore that: "it is not clear whether the funds have wealth sovereign skill in investment than any kind of other investment instruments. Long and that the work of these institutions is not transparent, it is difficult to develop a realistic assessment of their performance. "

Yadav said that the investments made through funds sovereign consequent costs can be considerable political influence in the cause behind the creation of such funds.

The political problem faced by Temasek Holdings of Singapore when it was political anger after possession share in waging Corp from the family of Thai Prime Minister of Thailand.

He said Yadav site Directory Business: "The reaction of the general public and political anger surrounding the deal led to a political coup in Thailand, causing tension in political relations and led to a huge loss due to the low price of shares Shen Corp."

He added, "it does not seem wise to establish the Saudi government fund similar to the Singaporean style especially Saudi Foreign investment would be the other subject of a great deal of scrutiny of government."

Reading the automatically translated computer text is like being the end recipient in the children's game of "Telephone." Nevertheless, it is pretty cool to see how quickly a rough translation is possible.

If you read Arabic, the complete article is at Arabian Business.com. If you can't read Arabic, a rough computer translation of the entire article is available from Google.

Labels: press, web technology

Well, the semester is over, grades are posted, and I am starting to evaluate whether or not I want to use a course blog again next term. My course blog (vyadav.wordpress.org) was designed mainly to point students to news articles related to course readings.

Pointer Blog

The main goals of the blog were to encourage students to engage current events and to develop a habit of reading newspapers of record (e.g., the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times) instead of headline oriented sites (e.g. CNN, BBC). Students were encouraged to try to apply their theoretical readings to current events. The blog also served as a forum for students to discuss their reaction to current events. I ask my students not to use first person arguments in their short reaction papers and exams, so the blog was a venue where opinions were permitted and welcomed. I had hoped that quieter students would be encouraged to engage the course and become encouraged to participate in class on the basis of their on-line participation. Similarly, more engaged students could use the blog to explore topics not fully covered in the classroom.

The stimulus for students to post varied by class. In the introductory course, students were given points based on the mean number of posts (with the mean standing in for a "C"). There were also five quizzes and five reaction papers which asked students to apply theories to contemporary events based at least in part on news items linked from the blog posts. In the seminar, students were required to submit five substantial posts of at least one full page in length. Seminar students who posted shorter posts were given extra credit points.

I am still waiting to see the student evaluations but my hunch is that several students did not like the blog assignment. A large number of the intro students waited until nearly the end of the term before really engaging with the articles linked by the blog. I still think there was some value added, but my hope had been that the blog articles would work to stimulate more vigorous in-class discussions.

My general sense is that the blog works much better than just telling students to get a newspaper subscription (which is how my professors used to incorporate current events). Students seem to want to be pointed toward specific articles, particularly at the Introductory level. In my seminar, the students requested that I add links to specific items they had read on line and wanted to comment on.

Wiki

An alternative to using a "pointer blog" is to create a class wiki. A wiki, if you haven't heard, is a collaborative on-line document. I think of a blog as a either a medium which broadcasts from one/few to many; or which allows an individual to point readers to other sites. A wiki is a medium which seeks to bring many authors together to create a single, relatively stable product. A group blog can simulate a wiki, but a group blog is oriented toward freqent posting of new items, whereas a wiki generates relatively stable pages which will have minor edits over time.

I used class wikis at Mount Holyoke with some success. The wiki project mainly involved asking students to create their own class glossary for complex terms from the assigned readings. The software for the program was part of the open source (Sakai) courseware used by Mount Holyoke. If one does not have a wiki option in their courseware, then Google Docs (see previous post) can be used to achieve the same essential objectives.

The assignment worked best in my political economy seminar on "Developmental States," but there were also very positive results in my "Global Poverty and Property" class. I think the number of terms that students have to master for an upper level political economy seminar makes the idea of a collaborative glossary appealing.

The assignment design that I used was to break the students into groups for each term. In one class, I first assigned one term to a single student, the next week I assigned a new term to groups of two students; the following week I assigned a new term to a group of three students, etc... The gradual approach worked reasonably well in acclimating students to the demands of collaborative on-line assignments. The main issue in designing the assignment was avoiding the free-rider problem. Of course, since it is possible to view each student's edits in the wiki, it is rather evident who did what to contribute if the students all collaborate from separate locations.

Students were also asked to list a few key pages from the reading where the term is used and to provide anecdotes in plain english to make the definitions clear. The reason for this was to discourage students from basically mimicing a definition from Wikipedia or another on-line source. As entries were finalized, I would send e-mails asking for additional details if needed.

All terms had to be complete either one or two days before the actual class session -- so that students could use the glossary while doing their readings for the class. Since the end product is displayed to the entire class, edited by the professor, and used by classmates to study for exams, the quality of the work was impressive. Some students even added photos, charts, equations, etc.

Of course, the demands on the professor's time is rather intense, so it is a daunting undertaking. I don't believe in just using technology for the sake of it, but it might be a useful exercise in my "Politics of Development" course next term, because that course requires students to master a wide range of terms and concepts in order to engage the broader developmental discourse.

Labels: blog, teaching, web technology, wiki

For my colleagues: Here is a video explaining the logic of using Google Docs.

Labels: web technology

Good news! Yale University has launched its open source courseware, Open Yale. There is only one Political Science course available, Steven B. Smith's Introduction to Political Theory, but I am sure it will grow.

What's really interesting is that the site includes video and audio pod casts. It is clear that the video recording is very professional. One might even conclude that Yale is using its open source for promoting its brand.

I have read that the professors selected to participate were mainly senior scholars who had won teaching awards. Apparently, Yale also insisted that the content of the lectures must not infringe on any intellectual property so professors were asked not to rely on published texts unless permission was obtained prior to filming. My hunch is that such precautions are unnecessary given the core notion of fair use and the fact that the lectures are not being distributed on-line for a fee.

Labels: open source, teaching, web technology

I stumbled across a nifty little bit of freeware, called SimpleViewer, that helps to generate rather interesting Flash photo albums for Picasa/Flickr/ iPhoto/ etc... users. The directions to set up a basic (generic) photo album are easy to follow.

I modified the end product by adding my template's top and bottom banner into the index file that it automatically generates before I uploaded the files to the server. This just gives the album more of a tailored look and does not force the viewer to navigate back to the linked page, but it is completely not necessary if you just want to quickly generate albums. I also tweaked the javascript so that the top of the album would not take up too much space. Basically I left the horizontal width at 100% and changed the vertical height to 70%. The resulting javascript code looks like:

var fo = new SWFObject("viewer.swf", "viewer", "100%", "70%", "7", "#181818"); fo.addVariable("preloaderColor", "0xffffff"); fo.addVariable("xmlDataPath", "gallery.xml"); fo.write("flashcontent");

This program will probably be more pedagogically useful to colleagues in the Humanities than in the Social Sciences, but you never know... I guess it could be used to help students visualize life in different areas or for photos of leading figures.

Overall, I have to say that the end product generated by this template looks much better than the automatic Flash photo albums generated by Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks. The template is even sharper than the standard templates that come with Picasa. My first album is just composed of a few photos I took at the Sackler-Freer Gallery on the HWS Learning Communities trip to Washington, D.C. this fall.

Labels: web technology

It's common to see the quote on designer/developer websites: "code is poetry."

Let me just say for the record that code is not poetry.

Code is Lego. At least it is for me. I put stuff together and see if it works, when I get bored I try a new combination.

There is an aesthetic value to writing all of your code in nice clear formatting (it is also very useful if you are working on a project with partners), but at the end of the day what matters is whether your code does the task you want it to do on as many platforms as possible. Personally, I don't fuss too much about getting everything valid until I notice a problem.

Wasn't it Frank Lloyd Wright who said that if a building doesn't leak, the architect didn't take any chances?

Labels: web technology

So in a moment of downtime, I started experimenting with creating a set of maps that would be integrated with my course on South Asian politics (... sadly, I relax by writing code...).

My first plan (just like all of my grand schemes) was to create my own flash maps using Flash + XML. I went to ammap.com which has a free downloadable map and some documentation to walk you through the editing process. I created my first flash map and played around with the color schemes, zoom levels, etc. using the recommended (free) PSPad XML editor. I thought about adding some basic data, but I quickly realized that this map would simply not be very useful in the long run. I need layers and layers of maps so that students can zoom in an out to find particular cities, provinces, terrain, borders, etc.

So, I decided to table that project and see if I could customize Google maps, which has reasonable coverage in South Asia. As it turns out the process of getting access to Google Maps API is relatively simple. You simply register and they give you an API key which you can then use to develop your own maps by putting the code into your HTML pages. The code is good for all of the pages in a given directory.

The hard part is that you need to know some basic programming language. They do provide a lot of sample code that you can copy (right click and select "view source"), paste into your HTML, and tweak. Since I have limited programming knowledge, this hack/tweak method is my preferred mode of learning. Now, if you're not familiar with JavaScript, you will want to save the first sample code generated by Google when you first get the API key. Keep that file separate from the ones you tweak in case you make a mistake with the code. In fact, you may just want to keep a separate file for all of the successful tweaks.

So here is my first map using Google Maps API code. After plunking the code into my template HTML file (note that some of the JavaScript goes into the "head" tags, I just modified the starting latitude and longitude so that the map is centered on South Asia from the beginning. If you don't know the longitude and latitude that you want to use, you can ask Google (drag the map around, click on the map to get a reading). I also adjusted the map navigation buttons so that they fall over the bottom of the map once the image is double clicked. I think this makes it a bit easier to use the map in a tiny space. Yes, I could make the map bigger, but I am just keeping everything simple for the moment...

My eventual goal is to use the maps to illustrate parts of my lectures, particularly when I have to explain the strategic aspects of the Sino-Indian War and the four Indo-Pak Wars. It is possible to mark up these maps and even create some rather nifty cluster diagrams and other dynamic stuff. For the moment the map will just be useful as a way to encourage students to explore the geography of South Asia. As always, I'll work on that later...

Labels: web technology

About two years ago I visited a university in Kolkatta (Calcutta) to initiate a cooperative student exchange program and to explore the possibility of holding a few on-line video conference courses with their university. The university was underfunded like many public Indian institutions, but despite its economic limitations it had been the home institution of a nobel laureate, Amartya Sen.

I met with the computer science professors and tech staff who were in charge of their distance learning program. I asked them what type of hardware and software they were using. They told me that their university simply could not afford proprietary software. I was a bit dejected and expected that I would then have to listen to a lot of excuses about the University Grants Commission and bureaucracy, but they told me that they had decided simply to build their own software. With a glint of pride in their eyes they showed me how they had created an entire suite of distance learning software that reached students in the remote neighborhoods of greater Kolkatta.

Honestly, I was pretty impressed. Given the bandwidth limitations and technological challenges of distance learning in South Asia (not to mention the serious problem of running computers without air-conditioning in the Indian heat), I found their work inspirational. The potential of their innovations for broader development projects was readily apparent.

I think about this example a lot when I consider whether or not to use proprietary software for a given task or project. I think it is important to view technology as a tool. When the technology does not suit the task at hand or when its cost becomes exorbitant, then it is time to figure out how to build a better tool. As far I am concerned, importing proprietary software wholesale and unconsciously comes at the expense of freedom.

Of course, we all have limited time, resources, and skill sets. As a social scientist with no formal instruction in writing code, my technical skills are completely mediocre compared to my colleagues in the physical sciences who are building complex instruments with sophisticated programming language to achieve their research and teaching objectives. However I think we should all push our skills to their limits. We lose the ability to modify and tailor technology to our own purposes if we gradually accede to being consumers and purchasers rather than producers.

Since I began using the internet in 1989, I have watched this technology, which began as a medium for inter-university and government communication, gradually become a terrain of commercial activity. There have been counter-currents where individual producers have made bold attempts to reclaim territory lost to corporate interests, but on the whole most have accepted a subordinate status as consumers. Individual producers of culture are also being gradually coopted as corporations see the potential of social networking software and providing server access in exchange for advertising revenue. Self-expression is becoming limited to selecting from a range of pre-set options and trivial games within a software framework defined by corporate software designers (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, etc). However, even these coopted efforts are laudable because they show that individuals have a desire to be more than passive consumers and recipients of advertising information.

I think that most individuals will have to make compromises with the available technology based on their skills, financial resources, and time. However, if on balance technology can be used to enable culture and knowledge production and expand access, then it is worth the compromises. Even tailoring technology at the margin (e.g. by modifying templates or writing a simple code to perform desired tasks) makes a difference in expanding personal freedom.

Labels: technology, web technology

For the course calendar, I have decided just to use one calendar for all three courses. I thought about making separate calendars for each course, but I think the main utility of a public calendar is for students and colleagues to quickly figure out a convenient time to schedule an appointment. In others words, the purpose is to help me avoid playing e-mail tag. As such, a unified calendar makes the most sense.

After spending time looking over different templates, I decided it was faster just to go with something off the shelf. I wanted to be able to continuously update the calendar as events pop-up. I chose Google because its features seemed the most intuitive. MS Office also has a publishable on-line calendar, but it was not as easy to integrate within my site.

Google makes it relatively easy to both manage a public calendar and to embed the calendar with in a website.

I would ideally like to make it possible for students to sign-up for appointments through the on-line calendar, but this is a technical task that I can postpone for now.

I know that the most common concern about a public calendar is privacy. It's pretty easy to keep appointments and engagements private so that they only appear as "busy" times on the calendar.

One final note, it seems like Google Calendar is already pretty popular here at HWS as it is easy to add HWS events and the HWS academic/events calendar. The calendars are easy to find just by searching "HWS" in the public calendars function.

Labels: web technology

I thought I would try Dreamweaver's Spry Widgets in making the on-line syllabus for my POLS 248: Politics of Development (... go ahead, take a look, let me know if it works on your computer). There are a few advantages to using widgets in building a course website.

First, the widgets are drag and drop, with very little tweaking needed. The only thing that I adjusted using the CSS inspector was the color scheme. That took about five seconds.

Second, the widgets allow for cut and paste. So one can just dump content into each category from an MS Word document. This improves the workflow, which is what I am trying to work on since I am hoping to make all three of my course websites ready next term (Unfortunately, I need to make both hard and soft copies of items like the syllabus because students still seem to want a physical copy of the syllabus on the first day of class. The idea of a paperless classroom is still a few years away).

Third, the end product avoids the need for endless scrolling (something that I personally find annoying) when hunting for specific information. I think the look is more tidy and functional than the alternative. In any case, most people are already used to tabbed and accordian style widgets if they commonly use any major news websites. I think the widget has a rather intuitive interface, but I will have to see how others react.

I have not tested any of this other platforms yet... so my fingers are crossed.

Labels: web technology

So, we had to submit our course preferences up to the spring semester 2009. Here is what I am planning to teach:

Spring 2008

• POLS 248-01: Politics of Development
• POLS 254-01: Globalization
• POLS 281-01: Politics of South Asia

Fall 2008

• POLS 180-01: Introduction to International Relations
• POLS 4##-01: Failed States (Seminar)

Spring 2009

• POLS 254-01: Globalization
• POLS 281-01: Politics of South Asia
• POLS 287-01: States and Markets

Labels: teaching

So I wanted to learn how to add a PowerPoint lecture as a flickr/picasa slideshow to this notebook (i.e. "blog") and more generally to my course website. I already have a Picasa account with Google which I use to share photos with friends.

Since I like Picasa's slideshow feature, I wondered if I could use the "embed slideshow" feature with Powerpoint. I just needed to figure out how to upload my PowerPoint slides as images. By presenting my PowerPoint slides using the slideshow feature, this would essentially replicate the function of much more expensive software like Adobe Captivate.

So, going into my super-nerdy mode... I read a simple on-line tutorial, and here are the results from a sample PowerPoint lecture:



Basically, the process is about as complicated as saving one's PowerPoint as ".png" files (File/Save As/) and uploading those files to either Picasa or Flickr. Then one only has to copy and paste the code from the embedded slideshow function into one's blog or html code. Note, that I chose to use one of the biggest sizes and the slideshow can easily be made smaller.

Since I will be avoiding proprietary courseware next term, I think this is how I am going to make any PowerPoint lectures available to my students. Although I have reservations about the overall benefits of publishing (or even using) PowerPoint slides, I think some students do learn better by being able to review slides that they did not quite get the first time around.

The only drawback here is that Picasa does leave a small branded logo in the bottom right. I could make the same slideshow manually using Flash CS3, but I think the time saved by this little trick is worth the branding... at least until I learn how to write the program to do this automatically.

Ironically, I think this little trick may help me to get away from using PowerPoint altogether. In a conversation with one of my former professors, I learned that he now only uses slideshows instead of PowerPoint. He said students retain more of a lecture when you show them powerful images rather than a whole lot of text in the standard, dull PowerPoint format. After attending one of his latest talks, I am inclined to agree. Although I don't have the time to research images for all of my lectures, I think I will gradually shift over to this technique.

Labels: teaching, web technology