“arXiv’s goal is equitable access to scientific research for all – and to achieve this, we have been working to make research papers more accessible for arXiv users with disabilities. We are happy to announce that as of Monday, December 18th, arXiv is now generating an HTML formatted version of all papers submitted in TeX/LaTeX… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Education
Using Maps of Historical Locations to Understand Historic Events
This post is by Tyron Bey, the 2023-2024 Library of Congress Teacher in Residence. “In the November/December issue of Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies, our “Sources and Strategies” article features a map titled “Important farmlands map, Clarendon County, South Carolina.” Created by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service in… Continue Reading
The lives upended by Florida’s school book wars
Washington Post (read free): “…The battle over what children should be allowed to read in school has riven Florida’s Escambia County School District. It’s part of a national battle, as school book objections surge to historic highs across the country. In Escambia County, the controversy kicked off in 2022, when a high school language arts… Continue Reading
Lawrence school district using AI to look for ‘concerning behavior’ in students’ activity
LJworld.com (read free): “The Lawrence [Kansas] school district has purchased a new system that uses artificial intelligence to look for warning signs of “concerning behavior” in the things students type, send and search for on their district-issued computers and other such devices. The purchase of the software system, called Gaggle, comes at a time when… Continue Reading
January 1, 2024 is Public Domain Day
Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain: Works from 1928 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1923! – On January 1, 2024, thousands of copyrighted works from 1928 will enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1923. They will be free for all to copy, share, and… Continue Reading
The world’s most liveable cities in 2023
The Economist: “Once again the liveability index from EIU, our sister company, is one of our most popular pieces of data journalism this year. Readers in their millions come to find where their city sits in the ranking, but they leave with a broader understanding of the world. This year marked a full recovery from… Continue Reading
Crowds Can Effectively Identify Misinformation at Scale
Martel, C., Allen, J., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2023). Crowds Can Effectively Identify Misinformation at Scale. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231190388 “Identifying successful approaches for reducing the belief and spread of online misinformation is of great importance. Social media companies currently rely largely on professional fact-checking as their primary mechanism for identifying… Continue Reading
Label the States
XKCD: label as many US states as you can on this blank map – Do you miss the pen and pencil grade school exercises from geography and social studies classes? I still remember how to spell state names – such as Mississippi, and the number of days in each month, using the memory tools we… Continue Reading
The History of Cartography, the “Most Ambitious Overview of Map Making Ever,” Is Free Online
Open Culture: “The University of Chicago Press has made available online — at no cost –five volumes of The History of Cartography. Or what Edward Rothstein, of The New York Times, called “the most ambitious overview of map making ever undertaken.” He continues: People come to know the world the way they come to map… Continue Reading
Health misinformation is rampant on social media
The Conversation – Monica Wang: “The global anti-vaccine movement and vaccine hesitancy that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic show no signs of abating According to a survey of U.S. adults, Americans in October 2023 were less likely to view approved vaccines as safe than they were in April 2021. As vaccine confidence falls, health misinformation… Continue Reading
BirdWeather
“What is BirdWeather? BirdWeather is a visualization platform that, using the BirdNET artificial neural network (a type of machine learning algorithm), is continuously listening to over 200 active audio stations around the world and is actively plotting their results in a user-friendly map interface. We built BirdWeather to be a living library of bird vocalizations accessible to users via online… Continue Reading
When the New York Times Lost its Way
The Economist, James Bennet [free to read] – America’s media should do more to equip readers to think for themselves: “…Whether or not American democracy endures, a central question historians are sure to ask about this era is why America came to elect Donald Trump, promoting him from a symptom of the country’s institutional, political… Continue Reading
