Andy Sternberg's posterous

Andy Sternberg's posterous

Andy Sternberg  //  http://andysternberg.com

 
May 22 / 6:01pm

Introducing “Mozilla Webmaker:” helping the world make the web | mozilla.org

Building a generation of webmakers

Mozilla Webmaker wants to help you make something amazing on the web. With TOOLS, PROJECTS and EVENTS that help you create, learn and connect. Our goal: move millions of people from using the web to actively making the web. Creating a new generation of webmakers, and a more web literate world.

Join the Summer Code Party

This summer, we're inviting everyone to join us to meet up, make something cool, and learn how the code behind the web works. It's called the Summer Code Party, and it starts June 23.

Mozilla is joining with dozens of other organizations to make this happen. Want to make a prettier template for your blog? Or level up your latest YouTube video? Or just learn a bit of HTML? We'll have tools, tutorials, and activites to help.

Get involved

via mozilla.org

 
Mar 17 / 4:22pm

Report: From Credibility to Information Quality | Youth and Digital Media

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to share a substantial new report from the Youth and Media project:
“Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality“ by Urs Gasser, Sandra Cortesi, Momin Malik, & Ashley Lee.

Building upon a process- and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities. A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality—primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies—reveals patterns in youth’s information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation.To access the full report, please visit: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2005272

Key Findings:

1. Search shapes the quality of information that youth experience online.
2. Youth use cues and heuristics to evaluate quality, especially visual and interactive elements.
3. Content creation and dissemination foster digital fluencies that can feed back into search and evaluation behaviors.
4. Information skills acquired through personal and social activities can benefit learning in the academic context.

“Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality” lays the foundation and raises questions for further explorations in this area. The report also encourages a public policy discussion on youth, digital media, and information quality issues. We hope you will take the time to review the report, to build upon it, and to share it with interested colleagues and networks.

We wish to thank all of our wonderful collaborators at the Berkman Center, our friends at the Havard Law School Library, and the participants of a workshop on information quality for valuable contributions and their important work in the field. The report builds upon research enabled by generous grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Available Material:

One Page Summary [PDF]: [YaM] From Credibility to Information Quality_1 Page Summary_02202012_FINAL

Executive Summary [PDF]: [YaM] From Credibility to Information Quality_Executive Summary_02202012_FINAL

Full Report [PDF]: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2005272

Podcast: 

[YaM] From Credibility to Information Quality_02222012_FINAL

Infographic: Full Size Image

via blogs.law.harvard.edu

Search, evaluation, info skills...

 
Feb 29 / 11:10pm

Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives (via @pewinternet)

Many of the experts surveyed by Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Internet Project said the effects of hyperconnectivity and the always-on lifestyles of young people will be mostly positive between now and 2020. But the experts in this survey also predicted this generation will exhibit a thirst for instant gratification and quick fixes, a loss of patience, and a lack of deep-thinking ability due to what one referred to as “fast-twitch wiring.”
PIP Future of Internet 2012 Young Brains PDF
Check out this website I found at pewinternet.org

 
Feb 28 / 1:28pm

Heads Up! Best Buy 30 Years Gift Card Facebook Event is a Scam

A couple phishing scams slipped through to my Facebook event invites today. One was something about iPhone which was obvious and typical but the other I actually had to look into -- it was an "event" hosted by a page called Best Buy Corporate. Which of course led to a mysterious IP address and typical queries which, if acted upon, would lead to one being phished.

Screenshots below:

Screen_shot_2012-02-28_at_1
Screen_shot_2012-02-28_at_1

 
Feb 19 / 10:33pm

Andrew Sternberg is an 82-year-old Holocaust Survivor and my new hero.

Screen_shot_2012-02-19_at_10

(Photo: David Ciardelli, left, and Andrew Sternberg pause outside the walls of Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Sternberg's prisoner number, 68840, is affixed to his blazer. )

It's not often that the Google vanity search yields mindblowing new information regarding your namesake. But just today I discovered the inspiring story of a Holocaust survivor with whom I happen to share both first and last names. 

Andrew Sternberg was 16 on June 23, 1945 when he was liberated from Ebensee concentration camp in Austria with the help of troops from the U.S. Army's 80th Infantry Division.

In the 1950's he immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Cleveland, where I gather he still lives today (Shaker Heights) -- at least according to this June 2010 News Sun article.

In May 1944, the Nazis deported his family from Nagykanizsa, Hungary, to Auschwitz, in Poland, where guards immediately separated Sternberg from his parents. He never saw either one again. Weeks later, he was transported by cattle car to Austria.

My search initially brought up the PDF below (and linked here), which was reprinted from the March 10, 1995 Cleveland Jewish News. The document is hosted at http://hias.org, the website for the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society which, along with the International Rescue Committtee, effectively made it possible for Sternberg and others to immigrate and start a new life in the U.S. He struggled in his first years in Cleveland but then started a successful heating and air conditioning servicing company.

Andrew Sternberg continues visiting area schools to talk about the Holocaust and taking an annual trip to visit concentration camp sites in Hungary and Austria, according to the June 2010 article. 

Thanks Google for the inspiring revelation. It would be an honor to meet this man!

 
Jan 12 / 11:11am

Real Time Charitable Giving Since Haiti Earthquake (via @PewInternet)

Real Time Charitable Giving

via Pew Internet & American Life Project

 

Technology is increasingly relevant to Americans’ monetary contributions to the causes and organizations they support. Previous research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that one in five US adults (20%) have made a charitable contribution online, and that one in ten (9%) have made a charitable contribution using the text messaging feature on their mobile phone. Mobile giving played an especially prominent role during the aftermath of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, as individual donors contributed an estimated $43 million to the assistance and reconstruction efforts using the text messaging feature on their cell phones.

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