Deloitte has released some predictions about the technology media and telecommunications industries for 2014 (Youtube):
A short video story about Bob Bonner who is a photo archivist at National Geographic.
The first time I went downstairs to film Bill for this video, he was busy searching for old photos about South Africa, at the request of a magazine editor. One of the unpublished images he pulled has stuck with me. It was taken during the apartheid era at Christmas time, and it showed dozens of white men standing along a pool’s edge, tossing money into the water where black mine workers were fighting for their Christmas bonuses. It was a simple photograph, but it thrust me into the small, yet appalling moments of racism. There were no broken bones, no starving children, no corrupt cops. But there was degradation. There was merciless humor. There was struggle, strength, pride, hope, pain, entitlement, hate. That photo showed me apartheid. And Bill remembers that image, and those people, and the photographer every single day. He pays homage to their lives by keeping these moments safe in his memory, and sharing them with anyone who wants to learn.
Laerdal Medical and Wolters Kluwer Health Introduce Virtual Simulation Learning Tool for Nursing Students. (Press Release) I spent some time looking into this opportunity a number of years ago and it is interesting to see they finally got something off the ground.
"There's a huge unmet need for improved clinical education and for interactive activities in the classroom that are focused on patient-centered care," said Susan Driscoll, President and CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health, Professional & Education. "The new vSim for Nursing product provides an interactive learning experience that helps nursing educators promote better and safer patient care, and ensures nursing students are ready to practice. This is the first simulation solution to provide readily available clinical practice with fully integrated learning resources that are closely tied to the nursing school curriculum."
Accessed online, vSim for Nursing simulates a patient encounter using computer-animated avatars that allow nursing students to access and practice patient care anytime and anywhere. The "virtual" simulation environment helps build competence by introducing nursing students to realistic scenarios where they are responsible for making a variety of clinical reasoning decisions. The simulator reacts to each patient-care decision and tracks these actions so that they can be reviewed and measured with personalized feedback after the scenario. The post-scenario report is then stored for reflection and continued learning. By allowing repetitive practice, students can build their confidence and competence in a safe environment.
Last week I noted problems in Canada over Access Copyright's licensing terms but this week The University of Montreal cancelled their all-in subscription to Wiley/Blackwell journals (THE):
Montreal previously subscribed to the publisher’s “big deal”, which provided electronic access to its entire journal collection for a fixed fee.From the twitter this week:
But an announcement on the university’s website, posted on 14 January, says that many years of above-inflation journal price rises, combined with recent cuts imposed by the Quebec government, had forced it to make a stand and decline to go on reducing monograph acquisition to sustain journal access. Many libraries have threatened in recent years to cancel big deals, but few have followed through. In 2011, Research Libraries UK refused to renew big deals with both Wiley-Blackwell and Elsevier unless they made significant real-terms price reductions. Before the stand-off was resolved a few months later, RLUK suggested that its members could restrict their subscriptions to the publishers’ journals in the highest demand from academics, accessing the others via inter-library loans.
Interesting news from CCC: Copyright Clearance Center and IPR License Form Wide-Ranging Strategic Partnership DigitalBookWorld
YouTube reveals $1bn music payouts, but some labels still unhappy Guardian
Washington-based tech firm Flat World raises $9.5M in funding to make textbooks cheaper VCPost
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