Blogs and websites look great when they are embellished with images so it is tempting to quickly add a photo or drawing that we like through an Internet image search. However, there are two considerations: 1) locating the actual source of the image for crediting and 2) determining whether it is copyrighted and can be posted for public viewing. I recently used Google Image Search to locate a Peer Review image  I found this image (deliberated blurred because it is copyrighted as explained below) and wondered who was the original creator and could it be posted publicly on the web (crediting the cartoonist). It looked great for the Teaching with Canvas page: Student Peer Review  . So where did it come from (reverse image search)? I went to images.google.com  and searched by image (AKA reverse image search), uploading the image file that I found and downloaded.    In the search results:  there were hundreds of copies on the web with several Creative Commons references to this popular...

You are not alone if you have struggled to keep your focus reading through articles on the web that are bombarded with still and animated ads. For example, reading  Why One Millennial Musician Is Working To Save Music Education ) is a challenge as shown in the brief animation below. Millenial musician article with ads Readers are easy to use with many benefits However, there are a surprising number of readers who are either not aware of or do not attempt to apply reader tools built-in or readily available in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Through a simple click these tools enable distraction free reading of most web pages by stripping everything but the article’s text and relevant images. Using a tool's appearance options text can be enlargened, font style changed, and background color modified. As a result readers feel empowered to focus on reading in a calming environment, providing an opportunity to more effectively retain information. Distraction free reading is visua...

There has been seemingly endless news regarding computational machines that manipulate massive amounts of data (Big Data). Almost every user and discipline are affected by technology companies that implement massive processing of BigData. The faculty book group met in early February to discuss Cathy O’Neil’s book Weapons of Math Destruction, a groundbreaking book in the sense that it fully brings to fore, using many examples, how our lives are substantially affected by networked data gathering and analytical machines -- programmed and run by humans of course. A quote from the book: “Ill-conceived mathematical models now micromanage the economy, from advertising to prisons. are opaque, unquestioned, and unaccountable, and they operate at a scale to sort, target, or “optimize” millions of people. By confusing their findings with on-the-ground reality, most of them create pernicious WMD feedback loops.”   It is a worthy read for all. Below are related resources with brief descriptions ...