By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. An open letter to editors of the New York Times (and most other American periodicals)
Daniel Willingham, 2016/09/13
When both Daniel Willingham and Joanne Jacobs storm the barricades over an article in the NY Times, I figure there's something to recommend it. And novelist Nicholson Baker's Fortress of Tedium is a light romp through his own education at the School Without Walls and the contrasting eyeball-drenching monotony of a more traditional school. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OSU Panel Discussion: Faculty experience with adaptive learning for Intro to Psychology course
Phil Hill, e-Literate, 2016/09/13
Phil Hill summarizes this panel discussion and provides a couple of videos focusing on Kathryn Becker-Blease's experiences using adaptive learning in an Introduction to Psychology course. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Educational Software Patents: A Call to Vendors
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2016/09/28

As described here September 1, Elsevier won a patent for an online peer review system, something the open source Online Journal Systems has been doing for decades. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. US school's unmanned boat reaches Welsh coast
BBC News, 2016/09/28

A driverless boat (pilotless boat?) created by students from Kent School in Maryland was recovered in Wales. They launched The Osprey with a time capsule onboard off the New Jersey coast on 13 June and tracked it across the ocean. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Enhancing quality and combating corruption in higher education: A Global Perspective
Stamenka Uvalić - Trumbić, Sir John Daniel, 2016/09/20
Discussion of quality standards proposed by CHEA, the US Council for Higher Education Accreditation. You can find a PDF (28 pages) of the quality standards on the CHEA website. The focus is on "combatting corruption and enhancing integrity" and it was authored by Daniel. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Culture vs Institutions: Who Pays for Change?
Tim Klapdor, Heart | Soul | Machine, 2016/09/20
When we pose a dichotomy like "culture versus institutions" most people will say "well it's both". But my point was that institutions are not necessary for openness. There's no middle ground between 'necessary' and 'not necessary'. You have to choose. Tim Klapdor takes an approach to this issue based on the question of cost. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Is the Future of Liberal Arts Programs “K-Shaped”?
Thomas Carey, Inside Higher Ed, 2016/09/20

I think this is really clever but I also think it's dangerous. The argument is that traditional 'liberal arts' education was intended to create a 'T'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Mostly Complete Chart of Neural Networks
Randy Krum, Cool Infographics, 2016/09/22

It's just an infographic and won't give you a need knowledge of neural network configurations. But it's still useful. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How Google And Others Are Plotting The Revenge Of The Web App
Jared Newman, Fast Company, 2016/09/12

I've messed around with web apps in the past and I've never really been interested in developing for the mobile app ecosystem. So I'm hopeful something comes of this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why does deep and cheap learning work so well?
Henry W. Lin, Max Tegmark, arXiv, 2016/09/12

There's a good Technology Review summary of this article. In a nutshell: why do deep learning algorithms, which simulate neural networks, work so well? Mathematically, they should be much less effective, because they are attempting to select the best answer from an enormous number of possible outcomes. More...