Teaching in a Digital Age
Tony Bates, OpenText BC, 2015/04/08
I've cited chapters from Tony Bates's ongoing online book Teaching in a Digital Age on numerous occasions over the last few months, so I won't rehash all that here. Suffice it to say that the full text is now available as a free download on the BC Open Text website. Not that the full PDF is 502 pages. More...

Task Force on Academic Freedom
Ronald J. Daniels, Robert C. Lieberman, Johns Hopkins University, 2015/04/08
Johns Hopkins University last year convened a task force on academic freedom. As reported by Inside Higher Ed, "the administration is seeking feedback on the task force’s final product." It's a short document, for some reason released only as a PDF image (to prevent it from being edited? Puh-leeese). More...

Sir Ken Robinson: ‘Creative’ with the truth?
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2015/04/08
Ken Robinson's video on creativity is cited over and over again and was long overdue for this takedown by Donald Clark. It's the classic response: Robinson's observations and anecdotes are (a) not new, (b) not backed by data, (c) except data he has made up, and (d) are false. More...

Online Test-Takers Feel Anti-Cheating Software’s Uneasy Glare
Natasha Singer, New York Times, 2015/04/09
More on ProctorTrack, the service that stares at you through your camera while you take an online exam. Not surprisingly, students don't like it. More...

Mean What You Say: Defining and Integrating Personalized, Blended and Competency Education
Susan Patrick, Kathryn Kennedy, Allison Powell, International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), 2015/04/09
The School Improvement Network sponsored a post in EdSurge linking to this white paper, and the paper is heavy with self-referential linking (so take some of it with a grain of salt) but it is on the whole worth a read as an outline of the major elements (and supporting technologies) for personalized learning. More...

Digitally Connected: Global Perspectives on Youth and Digital Media
Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser, Social Science Research Network, 2015/04/09
This open (I think; it uses an SSRN redirection service) online book contains the proceedings of a conference funded by an array of charitable institutions and United Nations agencies that only an institution like Harvard can assemble. More...

Los Angeles Police Department taught the Canadian way when it comes to using force
Kim Brunhuber, CBC News, 2015/04/09
What's interesting is not that the Los Angeles police are now using training methods employed by the RCMP, but rather, the manner in which training is now being conducted. More...

The Math Ceiling: Where’s your cognitive breaking point?
Ben Orlin, Math With Bad Drawings, 2015/04/09

"A student who can answer questions without understanding them is a student with an expiration date." You'll understand. More...

The 60,000 Times Faster Claim Gets Dialed Back to 1982
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2015/04/09
Have you heard this? "We can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text?" In my own mind I would question it right away because of its overt employment of a computer metaphor to talk about cognition, which to me is prima facie questionable. More...

Machine Learning Algorithm Mines 16 Billion E-Mails
Press Release, MIT Technology review, 2015/04/09
I'll leave aside the question of where they got 16 billion emails and pause for a moment to ponder the implications of this: "Human e-mailing behavior is so predictable that computer scientists have created an algorithm that can calculate when an e-mail thread is about to end." (I really thing 'created' is the wrong word here - I think the appropriate word is 'found'.) If we're that predictable, what does it say about us. More...