By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. If universities sacrifice philosophy on the altar of profit, what’s next?
Julian Baggini, The Guardian, 2018/12/26
The issue here isn't whether philosophy is valuable or even the slippery slope implied in the title, it's this: "The crude pursuit of what is 'practical', 'efficient' or 'useful' is threatening everything of value that isn’t evidently profitable." To be clear, by "profitable" we usually mean "profitable to some business owner" because skills that merely profit the student, but not industry, are still deemed to be of limited value. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Helping Students and Teachers Embrace Engineering
Reid Whitaker, Getting Smart, 2018/12/26
When I took a year of Computing Science in 1980 it was still considered engineering and so I got a year's worth of engineering education (and one computing science course). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teach Yourself Logic: A Study Guide (and other Book Notes)
Peter Smith, Logic Matters, 2018/12/26
Despite the summary in O'Reilly - "a wonderfully chatty book that functions as an introduction to logic for mathematicians and philosophers" - this text  (95 page PDF) doesn't actually teach you logic, it teaches you how to teach yourself logic. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Great Video Requires Talent and Lots of Fast, Reliable Storage
Andy Marken, Content Insider, 2018/12/24
This article arrived in my email as an issue of the Content Insider newsletter. I thought it offered a really good behind-the-scenes look at some of the elements of video production, which detail I haven't seen before. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Homeostatic Fallacy and Misinformation Literacy
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2018/12/24
This is a few days old but I want to make sure this item does not get lost in the shuffle. The idea here is that people have a natural 'set point' that they drift back to - new information, for example, is not likely to change one's core beliefs, which is (partially) why you cannot simply appeal to reason and evidence to (say) persuade a person to quit smoking. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. That Isn’t a Mistake
Dan Meyer, dy/dan, 2018/12/24
I find it amazing that such a simple post can generate so much comment (75 connents as of this post), but it goes to show that discourse is about both content and building an audience over time. Mostly the latter, in this case. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Literally Just A Big List Of Facebook’s 2018 Scandals
Ryan Mac, Buzzfeed News, 2018/12/24
Like the title says. It has been more than two years since I quit Facebook - the impact was that views on my website went up, but that I was less connected with people. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Byrne’s Euclid
Nicholas Rougeux, 2018/12/24
I cited with approval recently the statement that mathematics is something that we as a society have created rather than discovered. To be sure, the structure of mathematics unfolds like origami, but it's still more like a language or art than anything else. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 2018 review of online learning
Tony Bates, Online learning adn distance education resources, 2018/12/24
I'll save a place in this post for the fift installment of this series, which is forthcoming, but here are the previous four:

• AI and synchronous online learning
• Open universities and open education
• Emerging technologies
• Weak leadership

For each of the different topics, Bates gives the following scores. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. LRNG + Badgr: Unlocking Opportunity Through a Shared Digital Backpack
Connie Yowell, Wayne Skipper, LRNG, 2018/12/19
This announcement portends a developing ecosystem outside the traditional LMS infrastructure. LRNG - which recently merged with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) - allows cities to create an openly accessible network of learning and employment opportunities accessible to schools and youth (see here). More...