By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Nature Medicine 2.0
A pretty ridiculous editorial, really. One would have thought more of Nature. "Everybody will eventually be famous to 15 people," reads the editorial. "In such a world, is there room for journals like Nature Medicine?" What appears obvious is that they haven't been paying attention - nothing in the 2.0 world prevents something from being widely popular (see next item). What changes is this: while the Nature editorial says, disingenuously, "Scientific journals, as it turns out, are also information providers," it means that scientific journals are not the only information providers, and that publications need to compete on the basis of merit, not on the basis of prestige or being the sole supplier in a monopoly market. Do we really have "a world divided into small tribes (some of which could well fit in a family minivan), in which the safety of being one of many people able to express their points of view has replaced the authority of experts?" No. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?”
Isaac Asimov, MIT Technology review, 2014/10/24
Isaac Asimov was very influential on me ion my youth, and I read many of the dozens and dozens of books he authored. This essay is a previously unpublished article he wrote on creativity, and it is not surprising to see the affinity between my own thought and what he wrote. "What is needed," he writes, "is not only people with a good background in a particular field, but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected." And, "Making the cross-connection requires a certain daring". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. LISTedTECH: New wiki site and great visualizations
Phil Hill, e-Literate, 2014/10/24
Phil Hill onmtroduces us to this interesting site that assembles statistics on technology usage in education, creating useful visualizations in the process. LISTedTECH wiki used to run on Drupal, but has since converted to a MediaWiki. This makes it a lot easier for people to add content (though sadly the RSS feeds are not useful). " LISTedTECH was created by Justin Menard, who is Business Intelligence Senior Analyst at University of Ottawa," writes Hill. "The site is broader in scope than just the LMS – there is a rich source of data & visualizations on MOOCs, university rankings, and IPEDS data. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Solidarity in the Ivory Tower
Herbert Pimlott, Academic Matters, 2014/10/24
Herbert Pimlott writes, "The growing number of precarious academic workers teaching an ever-larger number of undergraduate students is a threat. It is a threat to our profession, with serious implications for our working conditions, our compensation, and the future of collegial governance. It is also a threat to the existence of higher education and the public university as we know it. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Poverty Is Strongest Factor in Whether High School Graduates Enroll in College
Laurie Arnston, Higher Education Today, 2014/10/24
Despite all the emphasis on how important teaching and testing are for improving educational outcomes, the fact remains that the worst results from higher-income schools are still better than the best results from low-income schools. This is why education alone is not sufficient to provide opportunities to youth. Governments also have to be focused on measures that address equity, in order to lower the pervasive impact of poverty on outcomes. Measures that do not address this cause are not (despite the rhetoric) addressing outcomes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, IMS Global Learning Consortium, and International Digital Publishing Forum Announce Digital Learning Metadata Alliance
Press Release, IMS, 2014/10/24
According to this press release issued by IMS, the new organization will be called the Digital Learning Metadata Alliance and can be found at dlma.org - "The first incarnation of DLMA work will be the metadata schema for EDUPUB a joint collaboration between IDPF and IMS Global to enable e-books that are interoperable across reader platforms, web browsers and educational systems (such as learning platforms and learning tools)." Dublin Core just the other day assumed formal responsibility over the learning resource metadata initiative (LRMI). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Conversation on Workplace Learning and Literacy
Stephen Downes, Valerie Irvine, John Kenney, YouTube, 2014/10/24
Framed around the LPSS program, and looking at specific issues such as workplace learning and literacy, this discussion outlines some of my views on the problems we are trying to solve, the applicability of the solutions we are creating, and the question of broader social needs being served by the program. I am in one window; Valerie Irvine and John Kenney are in the other. [Link] [Comment]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Big Data Won't Cure Us
Gina Neff, Big Data, 2014/10/22
One of the flaws of contemporary economics is that it postulates the economically rational consumer who will always choose in his or her best interest. We know, however, that this is rarely the case, and that the economy is beset by forces that are essentially irrational. The same problem applies to big data. As Gina Neff writes, "At last year's Stanford Medicine X Conference, a speaker confidently gave a simple, linear equation: 'Data leads to knowledge which leads to change.' This seemed sensible enough to most in the room because it reflects the values of quantified self and data-driven health innovation". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Simple Genius of the Blackboard
Lewis Buzbee, Slate, 2014/10/22
I'm not sure quite what to make of this, but... "The blackboard-centered classroom offers more than pedagogical efficiency; it also offers an effective set of teaching possibilities. In such a classroom students are focused on the teacher (on a good day), but most importantly, they are focused". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Gone Figuring
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2014/10/22
There's a storm once again over misogyny in the gaming development community. It's called #gamergate and I confess I am not close enough to it to know who is on which side (I've been reading articles like this and I still do not know who the players are). I think everybody knows I have no tolerance for abuse and threats against women. I agree with Audrey Watters that it's an ed tech issue. But I echo Alan Levine: "The outfall of this is beyond ugly, and when things go from rudeness to physical threats and abuse, things have crossed a line into evil territory. Trying to get to an understanding is hard, I gave Deadspin’s comprehensive The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate one read, and that leaves me still wondering if I 'get it'." I get that I can't simply admonish people to "play nice". More...