By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Deep Learning: The Impact on Future eLearning
Anandhavalli Muniasamy and Areej Alasiry, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2020/01/15
This paper makes a promise it doesn't really deliver on, suggesting that "deep learning has evolved into developing ways to repurpose existing resources (that) can mitigate the expense of content development of future eLearning." Let's just mark that down as 'future technology'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Designing a Community of Inquiry in Online Courses
Holly S. Fiock, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2020/01/15
After the literature review, the bulk of this article is devoted to a big table titled "Summary of Instructional Activities for CoI." The seven big rows of the table echo Sorensen and Baylen’s final principles for online instruction, and each is subdivided into the three 'presences' from the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model. I see this mostly as a classification exercise, though I suppose if pressed we could read the rows and subdivisions as providing research support for the activities listed. But I'm left wondering, why these activities rather than others? Why is this an 'activity', for example. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New year, new browser – The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview and now available for download
Joe Belfiore, Microsoft Windows Blogs, 2020/01/15
The new Microsoft Edge browser - the first built on the Chromium browser engine - has been released and is available for general download. Features include "AAD support, Internet Explorer mode, 4K streaming, Dolby audio, inking in PDF, Microsoft Search in Bing integration, support for Chrome-based extensions, and more." What I want to know is how well ad-blocking works. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Using Chrome as a Local Web Server
Justin Mathews, Medium, 2020/01/17
I'm setting up a new machine in the office, which includes installing browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc). Normally when I install Chrome, I get the browser and that's it. But this time, for whatever reason, I also got the 'Web Server for Chrome'. You can also get it on the Chrome web store. First of all, it just works. Click on the icon, select a starting directory, enter http://127.0.0.1:8887 into your browser, and view your files. It can also act as a network web server, or it can try to acquire an internet address, so you can access it remotely. What the indieweb needs is a quick way to set up a personal web server. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Light Commands
Takeshi Sugawara, et.al., 2020/01/17
Most voice activated home assistants use micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) microphones. These allow speakers to act in reverse, turning sound waves into electrical signals. Unfortunately, however, they also turn light signals into electrical signals. This means you can 'speak' to your voice assistant using pulsed light. And thus, a new way to hack home assistants was born. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Truly Reusable Design Systems in Practice: Web Components
Ilya Lyamkin, HackerNoon, 2020/01/17
Web development over the last few years has been dominated by frameworks like jQuery, Angular and React. We're now moving into the next phase of web development: web components. This article is an introduction, giving an overview and then a rationale, then diving into a toolchain called StencilJS. Here's another intro, again with a fair bit of technical detail. Here's an intro slide deck. Here's a whole set of bookmarks. Here's a toolset called Smart. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Guide to Digital Video Advertising
Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2020/01/17
The news that Google will be disabling tracking cookies in Chrome is the smallest tip of a very complex story about internet advertsing. This long article on digital video adevrtising is the rest of it. A complex advertising ecosystem has emerged; this article describes all the standards, the players, the market (mostly US), and the technology. You may be overwhelmed, but it's worth keeping around as a reference. You can be sure some or (probably) all of this technology will inform educational content design and delivery in the longer term. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Getting Started with Open Badges and Open Microcredentials
Kyle Clements, Richard E. West, Enoch Hunsaker, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2020/01/16
This is one of those articles that describes every possible step involved in the creation and issuing of badges and microcredentials while still leaving you not knowing how to do it. That's not to say this isn't a good article. It is. But there has been a disinclination in recent years to actually talk about technology in educational technology literature, leaving practitioners in a position where they have to figure out most of this stuff for themselves. Sure, I can see this article being a useful guide for a professor or administrator managing a technical team deploying a badge infrastructure. But they shouldn't walk away from it thinking that they understand how badges are developed and used. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How artificial intelligence will impact K-12 teachers
Jake Bryant, Christine Heitz, Saurabh Sanghvi, Dilip Wagle, McKinsey, 2020/01/16
This article is a mixture of hoary old truisms (eg., "their role will shift from instructor to facilitator and coach") and generic 'technology will make things better' but which nonetheless reassure educators by saying that not only will tech not replace them, the demand for teachers will actually grow in the future. The premise here is that new technologies will reduce time spent on administrative tasks, allowing teachers to spend more time on teaching tasks (or maybe it will cut down on those 50-hour work weeks - either one would be good). But the link between artificial intelligence and these outcomes is pretty tenuous - it involves things like using AI assistance to grade papers and having AIs fill out forms. There's a lot of talk about AI enabling personalization - but the math doesn't work. If tech is saving 30 percent of a 50 hour work week, the it provides an extra 6 minutes per student per day. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Thoughts on “Non-Amicable” Enforcement of CC Licenses
Diane Peters, Alexis Muscat, Creative Commons Blog, 2020/01/16
I suppose this was inevitable. People who use Creative Commons (CC) licenses to facilitate sharing sometimes also believe that they protect their rights as creators. After all, Creative Commons is 'some rights reserved' - including especially attribution. But as people use these works without respecting these limitations, creators are increasingly tempted to turn to automated enforcement services - such as, for example, an automated image search service that tracks down unattributed copies of your images. According to this post, Creative Commons is official neutral on such services - it's not in the business of enforcing licenses, just defining them. More...