By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Introverted Teachers Are Burning Out
Michael Godsey, The Atlantic, 2016/02/02

I can easily understand how introverted teachers would be at risk of burning out. Contact hours are stressful and people who are introverted need time to recharge. But here's the thing - wouldn't introverted students also be at risk of burnout? After all, when you're in school, you're on stage all day every day. There's no real personal time. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Should you #DeleteAcademiaEdu? On the role of commercial services in scholarly communication.
Paolo Mangiafico, LSE Blog, 2016/02/02
There are a few interesting things here. One is the recap of last week's controverse du jour in the Chronicle revolving around an email from Academia.edu asking an academic whether he would be willing to pay "a small fee" to publicize his paper. Much outrage and the obligatory hashtag ensued. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Connected Copies
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2016/02/01

It's funny. Mike Caulfield wonders "why more OER sites don’t grab material from one another and populate their own sites with it, instead of linking out" while I wonder why they want to combine materials together instead of just linking to them. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Pearson chief brands critics 'naive and ignorant' as company cuts 4,000 jobs
Christopher Williams, The Telegraph, 2016/02/01

Living in another world, here Pearson executive John Fallon: "What I think is completely overblown, frankly, is the comparison between education and the music industry. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wondering if Life Would be Easier With an OU – or FutureLearn – Compute Stick…?
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2016/02/01

This is such a terrible model I fear that it will actually be implemented. Not that it doesn't have its attractive features. But imagine this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. N Cultures
Mark Liberman, Language Log, 2016/02/01

Here's another look at the competing 'camps' in machine learning, this time depicted by Jason Eisner as three in number, and based on real work in the field: classical, Baysean, and deep learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Making a MOOC ‘successful’
David Hopkins, Technology Enhanced Learning Blog, 2016/02/01
What exactly is it that makes a MOOC successful? David Hopkins links to a number of schemes (here, here, here, here and here) based on things like "interactions, journeys, optimum length, appropriate materials, platform, etc." but suggests that what really makes a MOOC successful has far more to do with how much attention you can drive to it. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jaron Lanier’s rant against online collectivism and its relational alternative
Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation, 2016/01/29

Michel Bauwens responds to Jaron Lanier's post in Edge warning us of "digital Maoism" and the dangers of online collectivism. Bauwens finds, I think, the same middle ground between the individual and the collective. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Amber
Amber, 2016/01/29

Amber is a nifty solution to the problem of dead links in blogs and websites. "It automatically preserves a snapshot of every page linked to on a website, giving visitors a fallback option if links become inaccessible." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Plurality, partnership and pellucidity – the three ‘p’s of open access monograph publishing
Caren Milloy, Jisc, 2016/01/29

This strategy outlined in this article is much like the use of the word 'pellucidity' - it may have seemed like a good time to all concerned, but nobody really knew what the objective is, and there was a much simpler way to go about it. More...