By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Malawi app 'teaches UK pupils 18 months of maths in six weeks'
Spencer Kelly, BBC News, 2014/09/08
There's all kinds of ways this can be an overstatement and that the results in widespread practice would be nowhere near the test case (or not long-lasting, nor not transferable, or some such thing). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Twitpic is shutting down
Press Release, TwitPic, 2014/09/08
I don't know whether Twitpic is actually shutting down or whether this is just posturing to get Twitter to pack down, but either way it demonstrates how we can't depend on web service providers to have our interests in mind when they begin fighting (as they always do) among themselves. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Something is rotten in the state of…Twitter
Bonnie Stewart, The theoryblog, 2014/09/08
"Will my dissertation end up being about the Twitter that was, rather than whatever it is in the process of becoming?" Bonnie Stewart looks at the decline of Twitter not just as an isolated event but as part of a wider pattern. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Twitter, algorithms, and digital dystopias
Doug Belshaw, 2014/09/08
So what happened after people exchanged their RSS readers for services like Twitter and Facebook? "What’s so problematic about all of this, of course, is that whereas we used to be in charge of our own reading habits, we’ve outsourced that to algorithms. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Launch of Twitter’s Analytics Service
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, 2014/09/08
Twitter has launched a new analytics service. Here's the announcement. Brian Kelly: "the service provides statistics on tweets (potential impressions, engagement and engagement rate). Additional tabs provide information on followers (changes in the numbers of followers and profiles of their gender, location and interests) and Twitter cards." I'm not sure I even want this. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mute the Messenger
Jason Stanford, Texas Observer, 2014/09/10
Walter Stroup offered evidence to show that standardized tests measure test-taking ability more than they measure knowledge, and that the teacher has only a small impact on the final assessment. "According to Stroup’s initial calculations, that constancy accounted for about 72 percent of everyone’s test score." A later recalculation suggests it's more like 50%. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Personal Health Data: It’s Amazing Potential and Privacy Perils
Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog, 2014/09/10
It's hard to underestimate the potential to improve both health and learning through the analysis of personal data. I think of my own experience with Runkeeper to track my cycling. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why can't you comment on this post? #indieweb
Ben Werdmuller, Benwerd, 2014/09/10
OK, so I've played around with this a bit and think I've figured it out. It's what I think my Referrer System, which I built in 2002, would have become had it grown up (it peaked at 800K hits per day, and I didn't have the resources to sustain that). The idea here is that, if you read something and you want to comment, you comment on your own page, not the page you're reading. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Are Laptops Really Bad For Learning?
Darren Kuropatwa, A Difference, 2014/09/10
In this good summary of the results of the recent study comparing note-taking with pen and laptop Darren Kuropatwa also points to the underlying reason to be sceptical about the conclusion. In the three studies students performed better on tests after taking notes with the pen, rather than the laptop. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bootstrap 3 Less Workflow Tutorial
Erik Flowers, HelloErik Experience Design, 2014/09/09
Responsive design, JQuery libraries, Bootstrap, HTML templates, CSS preprocessors... the world of web page design has become impressively complex. At the same time, if you're able to step lightly over these tools, it has never been easier to design complex pages that display well on any media. More...
