By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Roots of Empathy
Allie Alayan, AACE Review, 2019/02/22
I'm not sure whether a baby counts as educational technology, but I'm going to accept the wide definition in order to link to this short item about the development of empathy being implemented in classrooms. It "is designed for teaching empathy to children between the ages of 5 to 13. Observing the emotional state of an infant is used to promote positive emotional and social development in children". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Advancing academia with Wikipedia
Sharon Aschaiek, University Affairs, 2019/02/27
Short description of how universities are designating Wikipedians in residence (WIR) to support the institutional mandate through the coordination of editing and other activities related to the online encyclopedia. "Wikimedia offers free recruitment, training and content creation support to institutions seeking WIRs. According to the organization, these services fall in line with its goal to encourage cultural and educational institutions to share their resources freely on Wikimedia sites". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The impact of conformity in education
Dave Cormier, Dave’s Educational Blog, 2019/02/27
According to Dave Cormier, "When we identify the technology and not the people beyond we missed the systemic cultural practices that are helping to shape the people who are the bad actors on those platforms." Technology may be an enabler, but it's the people who actually behave one way or another. That's why "we need our schools to replicate models of inclusivity and equity that are not about the imposition of conformity. That means that we accept people the way they come in the door, and we help them come up with answers that belong to them". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Casualties of the future: college closures and queen sacrifices
Bryan Alexander, 2019/02/26
The primary value of this article is that it lists a welter of college closures and cutbacks, a list suitable for reference when encountering a person who says that the existing system is secure and unchanging. Bryan Alexander postulates that we are now in a boundary zone, "right in the midst of a switching period, a liminal space, marked by uncertainty and instability". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. It’s about Trust, Stupid! Why Blockchain-based BlockCerts are the wrong solution to a false problem (2/3)
Serge Ravet, Learning Futures, 2019/02/26
Serge Ravet offers an extended and well-argued case against the use of blockcerts in education. The term 'blockcert' refers to a specific approach using blockchain to validate digital credentials. The question being posed asks what advantage they have over badges and (especially) the Verifiable Claims W3C specification. The problem, argues Ravet, is different from the solution offered by blockchain: "A credential is not fungible, i.e. its ownership can’t be transferred to someone else or transformed into something different, like exchanging a credential for a bowl of lentil stew. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Quest to Topple Science-Stymying Academic Paywalls
Joi Ito, 2019/02/19
The lede is well and truly buried in this article, but here it is: "We are developing a new open source and modern publishing platform called PubPub and a global, distributed method of understanding public knowledge called Underlay." The PubPub code is open source and available on GitHub and is basically a Node.js-based content management system that looks and feels a lot like WordPress or Medium. Underlay is more interesting - its website says it is "a global, distributed graph of public knowledge... This is an attempt to replicate the richness of private knowledge graphs in a public, decentralized manner... We will work with other protocol layers to define the initial federation model, and decentralize the underlay with IPFS." So anyhow, I used PubPub to create what is now an empty journal (I'll accept submissions, but my approval process is arbitrary and capricious). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Does Web-Based Training Work?
The answer (as we all know by now) is yes, but in studies of effectiveness, "the instructional method matters, not the delivery medium." The same is true of testing; as Ewan McIntosh write, "people writing as fast as they can for two hours is no way to test whether children can 'perform'." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Who Needs OLPC?
This post mostly makes the point that the rising cost of the OLPC (now $175) and the declining cost of commercial computers (now $289) are close to reaching convergence. Yes, the OLPC has some neat features, like a way to generate its own power. If you can live without Windows and Office (which seem to be more expenseive than the computer these days) then you're already at OLPC territory - if your school board takes advantage of the low prices and isn't seduced by marketing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Last Lecture
Brian Lamb highlights the idea of the 'last lecture' as evoked in Gardner Campbell's presentation. "if you were you to give one last lecture or presentation, what would you say? Presumably you wouldn't hold anything back, you would share your deepest passions and convictions... but how to use that precious time?" Me, I'd probably be like. More...