Learning’s first principle – the most important thing i learned this year
Aaron Davis, 2018/09/03
Aaron Davis pulls together three links with a common theme: the idea that learning depends first on the learner wanting to learn, on motivation. This is for me an important ground for endorsing learner-led learning. More...
Biaoqing: The circulation of emoticons, emoji, stickers, and custom images on Chinese digital media platforms
Gabriele de Seta, First Monday, 2018/09/03
First Monday has devoted this month's issue to the Emoji, from which I select two articles to highlight. This article looks at the blending of emoticons, emoji and stickers under the heading of 表情 - biaoqing - in Chinese culture. More...
I second that emoji: The standards, structures, and social production of emoji
Bethany Berard, First Monday, 2018/09/03
First Monday has devoted this month's issue to the Emoji, from which I select two articles to highlight. This article describes how candidate emoji are propossed and approved by the Unicode Consortium. " Unicode’s codespace has 1,114,112 code points. While Unicode Standard 11 contains just over 137,300 characters, there are a finite number of code points." This has led over the years for the encoding not only of minority languages, but also for the inclusion of a wide set of cultural touchpoints in the unicode emoji specification itself. More...
Building badge value with Endorsement
Don Presant, Open Badge Factory, 2018/09/03
This item introduces two major concepts to the badge ecosystem. The first is the idea of 'endorsement', which "promises to resolve recurring questions about the “credibility of badges” by providing third party validation that can be formal (like accreditation) or informal (“fits our purpose”). More...
An international group of researchers, including astronomers from Canada’s University of Victoria, is one step closer to understanding what the early universe was like, with the discovery of one of its oldest-known stars. The finding is significant because it provides a window into the period right after the Big Bang – before the Earth, our solar system and even our galaxy were formed, reports the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. More...Two weeks after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than 2,000 people on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, foreign researchers say red tape is slowing down or preventing investigative work of the devastated coastlines. But the Indonesian government says that it has sped up the processing of permits for researchers in the wake of the tsunami, writes Quirin Schiermeier for Nature. More...The academic year began with some 306,000 students studying at Israel’s higher education institutions, while junior staff at two universities began an open-ended strike over employment conditions and staff at a dozen more colleges threatened to strike this week, writes Stuart Winer for Times of Israel. More...Teachers’ unions in Zimbabwe have lambasted tertiary institutions for conferring honorary degrees to politicians after three honorary doctorates were recently bestowed on President Emmerson Mnangagwa. His predecessor, Robert Mugabe, received five honorary degrees from Zimbabwean universities, reports Bulawayo24. More...Americans are losing faith in higher education, and college leaders should look in their mirrors for the reasons. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 48% of the public has “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. That’s 9% lower than in 2015, the largest drop among all the 16 institutions – including Congress, the presidency, banks, and newspapers – surveyed over that period, writes Michael T Nietzel for Forbes. More...Traditionally, universities looking to widen access have focused on secondary aged children preparing to take their next step in education. But in many cases it may be too late to shape their decision-making. Universities are looking to solve problems that can become entrenched far earlier in a child’s education, writes Christopher Birchall for The Guardian. More.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
