By Helena Pozniak. Volunteering gives students the hands-on experience employers value. When trainee barrister Charles Chua comes face-to-face with migrants facing debt problems or needing immigration advice, he can find himself on unfamiliar ground. More...

By Katie Allen. Working-class children were being left behind by the school system long before the crash. It's time for radical change. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How online 'chatbots' are already tricking you
Chris Baraniuk, BBC, June 11, 2014
OK, so chatbots that lure people to dating sites or convince bitcoin users to give each other tips are not going to impact most of us. But with as much as 65 percent of online chatter being generated by bots, chances are you've read or interacted with one. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized
Will Bourne, Inc., June 11, 2014
This is becoming an increasingly loud trend. "For years, the internet's biggest players have hoarded your personal data and sold it for billions. Now, a band of angry startups is demanding privacy and aiming to overhaul the social-media business forever." This article introduces us to Wickr, with the slogan,  "The Internet is forever. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Man trademarks Pi, tries to cut out geeky T-shirt designers
Kevin Poulsen, Wired, June 11, 2014
I wish I could say that the headline is a joke, but it appears instead to be an all-too-real example of an IP regime gone off the rails. More power to those people ignoring the law and using PI for their own purposes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. #YesAllWomen and Ed-Tech Conferences, or Why ISTE is Unsafe
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, June 13, 2014
I'm still dealing with backlog, so I didn't see it when it came out 9 days ago, but it's important enough to pass along. Audrey Watters writes, "Ariel Norling published an incredibly brave article — an incredibly difficult to read article — chronicling predatory behavior and sexual assault at last year’s ISTE conference." She then relates her own experiences in the field, and the "utterly dismissive, if not utterly disgusting" response offered by ISTE's Brian Lewis. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dean at M.I.T. Resigns, Ending a 28-Year Lie
Tamar Lewin, New York Times, June 14, 2014
My first reaction to this was to laugh. Yes, of course, she should not have misrepresented her credentials. But it turns out that she did not even have an undergraduate degree. What does it say about the need for a university when you can even be a successful as a dean at MIT without having earned a degree? "Ms. Jones had received the institute’s highest honor for administrators, the M.I.T. Excellence Award for Leading Change." More...

By Cathy Davidson. I was honored to be invited to participate in a National Data Service kick-off in Boulder, CO, this week:  http://www.nationaldataservice.org/
National Data Service (NDS) is a consortium of many institutions dedicated to "an emerging vision of how scientists and researchers across all disciplines can find, reuse, and publish data. It is an international federation of data providers, data aggregators, community-specific federations, publishers, and cyberinfrastructure providers. It builds on the data archiving and sharing efforts under way within specific communities and links them together with a common set of tools."  It was convened by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), presided over by Director Ed Seidel. More...

By Gregory Semenza - Chronicle Vitae. I’m tired of hearing that academe isn’t part of the “real world.” This irritating canard is typically deployed by people living off campus—very often media critics, businesspeople, and politicians who view our colleges and universities as “ivory towers,” walled off from the practical concerns of average citizens. They promulgate an image of university faculty as impractical daydreamers, holders of arcane knowledge insulated from the economic and political pressures of everyday American life. See more...