What’s wrong with bots is they’re not ours
Doc Searls, 2018/06/07

That's probably not all that's wrong with bots, but it's certainly part of the problem. After all, the reason why it's creepy if a bot is listening to your conversation is that it belongs to Amazon or Apple or whomever. More...

How Do Objects Connect to the Internet of Things?
Kenneth Evans, ReadWrite, 2018/06/07
This article is written at a medium level of technical detail, which means it contains more actual information than most Internet of Things (IoT) articles, but you're not going to be lost reading equations and mathematical formulae. Consider this article in relation to the Doc Searls article. Can we connect things to the internet in such a way that they become the conduit for message exchange. More...

Using Telepresence Robots to Support Students Facing Adversity
Doris Cheung, Tarah Dykeman, Courtney Fell, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/06/07
At first I thought this was the sort of idea that was a very bad idea, something along the lines of replacing human advisors with bots. But this is actually the much more practical suggestion of attaching telepresence devices (ie., screens with our gfaces, cameras and speakers) to devices that can move around (ie., robots). More...

The Human Brain
Nancy Kanwisher, nancysbraintalks, 2018/06/04
This is the set of videos that constitute the course taught by Nancy Kanwisher on the human brain. All the greatest hits are in there: facial recognition, vision and the retina, shape processing and category sensitivity, and navigation (both animal and human). More...

Smarter, Simpler, Social
This article captures many of the underlying theses of the blogging and syndicated content movement. In a nutshell, argue the authors, social software should be

• Smarter, using XML syndication, distributed, collaborative metadata, ontologies, adaptive design and context-awareness
• Simpler, developed using modular software with common methods and properties, web services and shared protocols, simple design shared and open source code
• Social, in the way it is conceived, built, functions, and works, involving stakeholder engagement, inclusive process, collaborative development, and partnerships

This article also describes many of the features I think shouls characterize educational software. More...

Common Sense Learning Principles
Jay Cross reprints this essay on educational principles. Back to the basics, he writes. It is certainly that, but also, certainly some straightforward and useful advice for designers drowning under a flood of new techniques and new technologies. More...

A Model of Democracy
Think about this: "have increasingly become more democratized. One of the big reasons for that is the so-called knowledge revolution. The individual practitioners who have specialized knowledge or talents have taken on a much larger degree of the organizational power." I have long held that a society cannot consider itself to be a democracy unless its institutions are democratic: its schools and universities, its businesses and corporations, its charities and foundations. More...

Why do Colleges Build Dormitories? And Teach Half-time?
Philip Greenspun asks this reasonable question and notes, "A university will spend hundreds of $millions on dormitories, i.e., places for students to drink beer and sleep together. More...

Will The "Real" Community Please Stand Up?
David Wiley expressed surprise yesterday when he read my comment in OLDaily welcoming him to the learning object community. Of course, he always felt himself to be a member of that community. More...