By Jonathan Supovitz. After the rocky road of the test-based accountability era, the next stage of education reform seemed to promise a smoother ride. In 2010 the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which set off high expectations for student academic performance in mathematics and English language arts, were adopted in 45 of the 50 states with strong bi-partisan support. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Social Clicks: What and Who Gets Read on Twitter?
Maksym Gabielkov, Arthi Ramachandran, Augustin Chaintreau, Arnaud Legout, HAL, 2016/08/12
This excellent paper has been the subject of some recent social media pranks, the point of which are to show that people rarely read the posts they share on Twitter or Facebook. You can read a Washington Post article about it from mid-June. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The lost infrastructure of social media
Anil Dash, Medium, 2016/08/12
The most striking feature of this article is a list, side-by-side, of the sharing and network features that existed in the early days of the blogosphere and those that are available today. In far too many categories, today's listing is "n/a" - in other words, nothing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Hey, Snapchat, enough is enough
Nicole Lee, Engadget, 2016/08/12
Silicon Valley has a diversity problem. How else to explain the distribution of Pokemon locations? How else to explain how Snapchat came out with what is essentially a racist photo filter. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Inside Twitter’s 10-Year Failure To Stop Harassment
Charlie Warzel, Buzzfeed News, 2016/08/12
Ironically posted on Buzzfeed, this article asserts that "for nearly its entire existence, Twitter has not just tolerated abuse and hate speech, it’s virtually been optimized to accommodate it." More...