By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Great Video Requires Talent and Lots of Fast, Reliable Storage
Andy Marken, Content Insider, 2018/12/24
This article arrived in my email as an issue of the Content Insider newsletter. I thought it offered a really good behind-the-scenes look at some of the elements of video production, which detail I haven't seen before. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. LRNG + Badgr: Unlocking Opportunity Through a Shared Digital Backpack
Connie Yowell, Wayne Skipper, LRNG, 2018/12/19
This announcement portends a developing ecosystem outside the traditional LMS infrastructure. LRNG - which recently merged with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) - allows cities to create an openly accessible network of learning and employment opportunities accessible to schools and youth (see here). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. (The Very Last) Hack Education Weekly News
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2018/12/19
As someone who creates my own news summary I have a pretty good idea of the effort that goes into it. So I know what it has taken for Audrey Watters to produce her listing over the last eight years, and yes, I can understand why she's calling an end to it. It think, though, there's a difference in what we did over the years. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Oh, What A Tangled Web! Citation Network Underscores Editorial Conflicts of Interest
Phil Davis, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2018/12/18
This article references a case where a case where a publisher (American Scientific Publishers) was identified as "displaying a problematic pattern of citations". Phil Davis surveys some of the measures journals take to prevent this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Stories We Were Told about Education Technology
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2018/12/18
Audrey Watters is not writing a ten-part review of education this year offering instead this quick summary that says, essentially, that innovation in the field has slowed to a crawl and that governments and educators are making the same mistakes over and over again. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book
Andriy Burkov, 2018/12/18
If you want a holiday reading project, this might be it. I especially recommend chapter 6 on neural networks and deep learning - it covers such things as multilayer perceptrons, convolutional neural networks, and recurrent neural networks. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial
Robert W Yeh, et.al., BMJ, 2018/12/16
The outcome of this trial was that "Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention." It was a randomized control trial and statistically valid. More...