By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Canada's Fundamental Science Review
C. David Naylor, et.al., Government of Canada, 2017/04/11
This report (280 page PDF) (if you don't have time to read it have a machine read it for you) addresses Canada's investment in research and development and is known colloquially as the Naylor Report. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Beginner’s Guide To Progressive Web Apps
Kevin Farrugia, Smashing Magazine, 2017/04/11
I spent a good part of the day investigating progressive web apps (PWA). These are the result of a model proposed by Google back in 2015 that merges web browser applications with mobile applications. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How The New York Times, CNN, and The Huffington Post approach publishing on platforms
Joseph Lichterman, Nieman Lab, 2017/04/10
I'm not sure whether this represents a sea change or is just a blip, but the New York Times, which was one of the original partners when Facebook launched Instant Articles in 2015, has not ceased publishing that way. It still publishes a lot of content to platforms (as do most major publishers) but now in the form of links rather than full conten. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rules of memory 'beautifully' rewritten
James Gallagher, BBC News, 2017/04/10
If (and it's a big if) this thesis (pay-walled study) is correct, then proponents of cognitive load theory have a lot of rethinking to do. The suggestion is that while brains do indeed store short-term and long-term memory, they store these using two separate processes. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Federated Learning: Collaborative Machine Learning without Centralized Training Data
Brendan McMahan, Daniel Ramage, Google Research Blog, 2017/04/10
One of the problems with learning analytics and analytics in general is that it requires a lot of data. This means you have to watch what a lot of people are doing, which has ethical and privacy implications. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. When Pixels Collide
sudoscript, 2017/04/10
I'm not sure what principle this illustrates - chaos, maybe, cooperation, a bit, collaboration certainly, and competition too. Here's the set-up: last weekend Reddit created a grid where members could colour one pixel at a time, but would have to wait a few minutes before colouring the next one. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. I Don’t Need Permission to be Open
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2017/04/10
What is open pedagogy? According to David Wiley, "open pedagogy is the set of teaching and learning practices only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions... (it) is the set of teaching and learning practices only possible or practical when you are using OER." More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How a Browser Extension Could Shake Up Academic Publishing
Lindsay McKenzie, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2017/04/10
I've started using Unpaywall, a browser extension that finds open access versions of closed access publications. For example, is a search takes me to a closed Elsevier article, Unpaywall might find the Arxiv version. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. There Are No New Social Networks
Molly McHugh, The Ringer, 2017/04/17
The answer to the question in the title is succinctly given by Niv Dror: “Once an app becomes significant enough to pose a threat to the big players, they either get acquired or significantly handicapped by a competitive feature or restricted access.” This we might call 'normal ecosystem' (styled after Kuhn's 'normal science'). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Cuomo College Fiasco
David Brooks, New York Times, 2017/04/17
David Brooks hauls out all the old chestnuts in this criticism of New York's free tuition plans. Let's review:
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