Dunce’s App
Audrey Watters, The Baffler, 2017/08/21
I think it's important to distinguish between 'behaviourism' - the theory that mental states are essentially equivalent to behaviours or (Ryle) dispositions to behave - and 'behaviour management' - methods and tools to encourage correct behaviour. Hero K12, described by Audrey Watters in this post, focuses on the latter. More...
Let’s Retire #MTBoS
Dan Meyer, dy/dan, 2017/08/21
This story is amusing from a distance and in retrospect, but I'm sure it was less funny for those involved at the time. MTBos - which stands for "Math Twitter BlogoSphere" - was set up as a hashtag and web site in order to welcome math teachers to the online community. More...
Scholarly communications shouldn’t just be open, but non-profit too
Jefferson Pooley, LSE Impact Blog, London School of Economics, 2017/08/21µ
The considerations in this post addressed to scholarly publishing could also be applied to open educational resources. More...
The Attack on Affirmative Action Is Simple and Powerful -- and Wrong
Julie A. Peterson, Lisa M. Rudgers, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/08/15
Affirmative action swept through the Canadian university system 30 years ago without causing too much disruption. But it did impact me as when looking for my first academic job I was faced with the first wave of "we encourage women and minorities" notices on placement advertisement. More...
eLabFTW
2017/08/15
This is really interesting. "With eLabFTW you get a secure, modern and compliant system to track your experiments efficiently but also manage your lab with a powerful and flexible database. If you do experimental research, then eLabFTW is for you. Whatever your field is. It is also well suited for teachers, or biotech companies." While it supports the idea of working openly, the implementation is also of interest. More...
“We were all at fault, and we were all victims too.”
Metafilter, 2017/08/15
Discussion of the game No Man's Sky, which just came out with a new edition called 'Atlas Rises'. I've been trying it out. The same lovely universe is still there for the exploring, but more features and more gameplay has been added, including game-defined quests you can pursue. More...
BbWorld Report: Blackboard May Be Turning Around
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2017/08/15
This long post makes the case that Blackboard may be turning around but the more interesting reading is the analysis of the market that sees virtually all new implementations in the Canada-USA higher education space being either Instructure's Canvas or Desire2Learn's Brightspace. More...
Open Invitation to contribute toward the Ljubljana OER Action Plan
UNESCO, 2017/08/15
Cable Green writes by email "UNESCO has released a draft "OER Action Plan" and has asked for our comments and feedback. The draft OER Action Plan is available in English and French." The recommendations are pbroken down into five major categories: capacity-building and usage; language and cultural issues; access; changing business models; and policy. More...
How to become a Bayesian in eight easy steps: An annotated reading list
Alexander Etz, Quentin Gronau, Fabian Dablander, Peter Edelsbrunner, Beth Baribault, arXiv, 2017/08/18
I learned about Bayes Theorem while studying probability in the 1980s, but I never imagined it would have the influence it has today. It's a mechanism for calculating the probability of X given Y. More...
Asleep at the Switch: Schoolhouse Commercialism, Student Privacy, and the Failure of Policymaking
Faith Boninger, Alex Molnar, Kevin Murray, National Education Policy Center, 2017/08/18
A new report from the National Education Policy Center (55 page PDF) argues that schools should be prohibited from collecting student data unless rigorous safeguards are put into place, that algorithms used in personalized learning should be openly available for examination, and that the use of such technology shoulds require thirs-party assessments for validity and utility, including examinations of the technology (including, presumably, data sets) for bias and error. More...
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