By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blackboard’s Complexity Problems
George Kroner, edutechnica, 2015/08/05

This is a fascinating look at some of the complexity behind the scenes in Backboard's code base. It's a mixture of old code and new, of original Blackboard and acquired products, and support for various types of database. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A few random thoughts on Cecil, @bittman, and chickens
Steve Krause, 2015/08/05

According to Mark Bittman in Vox, eating a factory-farmed chicken is morally worse than the killing of Cecil the Lion. As Steve Krause points out, there's a difference between killing for food and fillingfor sport, and a difference between killing an animal on the verge of extinction and one which numbers in the gazillions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 5 Strategies To Trend On Twitter at Your Next Event
Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator, 2015/08/05

It's an interesting question: how should we measure the success of an event? This question is motivated by these considerations: "This year we wanted to focus on getting the buzz going in social media. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Collateral damage
Ryan Tracey, E-Learning Provocateur, 2015/08/05
This pretty much sums up my views on the whole learning styles debate: first, "The argument is that in the absence of such evidence, don’t waste time and money trying to match your teaching style to everyone’s learning styles," which is fair enough, but second, " regardless of the existence or impact of learning styles, a phenomenon that enjoys universal recognition is that of learner preferences." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Santiago de Compostela
Stephen Downes, Flickr, 2015/08/05

It took a while to get them all cleaned and uploaded, but I hope you enjoy this beautiful set of photos from Santiago de Compostela, Spain. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How will ad-blocking software change the web-content industry?
Jean-Louis Gassée, Quartz, 2015/08/04

I think that Apple was looking for ways to improve battery life in its mobile devices and someone was smartly thinking out of the box. "With content blocking turned on, the page loaded in two seconds instead of eleven. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. White House: Innovation in Higher Education
George Siemens, elearnspace, 2015/08/04

I can't resist sharing this post describing George Siemenss'ss invitation and visit to the White House (meanwhile people pay very good money to keep people like me far away from such places!). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Here’s a $5M Seed Fund to Support Higher-Ed Innovations Besides MOOCs
Tony Wan, EdSurge, 2015/08/04

So what's being funded in learning these days? "University Ventures said it’s already invested in four companies. More...