By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Case Against Reality
Chris Ashley, The Atlantic, 2016/04/27

I've always felt the case against realism is pretty definitive, so this article doesn't surprise me. And I love this analogy: "You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Online degrees could make universities redundant, historian warns
Richard Adams, The Guardian, 2016/04/26

This is an odd article that one the one hand says that Oxford should embrace online learning to increase access and remain relevant, and that it should go private (but raising its own endowment) so it doesn't have to respond to government demands that it, um, increase access. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. To Make Content Findable, Put It Everywhere
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2016/04/26

Mike Caulfield takes on a persistent truism in the OER world: that we need one central location where everyone can find open resources. This has never been true, and when tried it has never worked. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. UN to urge media to take more 'constructive' approach to news
Jasper Jackson, The Guardian, 2016/04/26

According to this article, "the United Nations is to call for the world’s media to take a more 'constructive' and 'solutions-focused' approach to news to combat 'apathy and indifference'." I can't see that happening in the news media. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Hiring for Cultural Fit Can Thwart Your Diversity Efforts
Celia de Anca, Harvard Business Review, 2016/04/26

Diversity, as I have observed frequently in these pages, is one of the four elements of the 'semantic condition', which are the criteria for successful networks. For a lot of people 'diversity' means language and heritage. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Strategies for Personal Learning
Stephen Downes, Apr 25, 2016, VI e-Learning International Conference 2016, Madrid, Spain, online via Zoom

In this presentation I draw the distinction between personal and personalized learning and the outline the major strategies supporting personal learning: sharing, contributing and co-creation. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How close are AI systems to human-level intelligence? The Allen AI challenge.
Daniel Lemire, 2016/04/25

Computers can now probably pass the Turing test for artificial intelligence: they can convince a human that they are interacting with another human in conversation. But could thy pass the Allen test: pass an eighth grade science exam? Daniel Lemire discusses this possibility. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Online disinhibition and the ethics of researching groups on Facebook

Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu, 2016/04/25

It's worth noting that the research we've conducted over the last half-dozen years on MOOCs and personal learning was conducted according to strict ethical guidelines, including informed consent to participate in research. A lot of current research on MOOCs and social networks conform to no such conditions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Scraping with Google Spreadsheets Across Instagram, Flickr, YouTube etc.
Tom Woodward, Bionic Teaching, 2016/04/25
As is always the case, the stuff that can be done by technical people today will be provided by some application for everyone tomorrow. In this post Tom Woodward demonstrates how to use Google Sheets to grab data from a variety of sites, including YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, and more. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Facebook now gets a million users from “dark web” service Tor
Nick Waddell, CanTech Letter, 2016/04/25

For those who don't think privacy is an issue with people (and there are many) consider this: you have to go out of your way to use a service like Tor, which is designed to help you browse the web anonymously. More...