Colony: Technical White Paper
Aron Fischer, Jack du Rose, Alex Rea, Colony, 2018/02/20

Just open-sourced: Colony. This is a link to the Colony white paper (55 page PDF), also just released. More...

Learning to program is getting harder
Allen Downey, Probably Overthinking It, 2018/02/20

I can attest from p[ersonal experience that this is true. More...

Wikispaces is Closing - Here Are Some Alternatives
Richard Byrne, Free Technology for Teachers, 2018/02/20
It's sad to read this. On the Wikispaces blog the developers write, "it has become apparent that the required investment to bring the infrastructure and code in line with modern standards is very substantial." Modern standards would include everything from security to accessibility to APIs and cloud services. More...

I have forgotten how to read
Michael Harris, Globe and Mail, 2018/02/20
I thought at first the author was describing some rare mental condition involving Broca's area but all he is saying is that he reads differently now. More...

Google Condemns the Archival Web
Doc Searls, dsearls, 2018/02/20
Doc Searls writes, "The archival Web—the one you see through the protocol HTTP—will soon be condemned, cordoned off behind Google's police tape, labeled "insecure" on every current Chrome browser... Every legacy website, nearly all of which were created with no malice, commit no fraud and distribute no malware, will become haunted houses: still there, but too scary for most people to visit." It's a problem for me because getting a certificate is neither simple nor cheap. More...

McGraw-Hill Education Launches Textbook and E-Book Rental Program
Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2018/02/20

Considering that you can only rent e-books as it is, it's hard to see what the big draw is here. More...

Bad News: the game researchers hope will 'vaccinate' public against fake news
Ian Sample, The Guardian, 2018/02/20
This is an interesting idea. "Cambridge researchers have built an online game, simply titled Bad News, in which players compete to become 'a disinformation and fake news tycoon'. By shedding light on the shady practices, they hope the game will 'vaccinate' the public, and make people immune to the spread of untruths." More...

Autopsy of a Failed Holacracy: Lessons in Justice, Equity, and Self-Management
Simon Mont, NonProfit Quarterly, 2018/02/20

Here is an article highlighted by Wendy Wickham directly relevant to the Engagement in a Time of Polarization MOOC I am currently taking (it's a subscription article but I have six free views left, so...). More...

Personalized Learning Meets AI With Watson Classroom
Erin Gohl, Getting Smart, 2018/02/22
"Generally speaking," says Erin Gohl, in personalized learning, "reducing people to a set of numbers overlooks so many factors that are integral to understanding a student, but explainable only as narrative comments." Rather, you need something that can brige the gap between words and numbers, for example, IBM Watson. More...

The media today: ‘This doesn’t look like the gun debate in America’
Jon Allsop, Columbia Journalism Review, 2018/02/22
The students are the stars in this article describing how jorunalists from The Eagle Eye covered the event in their school as it was happening and have taken the lead in ensuring that the story does not follow the usual 'thoughts and prayers'-'too early for the debate' news cycle following a major shooting. More...