How Do Objects Connect to the Internet of Things?
Kenneth Evans, ReadWrite, 2018/06/07
This article is written at a medium level of technical detail, which means it contains more actual information than most Internet of Things (IoT) articles, but you're not going to be lost reading equations and mathematical formulae. Consider this article in relation to the Doc Searls article. Can we connect things to the internet in such a way that they become the conduit for message exchange. More...

Using Telepresence Robots to Support Students Facing Adversity
Doris Cheung, Tarah Dykeman, Courtney Fell, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/06/07
At first I thought this was the sort of idea that was a very bad idea, something along the lines of replacing human advisors with bots. But this is actually the much more practical suggestion of attaching telepresence devices (ie., screens with our gfaces, cameras and speakers) to devices that can move around (ie., robots). More...

Connectively Full From First @ontarioextend Extended Lunch
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2018/06/07

One thing I'll be watching closely after tofay's election in Ontario is the future of Campus Ontario. I most certainly hope their good work is able to continue. So on to the link: Alan Levine describes his first Ontario Extend Extended Lunch conversation. More...

The Uncertain Future of OER
Tom Berger, Edutopia, 2018/06/04
I think that the answer to the question of "why open educational resources (OER) haven't caught on" is in the last paragraph of this article: "will we ever get to a Wikipedia-type model of teaching resources, with teachers freely giving and taking textbooks, lesson plans, and tests, refining and improving them, and sharing their improvements?" My thinking here is that so long as you think of OERs as teaching resources, they're never going to work. More...

Facebook scraps 'outdated' trending news section

The Guardian, 2018/06/04

There is a lesson for education technology in this story. Facebook has had nothing but grief trying to offer personalized news. Google, meanwhile, has announced a complete revamp of Google News featuring a content selection that will be the same for everybody. The role the AI plays is focused on the story. More...

Hax
2018/06/04
Phil Barker writes in an email, "have a look at what the HAX team are doing, they are making a universal front-end authoring interface. It allows you to do things like write Schema into your content as you go, or drop in pre-made chunks with metadata provided. And then publish the html to git pages (not quite automatic yet, but it works)." The source is available on GitHub. More...

An Interview with The Beast
Doug Peterson, doug — off the record, 2018/06/04
The Beast actually appears to be a person and not (as I thought) a metaphor for writer's block or addiction or something. More...

The Human Brain
Nancy Kanwisher, nancysbraintalks, 2018/06/04
This is the set of videos that constitute the course taught by Nancy Kanwisher on the human brain. All the greatest hits are in there: facial recognition, vision and the retina, shape processing and category sensitivity, and navigation (both animal and human). More...

Continuous Learning & Development; more than just continuous training
Jane Hart, Learning in the Social Workplace, 2018/06/04
This article is mostly a plug for a workshop (which makes me wonder whether running online workshops would be a viable source of income). I'm linking to it specifically to point to the continuous leadning framework document (1 page PDF) that comes with the article. More...

Blockchain in the Life Sciences
Stephen Downes, Jun 03, 2018, Life Sciences Day 2.0, Ottawa, Ontario

Slides are of my presentation to the panel giving an accessible overview of blockchain technologies and explaining their relevance to life sciences. The audio is from the panel as a whole (the first minute is missing); it looks at the future of life sciences technology and features speakers from OBIO, CHEO and IBM as well as myself. More...