Woolf University: the Airbnb of higher education or a sheep in wolf’s clothing?
Tony Bates, Online learning and distance education resources, 2018/06/22
"You are going to hear a lot about Woolf University over the next year or so and possibly much longer," predicts Tony Bates. The reference is to a white paper titled Building the First Blockchain University (58 page PDF), which Bates recommends you read cover to cover. It will generate its own token, rely on smart contracts, and through these "support direct personal, individual apprenticeships in thinking." The model described is basically a distributed corporation similar to the model of the DAO (I wrote about it here). More...

Facial Recognition Technology Has No Place in Schools
Doug Levin, EdTech Strategies, 2018/06/22
I think that the main problem here is that facial recognition software won't actually solve any problems or prevent any of the things (like armed intrusions) it is intended to prevent. More...

Has Consciousness Lost Its Mind?
Tom Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018/06/21
This review of the Science of Consciousness conference, held recently in Tucson, illustrates everything that is wrong with academia. The Chronicle of Higher Education seems offended that people outside the orthodoxy of what he styles as the "field of consciousness studies" would gather and discuss the topic in a serious way. More...

Americans believe two-thirds of news on social media is misinformation
Taylor Blatchford, Poynter, 2018/06/21
This will be presented differently depending on where you get the news, which I guess is part of the point. Here's how API summarizes it: "Americans believe 39 percent of news in newspapers, on TV or on the radio is misinformation and 65 percent of news on social media is made up or can’t be verified as accurate." Personally, I think this is probably a fairly accurate assessment. More...

Scientists Seek Genetic Data to Personalize Education
Ben Williamson, DML Central, 2018/06/21
This strikes me as a really bad idea, but I present it here so readers can judge for themselves. That said, as the article notes, "It raises significant concerns about biological discrimination and rekindles long debates about eugenics and the genetic inheritance of intelligence." The idea is that "educational genomics seeks to unpack the genetic factors involved in individual differences in learning ability, behavior, motivation, and achievement." The problem, as I see it, is that none of these are genetically based, and further, "the new geneism" may well be just another attempt to import bias and prejudice into the system. More...

GitHub Education Is Now Free For Classroom Use
Henry Kronk, eLearningInside News, 2018/06/21
Microsoft has made two major acquisitions in recent days and then turned right around and made them free for educators. One, featured in this post, is GitHub. The other was FlipGrid, a student video discussion platform, which it made free for education (and even offered refunds) shortly after. More...

Seven deadly sins of online course design
Matthew Lynch, The Edvocate, 2018/06/21
This is a light read and, as a listicle, doesn't really have a coherent point to make, but it was also a fun read and some of the 'sins' were well spotted. My favourites included: overwhelming discussions, bad narration, and buried leads. More...

Edu-business as usual—market-making in higher education
Ben Williamson, Code Acts in Education, 2018/06/21
Good article on what Pearson is doing in education with a great cover photo. And I really like the analysis of what it is exactly that Pearson is doing in education. Beginning from the precept that " markets do not simply appear," Ben Williamson focuses on an argument that shows "how the formerly non-market space of higher education has been reframed and re-made as an ‘education services market’, and subsequently how these HE markets work." The offering of goods and services that higher education might purchase is only the first step of the process. More...

UTC is Enough for Everyone, Right?
Zach Holman, During, 2018/06/21
Among many other things, the NRC is the keeper of time for Canada, which lends a little extra relevance to this article. Additionally, anyone designing educational technology has encountered the hurdles of managing time with software. More...

Defining the IndieWeb
Aaron Davis, Read Write Collect, 2018/06/20
I consider myself very firmly in the camp of the indieweb. But I wouldn't exactly say that I'm part of the indieweb community. And definitely not a citizen. More...