Propositional Content in Signals
Jeffrey A. Barrett, Brian Skyrms, UCI School of Social Sciences, 2018/06/15
I cut my teeth on Choice and Chance by Bryan Skyrms, so I was naturally interested in this article on information and meaning. It's nice and clear and will give the reader a good sense of some of the issues involved in determining the informational content of a signal (and especially the informational content of a signal when the signaler is lying or deceiving). More...

Does Higher Education need blockchain?
Chris Fellingham, Medium, 2018/06/15
As the Class Central report suggests, this article reminds us of Audrey Watters's outline of blockchain in education dating from April of 2016 (where she wrote "One Bitcoin is currently worth about $415" - heh). "Decentralised trust systems may well be the future but I don’t see that it solves a core problem," writes Chris Fellingham. More...

Advocates are becoming journalists. Is that a good thing?
Mathew Ingram, Columbia Journalism Review, 2018/06/15
The way to read this post is to replace the word 'journalists' with the word 'educators'. So. Would it be a good thing if advocates became educators? For example, consider a potential educational program about Amazon’s marketing of a controversial facial recognition software product to US law enforcement as provided to schools by the American Civil Liberties Union. More...

Post-Soviet Higher Education
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2018/06/15
I think there's a really important insight buried in this look at post-Soviet educational institutions: " a market-driven system does not necessarily lead to a differentiated system; in fact, it may be the opposite... Though subject to market competition, in all countries institutions became more homogenous." Once enterprises reach a certain size (larger than a family business but smaller than a college) specialization makes them vulnerable to competition. More...

EdX Begins Testing a Paywall
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, 2018/06/13
The problem with certain models of education is that they require commercial sustainability. Thus with EdX. "EdX has been struggling to figure out how to support its work ever since Harvard University and MIT first opened it for learning in 2012." I don't know how EdX burned through an initial startup of $60 million (by contrasts, the cMOOC initiative burned through $4.95). More...

Canada’s The Logic is a new subscription news outlet focused on the innovation economy, à la The Information
Shan Wang, Nieman Lab, 2018/06/13
The difference between me an the people launching The Logic is that they think quality news and education should be sold to rich people while I think quality news and education should be distributed for free to poor people. More...

Transparency and the Marketplace for Student Data
N. Cameron Russell, Joel R. Reidenberg, Elizabeth Martin, Thomas B. Norton, Fordham Center on Law and Information Policy, Social Science Research Network, 2018/06/13
According to these four authors from various Fordham Centers, "Student lists are commercially available for purchase on the basis of ethnicity, affluence, religion, lifestyle, awkwardness, and even a perceived or predicted need for family planning services." According to the report (38 page PDF) some 14 separate data brokers sell access to student data. More...

It’s easier than you think to craft AI tools without typing a line of code
James Vincent, The Verge, 2018/06/13
OK, this isn't quite as easy as depicted in the article, and to actually use it to do anything you will have to type some lines of code, but the gist of the article points to an important new trend in software, specifically, the ability to use services to build features that are then accessible through other applications that you build. More...

WITHIN creates distribution platform using WebVR
Judy DeMocker, The Mozilla Blog, 2018/06/13
It's still a novelty but we might be seeing much more virtual reality (VR) on the web soon using tech standards WebGL and WebAssembly. This is something that has been coming for some time with the development of the WebVR standards and the WebVR API. The experience will work with web browsers (I tested it with updated versions of Firefox, Chrome (which worked) and Internet Explorer (which didn't)) and also with VR headsets. More...

Blackboard Mobile Credentials: Cashless Solution or On-Campus “Big Brother”?
Cait Etherington, eLearningInside News, 2018/06/13
In a press release yesterday, Blackboard announced that it's bringing Student IDs to Apple Wallet. " With Blackboard Mobile Credentials, student credentials in Apple Wallet offer secure access to facilities, residence halls and more, as well as payments for dining, laundry, vending and retail, creating a seamless experience while navigating campus.It will be piloted this fall in three universities." This article discusses the implications. More...