Has ‘Write Daily’ Become Dogma?
Chris Smith, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2018/09/19
The headline is a bit silly. But the subject of whether we should write daily resonates with me because that's what I tell people I do. Writing this newsletter every day is core to my professional development. The story covers the preliminary results of a our survey (that's still open) of academics on the subject. More...

Peter Thiel: Crypto vs AI Dichotomy Will Determine the Future of Humanity
Avi Mizrahi, Bitcoin.com, 2018/09/19
The dichotomy here is dramatically overstated, and yet there are these two tensions, characterized by these two technologies, that illustrate a tension between competing technological approaches. On the one hand we have AI, characterized by big data and machine learning, which conjures up the sceptre of the surveillance state. More...

If you think Fortnite is just a video game, you’re missing the big picture
Burt Helm, Fast Company, 2018/09/19

When professional sports leagues like Major League Baseball or the National Hockey League want to promote attendance, they invest in youth leagues. This isn't merely to develop players but to give potential viewers a point of contact with the sport. More...

Introducing Blackboard Open LMS – the New Face of Our Moodle-based SaaS Product
Kathy Vieira, Blackboard Blog, 2018/09/19
The next act in the Blackboard versus Moodle saga is finally playing out as the former has announced that 'Moodlerooms' is now 'Blackboard Open LMS'. No expense was spared picking the new name. Here's the new website. More...

Explore the immersive web with Firefox Reality. Now available for Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream
Sean White, The Mozilla Blog, 2018/09/19
Firebox announces anouther step closer to the immersive web (which isn't what we will all use all the time, but which will make for a really interesting experience some of the time). And they're beginning to comprehend some of the finer points of the new medium. More...

Lessons on Disagreement from a Psychologist of Human Error
Justin Weinberg, Daily Nous, 2018/09/19
The Daily Nous (which despite appearances employs no fewer than 13 separate CSS stylesheets)  discusses an essay from psychologist Lee Ross describing "the illusion of personal objectivity." This is the belief we tend to have that our own beliefs were formed objectively, and that therefore other people would believe what we do if we explained it to them, and that if they persist in not believing they are being irrational and unreasonable. More...

Scientific Facts — Are they like Myths, Told through Fairytales and Spread by Gossip?
Anita de Waard, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2018/09/27
This paper caught my imagination despite myself, and then convinced me that the answer to the question in the headline is "yes". The key is in understanding the semantics in articles: "In stories and rhetoric, a statement exists not as a separate entity, but plays a role in the overarching narrative." When we look at scientific papers, this role is often signified by tense. More...

Surprising Ways AI Can Improve eLearning Accessibility
Pamela Hogle, Learning Solutions, 2018/09/27

I don't thing the solutions are particularly "surprising" but I think the linkage between AI and accessibility is a good one. More...

Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy
David Wiley, John Levi Hilton III, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2018/09/27
I really think this is last year's issue, and that most people have moved on, but I would be remiss if I didn't document David Wiley's definition of OER-enabled pedagogy in this article. "We define OER-enabled pedagogy as the set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions which are characteristic of OER." As the authors note (in the very next sentence), pedagogy is not usually defined in terms of copyright. More...

How do Virtual Teams Collaborate in Online Learning Tasks in a MOOC?
Annemarie Spruijt, Amber Dailey-Hebert, Herco Fonteijn, Geraldine Clarebout, Daniëlle Verstegen, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2018/09/27
This is a fairly narrow study but I like the question and the issue of collaboration in MOOCs has certainly been raised as an issue before. This MOOC was called Problem-Based Learning: Principles and design. Students at the centre!  which meant that they couldn't get away without doing problem-based learning, which in turn pretty much requires the formation of collaborative groups. More...