The Side Effects of Education: Research and Practice
Beth Holland, Education Week, 2018/09/13
The author considers the use of scientific evidence in education research in the light of Yong Zhao's  new book: What Works May Hurt - The Side Effects of Education. The major argument is this: " educators, policymakers, and researchers need to acknowledge that "the effect of any treatment is the result of interaction between the characteristics of the treatment and characteristics of the individual" (p. 90)" (the use of the word 'treatment' speaks to the analogy people are trying to draw between health and medicine). More...

Why We Need Web 3.0
Gav Would, Medium, 2018/09/13
More and more, as Ethereum co-founder Gab Would says, we are seeing that "the internet today is broken by design." It is centralized, it is driven by "the greedy, the megalomaniacs, or the plain malicious," and it provides no defense against fake news, cyber-attacks and surveillance. Hence the need for what is being called web 3.0 (backed by a suite of applications called web3). More...

EU approves controversial Copyright Directive, including internet ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
James Vincent, The Verge, 2018/09/13
There has been a lot of discussion regarding these regulations. Technology companies and activist organizations like EFF are particularly concerned (BoingBoing says "Europe just voted to wreck the internet, spying on everything and censoring vast swathes of our communications". More...

Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web
Zoë Corbyn, The Guardian, 2018/09/13
The web you thought you knew is getting ready for some major changes. "The proponents of the so-called decentralised web – or DWeb – want a new, better web where the entire planet’s population can communicate without having to rely on big companies that amass our data for profit and make it easier for governments to conduct surveillance." DWeb, or Web 3.0 (as it's also called in today's OLDaily) is coming. More...

E-Learning 3.0 - The Outline
Stephen Downes, Google Docs, 2018/09/13
I will be offering a MOOC called "E-Learning 3.0" this fall, launching at the Global Online Learning Summit | Online Learning 2018 in mid-October. The course will explore some of the major themes underlying what has been called Web 3.0 or DWeb and how they will impact online learning. My focus, as always, is educational technology, but of course technology can only be discussed in terms of the social, cultural and economic environment in which it is applied. The page linked here is a tentative outline for the course - please feel encouraged to add comments or suggestions. There's no sign-up form or anything like that - I will ask for information only if it's needed either to provide services (like email newsletters) or for research purposes (purely voluntary & with full disclosure).
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]. More...

Here's what Americans say it will take to rebuild their trust in the media
Christine Schmidt, NiemanLab, 2018/09/12
There's a lot going on in this article, but here's how I read it: for people who distrust the media, the most cited reason is bias, but for people who trust the media, the most cited reason is accuracy, and transparency can improve trust in the media generally. More...

7 Ways To Fix Ontario's Dismal Public Education System
Malkin Dare, Huffington Post, 2018/09/12
I think that when you post a headline like this, you need at the very least to be able to show that the system is indeed dismal. This is a tall order in this case. Ontario's public education system is the envy of the world. It ranks near the top of international testing. And it prepares citizens to participate in a modern information-age society. More...

A Rubric for Evaluating E-Learning Tools in Higher Education
Lauren Anstey, Gavan Watson, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/09/12
The article delivers what it promises, a rubric for choosing educational technology. There's a link to a nice downloadable version - 7 page PDF. The rubric has some technical requirements, including mobile design, accessibility and functionality, and it has security and privacy requirements, and then along the educational dimension it invokes the Communities of Inquiry (CoI) model, adding rubrics related to social, teaching and cognitive presences. More...

Work-Integrated Learning: We Can Do Better
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2018/09/12
The good news is that businesses are taking work-integrated learning (WIL) seriously. Hence the Business Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) letter to the Finance Minister on the subject. But I find myself in unusual agreement with Alex Usher in questioning the merit of advocacy for a national strategy. More...

Automation, A Moodle Admin Must. Is AI Next?
Cristian T. Duque, Moodle News, 2018/09/10
This post references Andy Schermuly's discussion of automation in the context of the LMS in eLearning Industry. Schermuly discusses automation in the State of Arizona, Choice Hotels International, Avis Budget Group. In the current article Cristian T. Duque addresses the lack of focus on automation in Moodle, and perhaps more significantly, points out that a lot of automation is form-driven. More...