By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Do Edtech and IKEA Have in Common? Persuasive Design.
Jeffrey R. Young, Sydney Johnson, EdSurge, 2018/10/04
This is a partial podcast transcript of a discussion with a panel (Sandra Burri Gram-Hansen, Margarita Quihuis and Safiya Noble) discussing behaviour design using educational technology. I like the analogy with the Ikea showroom, though it suggests something a bit pernicious: you cant't go wherever you want in an Ikea store the way you can in a department store, and the design is not for your benefit, it's for Ikea's. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. American Chemical Society (ACS) and Elsevier File Copyright Infringement Lawsuit in U.S. vs. ResearchGate
Gary Price, Library Journal, 2018/10/04
The only thing that surprises me about this is that it took this long to happen. The lawsuit alleges that "ResearchGate takes high-quality scientific articles that are written and published by others and makes them freely available via its for-profit platform." There may be examples to the contrary (though I didn't see any) but strictly speaking, this isn't what ResearchGate does. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blockchain looking more and more like a ball and chain?
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2018/10/04
Donald Clark was a fan of blockchain a couple of years ago but he reports that he has "fallen out of love with this technology" because "I’ve still to see a single implementation in learning that is worth the candle." I think this is true, and I think most of the educational implementations to date have been trivial. More...