By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Understanding Classrooms through Social Network Analysis: A Primer for Social Network Analysis in Education Research
Daniel Z. Grunspan, Benjamin L. Wiggins, Steven M. Goodreau, Life Sciences Education, 2017/04/13
The paper is a couple of years old but I thought it was a good introductory deep dive into social network analysis (SNA) for education. It contains good practical advice for people who want to apply SNA in their own educational research (for example, recognizing and dealing with survey fatigue). More...
Toyota says it is ready to mass produce robots
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Toyota says it is ready to mass produce robots
Jayson MacLean, Can-Tech Letter, 2017/04/13
Let us welcome our new robot overlords. More...
Deep Learning in 7 lines of code
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Deep Learning in 7 lines of code
gk_, Medium, 2017/04/13
This is a technical article with some good less-technical points. First, we have the idea of how straightforward machine learning has become, as noted in the title. Second, though, those seven lines embody considerable depth of function. The data is run through several layers of neural networks (five of the seven lines in question). More...
What I wish I knew before joining Mastodon
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What I wish I knew before joining Mastodon
Qina Liu, Medium, 2017/04/13
I've been on Mastodon for a while and have written about it previously, but if you're just looking at it now the first instance, mastodon.social, is now closed to new users. More...
Scaffolding in Microlearning
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Scaffolding in Microlearning
Christy Tucker, Experiencing E-Learning, 2017/04/13
The interesting part of this post occurs when Christy Tucker says "Maybe you don’t need to scaffold within a microlearning module. Maybe the microlearning itself is the scaffolding." More...
Building APIs for the University and the Student
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Building APIs for the University and the Student
David Raths, Campus Technology, 2017/04/13
Creating an API for a university system is more of a challenge than you might think. ""The inconsistency was such that if you wanted to write a mobile app that dealt with a student, it was possible you would have to deal with 25 different APIs using five different identifiers, and multiple data formats." Yeah. More...
New Systems, Old Thinking
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New Systems, Old Thinking
George Couros, The Innovator’s Mindset, 2017/04/13
The point of this article is that we have to get past old systems of thinking when we employ new technology. Couldn't agree more. But does the example make that point? George Couros writes that ionstead of saving all his stuff in folders (which is the old way of thinking) he just saves it wherever and makes sure it is tagged (that's the new way). More...
Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith’s publisher survival guide in the duopoly era
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith’s publisher survival guide in the duopoly era
Sahil Patel, Digiday, 2017/04/11
The 'duopoly' in question is Facebook and Google, and arguably these two platforms have a firm hold on platform traffic. This article points out that this is not a good deal for publishers. More...
All I Know Is What’s on the Internet
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. All I Know Is What’s on the Internet
Rolin Moe, Real Life, 2017/04/11
This is an excellent post responding to the idea that fake news is recent, isolated, and easily fixed with media literacy. More...
How India saved its internet from greedy corporations
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How India saved its internet from greedy corporations
Febin John James, freecodecamp, 2017/04/11
The headline is a little over the top but the article describes a determined attempt on the part of a number of companies to create a multi-tier internet where you have to pay extra for things like messaging. More...