By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Hey, Snapchat, enough is enough
Nicole Lee, Engadget, 2016/08/12
Silicon Valley has a diversity problem. How else to explain the distribution of Pokemon locations? How else to explain how Snapchat came out with what is essentially a racist photo filter. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Inside Twitter’s 10-Year Failure To Stop Harassment
Charlie Warzel, Buzzfeed News, 2016/08/12
Ironically posted on Buzzfeed, this article asserts that "for nearly its entire existence, Twitter has not just tolerated abuse and hate speech, it’s virtually been optimized to accommodate it." More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Facebook teaches schools a 'personalized' lesson
Corinne Lestch, EdScoop, 2016/08/12
According to this report, loosely based on a Facebook post (and probably this week's New York Times article) "The Summit-Facebook system, known as the 'Summit Personalized Learning Platform,' allows students to be in control of their own learning process and complete lessons at their own pace." Can Facebook learn enough about you to offer you personalized learning. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A compulsive audience and a complicit news media
Danny Funt, Columbia Journalism Review, 2016/08/12
We can blame social media for society's ills (including those caused by social media) but I wonder whether this isn't the case. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. National Student Survey 2016: overall satisfaction results
Carly Minsky, Times Higher Education, 2016/08/10
Why would an agency spend so much money on a flawed survey? Here's the gist: "about 312,000 final-year students from 155 institutions responded to the survey." All very nice. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to (seriously) read a scientific paper
Elisabeth Pain, Science, 2016/08/10
This is not a how-to article as the title suggests but rather a collection of dozens of short comments describing how various people - ranging from students to professors to editors - read scientific papers. There's a lot in common across the different accounts. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. With $3.2M Series A, Viridis Aims to Connect Community College Students and Employers
Tony Wan, EdSurge, 2016/08/10
I've been talking for a while now about how future students will receive jobs offers or contracts as recognition for their learning, as opposed to badges or certificates. The LPSS program was looking at this last year. Now it looks like the commercial opportunity has been seized. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Investigating the Potential of Blockchains
Open University, 2016/08/10
This is a very clearly written description of blockchain technology and how it can be used in education. It mostly quotes from John Domingue, director of the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Opening up Education: A Support Framework for Higher Education Institutions
Andreia Inamorato dos Santos;Yves Punie;Jonatan Castaño Muñoz, European Commission Joint Research Centre, 2016/08/10
This publication (78 page PDF) is the "final outcome of the OpenEdu project". The document rolls up results from a number of studies, including MOOCknowledge, OpenCred, and OpenSurvey. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Peer production in an integral and intersubjective framework
Michel Bauwens, Integral World, 2016/08/10
There's a lot that's interesting in this paper and yet I think the most interesting work is in the first section where P2P (peer-to-peer) is defined. In the second section and thereafter we get into a type of metaphysics that doesn't interest me (but is of great interest to critical theorists). Just more taxonomy. But learning, inference and discovery are not states, as a taxonomic approach would suggest; they are processes. The third section looks at "intersubjective modes", which is more interesting, but I find it conflates between markets, which require a measurement system, and networks, in which only structure is important (there's a bit of a back and forth on whether reciprocity is required, without which of course markets can't exist). So, ultimately, can P2P be a "mode of production"? Maybe, but "participants cannot live from peer production, though they derive meaning and value from it, and though it may out compete, in efficiency and productivity terms, the market-based for-profit alternatives."
It's worth noting the parallel between this and the thesis in Patrick Watson's The Struggle for Democracy, which is essentially that democracy presupposes wealth.
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