By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. UN to urge media to take more 'constructive' approach to news
Jasper Jackson, The Guardian, 2016/04/26
According to this article, "the United Nations is to call for the world’s media to take a more 'constructive' and 'solutions-focused' approach to news to combat 'apathy and indifference'." I can't see that happening in the news media. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Hiring for Cultural Fit Can Thwart Your Diversity Efforts
Celia de Anca, Harvard Business Review, 2016/04/26
Diversity, as I have observed frequently in these pages, is one of the four elements of the 'semantic condition', which are the criteria for successful networks. For a lot of people 'diversity' means language and heritage. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Strategies for Personal Learning
Stephen Downes, Apr 25, 2016, VI e-Learning International Conference 2016, Madrid, Spain, online via Zoom
In this presentation I draw the distinction between personal and personalized learning and the outline the major strategies supporting personal learning: sharing, contributing and co-creation. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How close are AI systems to human-level intelligence? The Allen AI challenge.
Daniel Lemire, 2016/04/25
Computers can now probably pass the Turing test for artificial intelligence: they can convince a human that they are interacting with another human in conversation. But could thy pass the Allen test: pass an eighth grade science exam? Daniel Lemire discusses this possibility. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Online disinhibition and the ethics of researching groups on Facebook
Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu, 2016/04/25
It's worth noting that the research we've conducted over the last half-dozen years on MOOCs and personal learning was conducted according to strict ethical guidelines, including informed consent to participate in research. A lot of current research on MOOCs and social networks conform to no such conditions. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Scraping with Google Spreadsheets Across Instagram, Flickr, YouTube etc.
Tom Woodward, Bionic Teaching, 2016/04/25
As is always the case, the stuff that can be done by technical people today will be provided by some application for everyone tomorrow. In this post Tom Woodward demonstrates how to use Google Sheets to grab data from a variety of sites, including YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, and more. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Facebook now gets a million users from “dark web” service Tor
Nick Waddell, CanTech Letter, 2016/04/25
For those who don't think privacy is an issue with people (and there are many) consider this: you have to go out of your way to use a service like Tor, which is designed to help you browse the web anonymously. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teaching in our right minds: critical digital pedagogy and the response to the new
Sean Michael Morris, Digital Pedagogy Lab, 2016/04/22
Good article again questioning the concept of 'rigor'. "In our collaborative article, “Beyond Rigor”, Jesse Stommel, Pete Rorabaugh, and I argue that: Intellectually rigorous work lives, thrives, and teems proudly outside conventional notions of academic rigor." More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Learning for Smart Education
Christian M. Stracke, Slideshare, 2016/04/22
102 slide presentation (!) looking at a number of projects dedicated to open learning. It, however, takes a quality focus, defining 'open education' as "innovations for changing and opening up education to improve the quality." More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Man Who Studies the Spread of Ignorance
Georgina Kenyon, BBC, 2016/04/22
Today's new word is 'agnotology', the deliberate spreading of ignorance. In internet and education technology, it has traditionally been known as FUD - "fear, uncertainty and doubt," which are the major means of manufacturing ignorance. More...
/https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
