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By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Trouble with Pinker's Argument about 'The Trouble With Harvard'
Cathy Davidson, HASTAC, 2015/07/27

What does elite education provide, and why do the rich do whatever it takes to gain entrance into top tier institutions? If we don't understand this, we don't understand what we need to provide for everyone else. Here's the full study. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Higher Education: Access Denied
Graham Brown-Martin, Medium, 2015/07/27

This is a small thing, but illustrative: the correct expression is "struck a chord", not "struck a cord". Why does that even matter? The former shows that you understand what the words mean, while the latter shows that you are parroting by rote. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open teaching and learning
Jenny Mackness, Learning, Open teaching, 2015/07/27

It can be more difficult to teach in an open environment. Janny Mackness observes, "being ‘in the open’ raises security alarm bells for some tutors. What if their students post the less than perfect (in their eyes) videos they have made on Facebook. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Memory is more than Ebbinghaus
Donald H Taylor, 2015/07/27

Good post which to me shows why we can't simply rely on mechanical generalizations to understand learning. Donald Taylor writes on Herman Ebbinghaus's 'forgetting curve', which basically shows how memories decline over time. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Join the Nano Open Online Courses (NOOCs) Adventure!
Zaid Ali Alsagoff, ZaidLearn, 2015/07/24

The idea of a nano-MOOC is that it is a very short MOOC. Zaid Ali Alsagoff writes, "Instead of having to do the whole course, I can now focus on the juice (I want), get assessed, and be certified (or Badged) on it. Yes, a NOOC is more granular, chunked, digestible, meaningful (evidence) and juicy!" More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Georgia sues Carl Malamud, calls publishing state laws "terrorism"
Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, 2015/07/24
Each paragraph gets more outrageous. "The State of Georgia claims that its statutes are a copyrighted work, and that rogue archivist Carl Malamud.. committed an act of piracy by making the laws of Georgia free for all to see and copy." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. LinkedIn quietly removes tool to export contacts
Bobby Owsinski, VentureBeat, 2015/07/24
You may think you own your own identity, but LinkedIn has very quietly underlined the fact that no, you don't. "LinkedIn has removed the option to export your contacts. Instead, the company is asking users to request an archive of their data, but that process can take up to 72 hours to complete." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Well I wouldn't start from here anyway!
Brian Mulligan, 2015/07/24
One of the arguments against the longterm success of MOOCs, and of of online learning generally, is that it does not provide the two major things college students are looking for when they enrol in college: first, a mechanism for finding a husband or wife of the same demographics and social standing as them; and second, a method of signalling to future employers that you can get into a 'good' college, which demonstrates not simply academic ability but also background and pedigree, wealth and social standing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Are crows the ultimate problem solvers?
Alex Taylor, BBC / Youtube, 2015/07/23

We were having a conversation yesterday about whether we need language in order to know things and to learn. We certainly need language of some sort in order to create models and representations. More...