By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mute the Messenger
Jason Stanford, Texas Observer, 2014/09/10
Walter Stroup offered evidence to show that standardized tests measure test-taking ability more than they measure knowledge, and that the teacher has only a small impact on the final assessment. "According to Stroup’s initial calculations, that constancy accounted for about 72 percent of everyone’s test score." A later recalculation suggests it's more like 50%. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Personal Health Data: It’s Amazing Potential and Privacy Perils
Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog, 2014/09/10
It's hard to underestimate the potential to improve both health and learning through the analysis of personal data. I think of my own experience with Runkeeper to track my cycling. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why can't you comment on this post? #indieweb
Ben Werdmuller, Benwerd, 2014/09/10
OK, so I've played around with this a bit and think I've figured it out. It's what I think my Referrer System, which I built in 2002, would have become had it grown up (it peaked at 800K hits per day, and I didn't have the resources to sustain that). The idea here is that, if you read something and you want to comment, you comment on your own page, not the page you're reading. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Are Laptops Really Bad For Learning?
Darren Kuropatwa, A Difference, 2014/09/10
In this good summary of the results of the recent study comparing note-taking with pen and laptop Darren Kuropatwa also points to the underlying reason to be sceptical about the conclusion. In the three studies students performed better on tests after taking notes with the pen, rather than the laptop. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bootstrap 3 Less Workflow Tutorial
Erik Flowers, HelloErik Experience Design, 2014/09/09
Responsive design, JQuery libraries, Bootstrap, HTML templates, CSS preprocessors... the world of web page design has become impressively complex. At the same time, if you're able to step lightly over these tools, it has never been easier to design complex pages that display well on any media. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mapping brain activity at scale with cluster computing
Jeremy Freeman, Nature, 2014/09/09
O'Reilly published and then deleted a post by Jeremy Freeman describing this article. I'm not sure why it went down, but it was fascinating, as it described how scientists are mapping the hundreds of thousands of neurons in the brain of a larval zebrafish. Part of the focus (and the focus of the original scientific article) was on the need for large clusters of computers to perform what essentially amounts to big data analysis. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reflections on community in #rhizo14 – more questions than answers
Frances Bell, Francesbell's Blog, 2014/09/09
A lot of people continue to value community in courses without, I think, comprehending what community is. It's really hard to understand the nature of a community from within. "How can we know about all of the flowers that bloomed? And some of the ones that failed to thrive or died?" Most people, I think, participate in community from their own frame of reference. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Standard Options Apply
Aaron Silvers, MakingBetter, 2014/09/04
As the development of the xAPI (Experience APO) continues, questions of development and implementation are beginning to arise. As Aaron Silvers says, the upcoming formalization by IEEE will break existing implementations. He suggests adopting a modular approach to xAPI, breaking it into different functions, modelled (for example) along the lines of WiFi, as a family of standards. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The End Of Neighborhood Schools
Anya Kamenetz, NPR, 2014/09/04
So I found this interesting, especially the way the discussion looked at two major aspects of the New Orleans school reform: first, the conversion of the system to public to private charter schools (and consequent firing and de-unionization of the school system), and second, the conversion from neighborhood schools to a city-wide system that offers choice. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The First Successful Demonstration Of Brain-To-Brain Communication In Humans
George Dvorsky, io9, 2014/09/04
Awesome (and a little bit scary): "For the first time ever, neuroscientists have demonstrated the viability of direct — and completely non-invasive — brain-to-brain communication in humans. Remarkably, the experiment allowed subjects to exchange mentally-conjured words despite being 5,000 miles apart. It's the neuroscientific equivalent of instant messaging." Meanwhile, DARPA's tiny implants will hook directly into your nervous system. More...
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