By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. For Some Scholars, a Full Professorship Calls for ‘a Lot of Paperwork’ That ‘Doesn’t Mean Anything’
Audrey Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018/10/08
A lot has been said about the fact that Canadian Nobel prize winner Donna Strickland was only an associate professor - not a full professor - at Waterloo. It's just a lot of paperwork for a limited benefit. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A philosopher explains how our addiction to stories keeps us from understanding history
Angela Chen, The Verge, 2018/10/08
I hear a lot of educators talk about how stories are essential to learning, but I'm not sure I agree, and it's not clear they help. Indeed, according to this article, our preference for stories might be misleading us. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. iFixit confirms you can still repair your own iMac Pro or MacBook Pro
Richard Lawler, Engadget, 2018/10/08
This is an update on a story cited here last week. The website iFixit looked at the story saying you can't repair your MacBook, tried it for themselves, and found that you atually can repair your computer. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. This proposed treaty on copyright exceptions should matter to the Open Education community
Creative Commons, 2018/10/08
Creative Commons has thrown its support behind a Civil Society proposed treaty on copyright exceptions for educational and research activities. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. E-Learning 3.0 Outline and Synopsis
Stephen Downes, mooc.ca, 2018/10/08
We're just in the process of the pre-launch week for E-Learning 3.0, the newest MOOC we are offering on the mooc.ca website. For now, you can read the course outline and synopsis, a fairly detailed description of the sort of things we'll be looking at over the next ten week. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open access at a crossroads
David Kramer, Physics Today, 2018/10/13
More reaction to Plan S for open access. I'm fully sympathetic with the Smits line of reasoning: “For the last 20 years, libraries, universities, and [others] had the possibility to sort this out. But they did not,” Smits says. “Now the funders have stepped in, and they now call the shots.” The publisher made large profits, the universities focused on absurd metrics, and the researchers didn't care. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Apple's New Proprietary Software Locks Kill Independent Repair on New MacBook Pros
Jason Koebler, Motherboard, 2018/10/05
As Doug Belshaw says on Mastodon, "Proprietary software is what proprietary vendors do." In this case, that the proprietary vendors do is write an application that presents people from repairing their MacBooks. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. An Ode To RSS, Moodle’s Most Pressing Interface
Cristian T. Duque, Moodle News, 2018/10/05
On the one hand, some people will say that the world of educational technology will resist decentralization. On the other hand, that same world can't kill it completely. A case in point is RSS, the ultimate decentralized technology, that lives on despite the efforts of even the might Google to kill it. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Education for All… Even a ‘Nazi’?
Greg Toppo, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/10/05
I do not like to get involved in U.S. politics because they are essentially the internal affairs of another country. However, Inside Higher Ed has published an article very sympathetic of Peter Cvjetanovic, one of the Charlottesville tiki torch marchers, and Marc Johnson, the University of Nevada at Reno president who "had one clear, immediate thought: Cvjetanovic must graduate." The article depicts this case as one involving free speech (even though someone was actually killed at the far-right rally), but it is nothing of the sort. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Research: Career Hot Streaks Can Happen at Any Age
Dashun Wang, Harvard Business Review, 2018/10/05
In my own mind I often compare my own career to that of a musician. Such a career is a mixture of hit songs, near misses, duds, and even periods where nothing seems to be happening at all. And it's very relative; I've never had a gold record, but I could, but it isn't up to me, and doesn't really reflect my work in any case. And this randomness isn't just me; it rules across the board. More...
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