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Stephen's Web ~ Link
OLWeekly
by Stephen Downes
Feb 24, 2017
Three recommendations to enable Annotations on the Web
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Web annotations have been a longtime dream of many, but for
many it was fool's gold - tantalizingly close, but
ultimately worthless. We've seen a slew of efforts - web
post-its, side-bar wikis, dual-column pages, and more. Now
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has come out with
recommendations, including "a structured model and format,
in JSON, to enable annotations to be shared and reused
across different hardware and software platforms." Will
this be the standard that makes the difference? Image:
ShowMe
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The LMS Market is Quickly Losing Ground
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About ten years too late, the LMS industry is in decline.
"The self-paced e-learning market — defined by LMS,
off-the-shelf content and services — is in steep
decline and is expected to drop from global revenues of
$46.6 billion in 2016 to $33.4 billion by 2021. According
to the report: “In the current e-learning market, the
single most unfavorable place to be is the LMS market,
which is essentially imploding, particularly in the U.S.
corporate segment that has a negative 33.9 percent growth
rate."
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Nietzsche For Tots
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What I like about the current age is that people have
started thinking about different ways of representing (and
different audiences) for all sorts of information. Today we
have by way of example Nietzsche in Shapes and Colors
http://amzn.to/2ltSEXn" target="_blank, "a board book aimed
at introducing Nietzschean themes to children by way of
simple phrases and beautiful illustrations, including
naturalism." And why don't we teach young children about
the wonders of nature, the varieties of perspective, and
personal empowerment? I had to wait until I was in
university before I discovered these things had names and
weren't the products of my imagination.
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Battle of the Classrooms: Apple, Google, Microsoft Vie for
K-12 Market
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As this article suggests, it's probably no coincidence that
Google, Microsoft and Apple each have a product named
'Classroom'. Though all are listed as 'free', each requires
the purchase of an expensive application or software suite.
The products are being targeted aggressively at schools
(especially in the U.S.) and the companies have created
associated 'classroom' communities. The tools are mostly
used to help students collaborate on documents and to
submit homework assignments. Related: are we innovating or
just digitizing traditional teaching
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Language ArtsTechnology in School Who Says I Don't Like to
Read? Sparking a Love of Digital Books Across Detroit
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This article describes the deployment of MyOn
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MyOn provides access to a library of 13,000 titles for
young readers. It works
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"by initially prompting students to take an interest
inventory to decide what types of books they are interested
in reading, and a placement test to determine reading
ability." We are told that "since adopting the platform,
the district has seen the number of books being accessed
and read by our students increase dramatically."
Interestingly, MyOn has no Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=MyOn&title=Special:Search&fulltext=1&searchToken=edbgxy4q3yqvx6avmahf901pm.
Previously a division of Capstone, it has just been
sold
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to Francisco Partners Linka
private equity firm. More coverage
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various media.
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The Copyright Lobby’s IIPA Report: Fake News About the
State of Canadian Copyright
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Michael Geist writes about this year's annual
misrepresentation of the state of copy protection and media
in Canada by the the International Intellectual Property
Alliance (IIPA), a lobby group that represents the major
lobbying associations for music, movie, software, and book
publishing in the United States. In particular, he focuses
on three areas:
The state of Canadian Piracy, which the IIPA reports as
rising, when in fact the Business Software Alliance’s
annual report
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last showed Canada at its lowest software piracy rate
ever
The notice-and-notice system, which the IIPA says is not
receiving full compliance from ISPs, and which hurts
licensed services, when in pact there is nearly full
compliance by ISPs, and licensed services are earning
strong returns in Canada
Fair dealing, which the IIPA has attacked on several
grounds, but which consistent with fair dealing regimes
around the world, and are more stringent than many,
including fair use in the United States
As Canada routinely states every year, "Canada does not
recognize the 301 watch list process. It basically lacks
reliable and objective analysis. It’s driven entirely
by U.S. industry."
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Kaltura Launches Lecture Capture Solution
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This is just something I want to keep handy for when I talk
to people who already have a Kaltura system running. It
seems like a pretty easy way to make a lot of learning
resources. Or course the quality and value might vary, but
creating something is infinitely better than creating
nothing.
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The Challenge of Non-Disposable Assignments
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Non-disposable Assignments (NDAs, though he agrees a better
acronym is needed) are assignments that ase seen by more
than just the student and the person grading them. They can
be thought of as open educational resources, but the status
as OERs connotes qualities that may not be there. The
challenge of NDAs is to create these assignments in such a
way that they are actually non-disposable, and not just
disposable assignments published in an open way. "It takes
a lot of effort to move past the first impulse of writing
ones that sound like they are answering a question or a
series of questions. Those have an odor of
'disposable-ness'."
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Anthony Johnson Brings 'Johnsonville' to Life
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My grade 8 class created a model society. I was one of the
two banks in our community. It was too much work, I didn't
clear the cheques, and the town economy collapsed. But the
idea was sound in principle. Later, as part of my MuniMall
project, I created something called MuniVille, which again
could be a simulated environment for town managers and
elected officials. Once again, my ambition far exceeded my
abilities, though fortunately no economies collapsed (and
the MuniMall community I developed ran for the next ten
years). So I like the concept of Johnsonville as described
in this article and wish founder Anthony Johnson the best
in his "world where each student must find a job, pay the
bills, pay mortgage and taxes, and learn by doing
projects."
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Looking (again) to Domain of One’s Own
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it's good to see a look at a project some time after it has
launched and some time after it has (largely) passed into
new hands and new ownership. Such is the case with this
post on Domain of One's Own. "As faculty have continued to
integrate DoOO into their classes, students have continued
to engage with the project in a variety of ways." Fer what
it's worth, I've been working recently on properly
virtualizing gRSShopper - basically setting it up in a
complete self-sustaining box that can be easily ported to
new environments. I have applications like Domain of One's
Own in mind (not that I've told them any of this).
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25 Years Without a Raise
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Adjunct instructors at Youngstown State University threw
themselves a party this week to mark 25 years without a pay
increase. "It’s 'fair to say that our president and
provost recognize that that's a problem and, while we are
facing some difficult budget challenges like most in higher
ed, [we’re] committed to trying to rectify that
situation," said university spokesperson Ron Cole. It's
hard to see how you could recognize something as a problem
and do nothing about it for 25 years. A more honest
statement would probably say something about how
embarrassed they are by this situation and how much they
wish it hadn't attracted international attention. Image:
Michelle N
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Philosophy and the Illusion of Explanatory Depth
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After reading this I was motivated to look up how a
toilet works
https://www.google.ca/search?q=how+a+toilet+works&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=tqKsWKLwM4KyaaOSv4gL#q=how+a+toilet+works&tbm=vid
on YouTube. I'm fairly confident I understand the
mechanics, but I don't really have an explanation. Why
doesn't the bowl simple lose water when the flapper is
opened; why does the water rush out as though it is being
sucked out of the toilet? Everything in the toilet is
actually pulled uphill. I think it has something to
do with pressure differentials or gravity (the way a siphon
does) but I'm not sure, and the videos didn't help me. And
that's why this article is interesting. Knowing the facts
doesn't give me the explanation, which is why a mere
presentation of the facts doesn't change
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(or inform) opinions. "Confronting and working through the
complicated details of an issue... may be the only form of
thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory
depth and change people’s attitudes."
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Bots: What you need to know
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This is a pretty good overview of the current bot ecosystem
(which contains far more than bots) along with a good
graphic drawing out the major contenders and relations
between them. "Bots use artificial intelligence to converse
in human terms, usually through a lightweight messaging
interface like Slack or Facebook Messenger, or a voice
interface like Amazon Echo or Google Assistant. Since late
2015, bots have been the subject of immense excitement in
the belief that they might replace mobile apps for many
tasks and provide a flexible and natural interface for
sophisticated AI technology."
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Four Reasons Why a Library Makerspace Makes Perfect Sense
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If a library isn't really useful for storing books any more
(because who needs books when entire libraries can be
stored on a single flash drive?) then what can we do with
the space? In this article Robert Schuetz suggests using it
to create a makerspace (what we used to call a project
room, workshop or lab). "School media centers provide open,
flexible space," he writes. "Collaboration, interaction,
and hands-on engagement need space for versatility and
movement. Visible, transparent learning will ignite
curiosity and interest from teachers and students." At a
time when governments are closing schools
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maybe they should be thinking of providing better community
support instead.
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Have Spare Time? Try To Discover A Planet
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I spent an hour last night searching for a planet. I did
not discover one. I did, however, look at lot of bad
photographs of stars (at least, to me they were bad
photographs; they might be state of the art for all I
know). It's a project called Backyard Worlds: Planet
9
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Basically they show you sequences of four photos from
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE
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telescope. Spot the moving dot and you win the prize of
being the person to discover the mysterious tenth planet.
What's interesting about this project is that it requires
the human eye (and human pattern detection).
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4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump
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Celebrating the fail is the new win. This is the core value
being embraced by 4chan members, alt-right supporters and
Trump voters. That's the thesis of this insightful and
well-argued essay by almost-loser Dale Beran in this long
but engaging read. Those who hold to the (often empty)
promise higher education offers should consider this
perspective. It forms part of the narrative of failure that
defines a substantial body of young men, the same men who
constitute things like Anonymous and Gamergate. I am not
sympathetic with the 4chan perspective, but I can
understand it, having lived through the same broken
promises, the same periods of extended unemployment, the
same challenges and the same frustrations. But instead of
embracing failure I embraced
Linkdiversity and equality, and
found myself a cause to fight for.
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Source: Getty Images Top Hat Raises $22.5 Million to Go
After Pearson, McGraw-Hill
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Bloomberg offers coverage to this Canadian company
Linkthat has set up an online
bookstore Linkfor textbooks.
Many of the offerings come from OpenStax (Rice University's
former Connexions service) and are offered for free while
the rest appear to be authored using TopHat's own authoring
tool ad sell for various prices. Presumably the company has
something else going for it, or they're just a really swell
bunch of guys, to account for $40 million in venture
capital funding. Top Hat CEO Mike Silagadze "started by
selling software tools to professors that help them engage
their students, such as smartphone apps that let them tell
lecturers if they understand new concepts in real-time."
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Trust Score (Beta) for Ethereum
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I agree with Nantium OÜ that "decentralization
will lead to a more fair society where monopolies lose
their stranglehold over some of our key economic sectors
(and possibly even government sectors)." I'm less convinced
that trust is a key part of this, but I'm willing to
listen. In any case, what OÜ has done is to create a
(beta) trust mechanism for Ethereum. Basically, it uses the
same mechanism for trust as it does for payment: "you can
file a complaint through an Ethereum contract that will
ultimately penalize the other party’s score." This
mechanism has already been suggested for credentials, such
as academic achievement or badges. I'm more inclined to
think that trust (and achievement) will be derived by AIs
mining publicly accessible data. But we'll see.
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Global Sentiment in L&D
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Donald Taylor has released the results of his 'global
sentiments' survey of around 800 people in learning and
development from around the world. The main result is that
personalization is the top trend, collaboration is dipping,
microlearning is becoming more important, and alignment
with business (including showing value) is becoming a core
concern. I found it odd that all the charts were (to me)
backwards, running chronologically right-to-left instead of
left-to-right.
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Geek Career Paths
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The is a cogent and clear article (laced with some
off-colour language because it's tech) on what tech people
(programmers, developers, designers) should think about
doing later in their careers. The advice was accurate so
far as my own experience can attest. Keeping up to date in
tech is hard work, because it's constantly changing. The
biggest jump for most tech people, I think, is the jump
into people-oriented positions, like management or sales.
The biggest risk for tech people is exposure to toxic
environments, like the world of venture capitalism. And
government isn't as bad as people say. Image: Mcleans
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These are the science concepts you need to know to
understand political life in 2017
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These concepts don't all relate to education, and their
importance most certainly isn't limited to political life,
but it's a good list and educators should be aware of all
of them. Here's the one-minute version:
Scepticism
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-skepticism-reveals/ -
"a willingness to evenly assess the scientific evidence
available."
Iatrogenesis
http://www.asam.org/docs/default-source/advocacy/opioid-addiction-disease-facts-figures.pdf -
illness “brought forth by the healer," like
the opioid epidemic
Social cost of carbon
Link//www.epa.gov/climatechange/social-cost-carbon
- the damage each ton of CO2 emission costs society
Clean coal https://qz.com/806040 - expensive, but
"captures the carbon dioxide and buries it"
Gene drives https://qz.com/558373 - increase a gene's
chance of being inherited
CRISPR
https://www.neb.com/tools-and-resources/feature-articles/crispr-cas9-and-targeted-genome-editing-a-new-era-in-molecular-biology -
being widely used to manipulate DNA with extraordinary
precision
NgAgo
http://www.nature.com/news/biotech-firm-backs-controversial-crispr-challenger-1.21343 -
new tech which might manipulate DNA with even greater
precision
Confrmation bias
https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/confirmation_bias.htm -
the tendency to select information that supports our
existing beliefs
IPFS Link- makes copies of everything
instead of relying on links
PFOA
http://fusion.net/story/349506/toxic-water-crisis-at-new-yorks-newest-superfund-site/ -
unregulated cancer agent turning up in drinking water
Neonicotinoids Neonicotinoids - the pesticide that
caused widespread bee colony collapse
SETI https://www.seti.org/ - search for
extra-terrestrial intelligence using powerful new tools
Now you's caught up. :)
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes
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