The best way to win an argument
Tom Stafford, BBC | Future, 2015/02/10

As Doug Belshaw summarizes, "Basically, get your 'opponent' to explain step-by-step how their position would work in practice (and avoid doing likewise)." In my case, however, all you'll get is a detailed explanation of how it would work and why I'm right. Because I have thought it through. :) So this is yet another one of those posts in which the author is describing something he thinks will work on 'other people'. And not, of course, himself.

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A Typology of Web 2.0 Learning Technologies
Matt Bower, EDUCAUSE, 2015/02/10

The 2015 Typology of Web 2.0 technologies on their website published by EDUCAUSE includes 212 tools arranged into 37 categories and 14 clusters. Can you imagine how powerful it would be if they all worked together seamlessly? Good list; few pictures, but many links.

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Lifelong learning in the digital age: A content analysis of recent research on participation
Alison J. Head, Michele Van Hoeck, , Deborah S. Garson, First Monday, 2015/02/10

According to the abstract, "This paper presents results from a cross-disciplinary content analysis of 185 recent research articles, published between 2008 and 2013." Nothing from me, or Wiley, or Levine, or Conole, and only one item from Siemens (from 2006), and exactly two paragraphs of discussion of MOOCs, in the introduction, all of which suggests some issues with the methodology. So what did they focus on? Major themes included organizational climate, learner characteristics and attitudes, market forces, and underserved populations. To me this looks like a reading list from the 80s and 90s. The discussion of trends (worth reading) that follows reinforces that perception. And as the authors note, "studies on participation in online learning were very much in the minority in our dataset." This is the one really big trend in the period they've studied, and they appear to have missed it almost completely!

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"Passwords are stored in plain text."
Eric Hellman, Go To Hellman, 2015/02/10

A nice explanation of password hashing and salting, and a rather interesting set of responses from various academic services about the manner in which they store their passwords (or entrust third party services to manage them as GET requests, storing them in access logs for later retrieval and reuse). "To sum up," writes Eric Hellman, "adoption of up-to-date security practices is far from complete in the world of library databases. I hope that the laggards have improved since the submission date of this RFP (roughly a year ago) or at least have plans in place to get with the program." OLDaily hashes passwords and should probably salt them as well.

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