OLDaily

JATS4R: Optimizing the Reusability of Scholarly Content
Mary Seligy, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2017/10/17

Adding to the alphabet soup of standards and specifications is JATS4R - 'JATS for Reuse', where JATS is 'Journal Article Tag Suite'. Then" the Open Access Media Importer (OAMI) was the original use case for JATS4R." Released by NISO as as NISO z39.96-2015, JATS is "effectively the XML-equivalent of the Tower of Babel... it is often too flexible for the huge variety of systems and applications available for journal content." Hence the need for JATS4R, which standardized the content of the data elements.  

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Learning styles terminology: What is the researcher talking about?
Warren W. Lake, William E. Boyd, Wendy Boyd, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2017/10/17

Despite the learning style sceptics, academic papers devoted to learning styles continue to appear. This paper (8 page PDF) serves the useful function of calling for people writing about learning styles to be clear about terminology and of describing and clarifying some learning approaches to learning styles in terms of their meaning, reproduction and orientation, "making inconsistencies appear to be less of an issue." They also seek clarity on whether the author thinks the dimension in question is fixed or changeable. All of this goes to show, I think, that thinking of 'learning styles' as a simple four-dimensional taxonomy used for differentiating instruction is narrow and unhelpful. We can look at factors related to intrinsic interest, the relation of ideas and evidence, the structure of critical reasoning processes, intention, and more. Additionally, "the author should, if possible, refer to an overarching term such as learning patterns or learning dimensions as suggested in this paper, and most importantly specify the model used if based on existing models, as well as the tradition to which the research has been most based." That should apply to critics as well as researchers.

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Steve Wozniak just created his own online university
Mallory Locklear, Engadget, 2017/10/17

I'm thinking that this is exactly the opposite of what the world needs: "our goal is to identify and develop the most elite talent through our Online and Academy platforms and place them into the fastest growing, top technology companies around the world." This is the goal of Woz U, which will run this 'elite talent' through "an aggressive 12-16 month fully-immersive program" of "entrepreneur programs (and) how to finance and capital raise for start-ups." This seems to me to be more like brainwashing than education. This sham initiative is run through Exeter Education and is "considered" part of Southern Careers Institute (SCI).

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