OLDaily

Fragment: From Jupyter Notebooks to Online Interactive Textbooks
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2018/08/29

Yes, this is a fragment, and yes, the best bit is in the headline. It should get you thinking about how we can create workflows from examples of functioning software in Jupyter Notebooks to actual textbooks. Of course, the problem is, if it's in a textbook - or even a flat HTML file - then the code samples don't actually work any more, and you have to go to another environment to run them. This sounds like a lot of overhead to me, and in my world (of distributed resources and embedded applications) the Jupyter Notebook is just a part of the (online) publication. Of course, I don't know how to make those yet... but it can't be far off.

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Do you have the cognitive patience to read this?
Angela Chen, The Verge, 2018/08/29

I just skimmed this but maybe you'll have the time to give it a closer look. This article is an interview with Maryanne Wolf, the author of Reader Come Home, which suggests that we are no longer able to read deeply because of digital text. She uses the right words, mostly, but it's hard to decide whether she misunderstands them or whether she's stretching to make the ideas comprehensible to readers. The idea of 'circuits', for example, is just misguided. A phrase like 'have a role in that function' just makes me shake my head. But yes, the networks are plastic, and yes, when new skills are learned, they are the result of new connections in existing networks. The idea of 'slower processes' maybe makes sense or maybe is an attempt to graft cognitive load theory onto this assemblage. Or maybe a blog post of an interview about a book is just the wrong way to address this whole subject.

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Wikipedia’s bot army - shows us the way in governance of AI
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2018/08/29

This was something I didn't know about. " There are nearly 3000 bot tasks identified for use in Wikipedia. So many that there is a Bots Approval Group (BAG) with a Bot Policy that covers all of these, whether fully or partially automated, helping humans with editorial tasks." Donald Clark reviews some of the policies that are in place and the governance system that maintains them. "Wikipedia, with its Bot Approval Group and Bot Policy, offers a good example within an open source context of good governance over data."

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Not Just What But Who You Know Matters
Julia Freeland Fisher, Education Next, 2018/08/29

The major value proposition offered by top tier universities isn't knowledge. This is available anywhere. Nor is it even top-flight professors. Great teachers and researchers can be found in institutions large and small around the world.No, the value proposition is access to the network of contacts, influencers, and collaborators. Access to networks matters, and it's this gap that isn't addressed in education reform programs ignore, to the detriment of participants. As this story states, "advantageous connections, formal and informal mentors, peer networks, and exposure to professions and professionals reside in exclusive networks that children access by sheer luck of the draw. It bears noting that schools are not causing these gaps. Rather, by design they do little to resolve them." I've taken to calling this "The Yale Advantage" and one of my objectives is to render it quaint.

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