OLDaily

Blockchain looking more and more like a ball and chain?
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2018/10/04

Donald Clark was a fan of blockchain a couple of years ago but he reports that he has "fallen out of love with this technology" because "I’ve still to see a single implementation in learning that is worth the candle." I think this is true, and I think most of the educational implementations to date have been trivial. But I'm more concerned about this: "In truth education and training does not want to be decentralised and democratised or disintermediated, as almost everyone in the field works in an institutions that will protect themselves to the death." This is also true, and what we might see in education is the educational version of Stellar or Ripple: the big banks creating their own version of the tech and setting up their own centralized network. But I also think there more to the picture than badges and credentials. More to come. Soon.

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American Chemical Society (ACS) and Elsevier File Copyright Infringement Lawsuit in U.S. vs. ResearchGate
Gary Price, Library Journal, 2018/10/04

The only thing that surprises me about this is that it took this long to happen. The lawsuit alleges that "ResearchGate takes high-quality scientific articles that are written and published by others and makes them freely available via its for-profit platform." There may be examples to the contrary (though I didn't see any) but strictly speaking, this isn't what ResearchGate does. Yes, it does harvest articles - but only open access articles. Otherwise,m what it does is ask authors to upload their personal copies (usually preprints) or (more commonly) posts a link whereby you can email the author asking them to send you a copy (via ResearchGate). All of this is perfectly legal, and will (IMO) constitute the bulk of ResearchGate's defense. This is a developing story and the Library Journal will be updated as new information becomes available. More from Inside Higher Ed

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What Do Edtech and IKEA Have in Common? Persuasive Design.
Jeffrey R. Young, Sydney Johnson, EdSurge, 2018/10/04

This is a partial podcast transcript of a discussion with a panel (Sandra Burri Gram-Hansen, Margarita Quihuis and Safiya Noble) discussing behaviour design using educational technology. I like the analogy with the Ikea showroom, though it suggests something a bit pernicious: you cant't go wherever you want in an Ikea store the way you can in a department store, and the design is not for your benefit, it's for Ikea's. There's a slant to the piece (crediting the 'invention' of the field to a Stanford professor in the 90s; telling us that diversity, in this case at least, "isn't because of kumbaya") and the presentation of the (false?) hope that "if they understand the principles of persuasive systems, then that also means that they are able to reject unwanted influence" but it's worth thinking about.

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