OLDaily

Microsoft Is Killing Skype Classic on November 1, and Here’s Why People Are Upset
Chris Hoffman, How-To Geek, 2018/10/16

Skype 8 (which is what Microsoft calls the 'Surface' version of Skype) never worked properly for me. So I always used (what they call) Skype classic, until the audio and video quality declined to the point where it too was unusable. So I had already moved on from Skype (using mostly Google Hangouts). It's not ideal but it's better than the remaining (ie., Facebook) alternatives (which I won't use, because Facebook). That said, the article suggests that Discord and Telegram are pretty popular, though they're both pretty new. There's lots of room for a new market leader here; it won't be Skype 8.

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The Structure of recent Philosophy
Maximilian Noichl, 2018/10/16

This is actually a set of three posts (one, two, three) and it illustrates several of the themes being discussed in this newsletter recently. The iagram maps the domain of philosopphy over the last 70 years, and it shows the emphasis on epistemology, possible worlds, models, and moral reasoning. More to the point, it shows the interconnectedness between these domains. The three articles also contain embedded code hat illustrates how the disgram was created from publicly available linked data. So this is next-generation e-learning stuff.

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Why did Donald Trump Stress the Importance of Building a Wall on the Mexican Border?
Mitch Weisburgh, PILOTed, 2018/10/16

This post has nothing to do with Donald Trump; rather, it's a device used to frame a discussion of Alex Rosenberg's How History Gets Things Wrong, The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories, discussed here last week. We want the simple story of how Trump reached his decision, but the simple story is almost certainly wrong. "Scientists have been able to determine that the neurons that make decisions fire up before the ones that are involved in consciousness," writes Mitch Weisburgh. "Basically, the brain makes decisions based on the activation of neurons that are located in a completely different part of the brain than the ones involved with conscious thought." Awareness of this process should inform our thinking about the fallability of our own decision-making process.

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Designing for Cognitive Differences
Brandon Gregory, A List Apart, 2018/10/16

I was at the 25th anniversary celebration for the Inclusive Design Research Centre on Saturday, and it raised in my mind the question of how broadly we should think of inclusivity (because it was baically an open recenption, and I am just not comfortable at open receptions - I need structure). So the categories described by this article caught my eye. One was 'inattention', which cover people with things like ADHD or who are distracted by motion. Another was 'anxiety', which may stem from unclear form or vague instructions. And finally, to complete the set, 'depression'. All these are pretty significant diabilities if you have them (and lightly dismissed by those who don't) and when we think of inclusive design we shoul be thinking of these as well.

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How to Fix Fake News
Regina Rini, New York Times, 2018/10/16

I'm not really on board with the idea tat the New York Times has solved the problem of fake news, nor either that emulating the norms of the cocktail circuit is the way to do it - both are as capable of spreading rumours as well as fact, and neithr seems to be held accountable for it. But there is an element worth drawing out of this article, and it's this: the ability to spread fake news stems at least in part from our ability to remember who said what. "We need to establish stable testimonial norms, which allow us to hold each other accountable on social media." In other words, we "should track and display how often each user decides to share disputed information." Of course, thi presupposes a system where we already know which news is fake - and one of the challenges today lies in making that determination.

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What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day
Jennifer Howard, Washington Post, 2018/10/16

The Mini-Heap entry asks, "what does it mean for the future of reading, learning, and teaching that the average person now reads 100,000 words a day on electronic devices?" But the article itself frames it as "what do we lose?" by reading these words. The article is a discussion of Maryanne Wolf's “Reader, Come Home.” Jennifer Howard summarizes, "Wolf offers a persuasive catalog of the cognitive and social good created by deep reading, but does not really acknowledge that the ability to read well has never been universal." I think that reading 100,000 words a day - one third of a novel - is actually pretty good, and the adjustments we make in order to read that much (especially to read in a linked and non-linear fashion) might actually be improvements.

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The State of Video in Education 2018
Kaltura, 2018/10/16

The website takes you through a spamwall but the direct link to the 31 page PDF should work (I tested it). It's a pretty brisk read pointing to the increased use of video in learning. "Most institutions report having at least some teachers regularly incorporating video in their curriculums. 26% of respondents reported that more than half of their teachers regularly use video." The highest rates of use are at the K12 level, while universities show the lowest use. The report also reports on student-created video, which exists, but at much lower rates. The report also looks at platforms use (leaders: YouTube, Vimeo) and reasons for choosing platforms (leader: "most comprehensive solution") and lecture capture (low but growing).

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