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Alexandra Mihai,
The Educationalist,
2026/05/28
This interesting post discusses the concept of 'presence' and breaks it down into five elements: attention, connection, self-knowledge, reflection and curiosity and creativity (I don't know why the last two are joined as one item, but they are). But really, for Alexandra Mihai, presence boils down to this: "Being truly present means engaging all of our senses (and) a recognition that the classroom is a shared human space. Presence means truly seeing and hearing one another, paying attention when someone speaks, responding thoughtfully, sensing the emotional atmosphere of the room, and developing awareness of the group dynamic." Which takes us back to a fairly traditional educationalist's stance. But I have to wonder - is the classroom the best place to foster anything like 'presence' as described here? I have personally found it to be the worst environment to focus on anything, let alone all the stuff described here.
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2026 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report: Teaching and Learning Edition
Jenay Robert, Nicole Muscanell, Mark McCormack, Kim Arnold,
EDUCAUSE,
2026/05/28
This report (46 page PDF) has two major sections: trends, which can be summarized as AI, Trump, and environment; and "signals of change", which are not trends, and includes "emerging practice", which again, are not trends. The Signals of Change section can be summarized as: AI, Trump ( recast as 'improving ROI) and environment (aka 'water'), with one notable exception, a section on 'the changing landscape of education systems', which postulates two-hour school days, inverted and flexible pedagogy, and athletics as a risk (obviously this report is very U.S.-focused). The 'emerging practices' section is the most forward looking, with sections (sometimes with examples) on administration (ie., admin+AI), learning pathways (with AI and VR), and community engagement (with AI). I get the emphasis on these three themes; they are dominating the discussion. But I wish they had looked maybe just a little beyond that limited horizon.
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A Way to Challenge the Groupthink of Scholarly Journals
Kevin McCaffree, Colin Wright,
Wall Street Journal,
2026/05/28
Sometimes people make it clear what they don't know by professing what they think needs to change. Such is the case with this Wall Street Journal opinion article which attacks the concept of peer review. Now we should be clear, peer review definitely needs reform, but not for the reasons the article proposes. The authors write, "The result is an ideologically biased literature that's presented as an expert consensus... objections to progressive orthodoxy are relegated to social-media threads, blog posts and newspaper opinion sections." This of course is complete nonsense. There is far more variety of opinion in academic journals than is ever found in the pages of this and other newspapers. And it's important that the editors' desire to squelch all dissenting opinion be resisted. Anyhow. They come out with a novel concept: "a first-of-its-kind article type called 'Peer Review.'" It's a good idea - but actual readers of academic journals know it's not exactly new. My own article was just published with two adjoining 'peer review' articles. It's a format I've seen often.
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The Costco theory of the internet
JA Westenberg,
Westenberg.,
2026/05/28
The basis for the 'Costco theory of the internet' is that "More results stop helping once the results are polluted. Reviews that are fake, incentivised, or written by people with no standards don't improve by multiplying." Just look at Amazon listings or Google search results for proof. Buyer beware! Even the brand names are fake. Costco addresses that. "A trusted operator narrows the field first, making the choices in advance and accepting the cost of everything it leaves out. Then it absorbs the complexity, doing the dull part before you get there: testing, comparing, rejecting, negotiating, standardising. Then it holds the floor. It doesn't have to make every item extraordinary, it only has to clear the obvious junk." I can see the point but this article was a lot to wade through, making the same point over and over. It would have been eliminated by Costco. Via Grant Potter.
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The first social network you can trust
wedium,
2026/05/28
The tagline is: "Join the first social media platform you can trust. Bot-free, fake-news-free, kids-safe, data-protective and made in Europe for Europe." But here's the catch: "anyone who wants to interact—that is, post, like, or comment—must verify their identity. This makes sense because it allows us to prevent bots from influencing the platform, curb fake accounts, and ensure significantly greater safety and respectful interaction among users." They argue "we have entered into a contract with the German company WebID, which securely hosts personal data on a European server in accordance with the highest data protection standards." Single point of failure. Ick. Via Ben Werdmuller.
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Copyright 2026 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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