By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A sense of wonder and discovery: in support of methodological pluralism
Keith Lyons, Clyde Street, 2016/05/25
Herodotus is a terrific read, so if you haven't yet, you should. It's also an interesting backdrop against which to frame this discussion of George Siemens's recent talk (and mammoth slide deck) on the fragmentation and reassembly of knowledge. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A very complex machine that’s doing nothing very special
slogger, Metafilter, 2016/05/25

This is a video of a machine that picks up randomly organized rocks and places them into very neat rows according to type and geological age. For all kinds of reasons (chief among them being sorting things into very need and organized rows) this machine really appeals to me. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Documents are the new Email
Stowe Boyd, Work Futures, 2016/05/23

The idea of this post is to point to the new role of documents as communications tools. Of course, they're always been communications tools, but only as attachments, or worse, printed paper. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Are OERs Sustainable?
Martin Poulter, OPENEDSIG Archives, 2016/05/23

This is an excellent posts looking at five key questions regarding the sustainability of open educational resources (OERs), backed with examples and references. Here they are

1. "Is the production of OERs sustainable?" After the end of the UKOER funding stream, there was "a dramatic decline in the number of resources added to JORUM." But a "huge amount" of content is being produced on other platforms. "I see this not as a petering out of OER production, but a shift in its context."
2. "Are OER platforms sustainable?" We don't know yet. "Entire platforms can disappear. In the non-open world, the closing of a platform means the loss of its content. We don’t have that problem in the OER world."
3. "Are communities of open practice sustainable?" There are examples both ways, but "the continuation of the OER conference itself suggests a positive answer to the question about communities."
4. "Are the OERs themselves sustainable: are they being updated so as not to lose relevance?" A tiny number of resources get remixed, but is that bad? Most academic publications aren't cited, but a small number get a huge number of citations. "To decide whether too much or too little adaptation is happening, we need to know the distribution that “'should' exist, and it’s not clear how to do this." 
5. "Do OERs promote an awareness of sustainability across all subjects?" We don't know.

Great stuff. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Competency-Based Education and Extended Transcripts: IMS Global Learning Consortium Enabling Better Digital Credentialing
Deborah Everhart, Lea, Jeff Grann, Mark Leuba, Joellen Shendy, IMS Global, 2016/05/23
In a nutshell: "IMS initiatives in digital credentialing enable interoperable competency ecosystems and empower institutions to award credentials beyond the traditional transcript." In addition, "The prevalence of informal and community learning on the web, a renewed appreciation for the value of service learning, and recognition of workplace and experiential learning are all expanding conceptions of what could/should be included in a person’s learning record." Organizations working with IMS on this include collegiate registrars and AACRAO, the Competency Based Education Network C-BEN, and the Badge Alliance. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. An Exact Value for the Planck Constant: Why Reaching It Took 100 Years
Michael Trott, Wolfram Alpha, 2016/05/20
This article could take you quite a while to finish but it's a terrific read on a subject you won't normally see in the media or on the web: standards of weights and measurements. The Treaty of the Metre was signed 241 years ago to this day (that's 51500 days) and in two years the most significant changes to le Système international d’unités (SI) system of measurement will be made since that day. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Facebook Schools MOOCs on Engagement
Jason Schmitt, EdSurge, 2016/05/20

"If MOOCs want to build student engagement," writes  Jason Schmitt, "they may want to take a lesson from Facebook." Maybe so. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Artificial intelligence, cognitive systems and biosocial spaces of education
Ben Williamson, Code Acts in Education, 2016/05/20

This article looks at two approaches to AI in education. First, "in the Pearson view, a marketplace of AI applications will both be able to provide detailed real-time data analytics on education and learning, and also lead to far greater levels of achievement." They're working on this now. A lot of what I've talked about in the past - "real-time intelligent analytics conducted up-close within the pedagogic routines" - forms part of this vision. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Small is Beautiful: A Study of Ed-Tech as if People Mattered
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2016/05/20

Of course it would be Jim Groom who channels E.F. Schumacher in the context of education technology, "of how small is beautiful in terms of  IT, experimentation, community, open infrastructure, and individual empowerment. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. De-Legitimization
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2016/05/20

George Siemens wrote a nice tribute to Gardner Campbell that was interpreted as a critique of Jim Groom. "Gardner was an originator of what eventually became the DIY/edupunk movement," wrote Siemens. More...