By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Lesson Plan Tool For Docs
OpenEd, Google Docs, 2016/08/17
What's interesting about the Lesson Plan Tool for Docs is that you can access a list of educational resources offered by OpenEd and import the reference to the resource into your document. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Measuring Teaching Quality
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2016/08/17
The problem with assessing anything - including (but not limited to) teaching - is that while it's tempting to employ an index of indicators, quality teaching (and anything else) is not reducible to these indicators. Nor, for that matter, is it necessarily any easier to measure each index value than it is the practice in the first place. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. An open listicle to startup founders
Ben Werdmuller, Open Words, 2016/08/12
Some fun from Ben Werdmuller. And good advice (and well-times as I seek to move beyond Facebook, somehow). A lot of what he says falls under of the heading "it's been done, it didn't work, move on." The whole point of creating something new is that it has to be new, not just a clone of something else. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Management and Organization at Medium
Andy Doyle, Medium, 2016/08/12
Medium, which started out as a company run as a holocracy, is moving on from that model. The reasoning is illustrative. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ascent From Social Media
Stephen Downes, Aug 11, 2016.

I think it's time to move on from Facebook. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MOOC Quality Malaysia
Stephen Downes, Aug 03, 2016, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Role of Incremental and Transformative Change in Future Prediction
Stephen Downes, Aug 03, 2016, Campus Technology 2016, Boston, Massachusetts

This presentation addresses change, innovation and transformation from the perspective of educational technology. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to Turn Around a Failing School
Alex Hill, Liz Mellon, Jules Goddard, Ben Laker, Harvard Business Review, 2016/08/22
This was an interesting article. Based on research covering changes made by 160 UK academies put into remdiation a number of years ago, it recommends that several changes undertaken, crucially, in the right order offer the best chance of remediating schools. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wicked problems, dynamic solutions and a new global classroom
Concordia University, 2016/08/16
This one looks like fun. According to the press release, "While there are many MOOCs out there that introduce ecosystem services and related topics, this is one of the first that focuses explicitly on the ecosystem approach, long adopted as desirable by the UN, while covering so many key ecosystems and overarching themes.". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New Models of Open and Distance Learning
Stephen Downes, Aug 18, 2016.

The combination of customization and personalization provide some, but not all, of the objectives set by new pedagogies. Students are limited by the capacity of the LMS. Community-formation is limited to the students enrolled in the course. More...