By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Medium, and The Reason You Can’t Stand the News Anymore
Sean Blanda, Medium, 2017/01/17

Continuing an important conversation: "The reason so many fail isn’t because they aren’t well meaning or smart. It’s because the incentive structure of online news is fundamentally broken. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reporters flocked to a campus controversy but missed its surprising conclusion
Christopher Hoffman, Columbia Journalism Review, 2017/01/17
Excellent article from Columbia Journalism Review on a controversy that enveloped the student-run Wesleyan Argus. It involved a column written by a staff member about Black Lives Matter that led to calls for the student association to withdraw financial support for the newspaper. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Five-Tool Scholar
Rick Hess, Education Next, 2017/01/17
I found this an interesting concept. The five tools are: "disciplinary scholarship, policy analysis and popular writing, convening and shepherding collaborations, providing incisive commentary, and speaking in the public square." The list is an attempt to explain Rick Hess's "Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Modern Workplace Learning Magazine is launched
Jane Hart, Learning in the Modern Workplace, 2017/01/17

Another publication in our field. As always, I welcome the new voice and look forward to future news and opinions from another perspective. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Diversity in the Open Access Movement
Kent Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2017/01/24
This is a good two-part article (part one, part two) discussing some of the divisions in the open access movement. Part two lays them out quite nicely: are embargoes permitted, yes or no; is charging for access permitted, yes or no; and is the non- commercial license permitted, yes or no. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How I Built that Free Microlearning Template
Tom Kuhlmann, The Rapid E-Learning Blog, 2017/01/24µ
'Microlearning' is the new buzzword in the rapid e-learning community, but be careful. As this article shows, it is often realized as a quick Flash animation. I, however, am viewing the internet on a 4K screen. These animations appear like postage stamps in the middle of my screen. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Looking Beyond the LMS: Why a Single App Won't Work
David Raths, Campus Technology, 2017/01/24

I think this vision of the future of educational technology is fundamentally correct, though the description in this article is lacking. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Struggling = Learning
Karl Kapp, Kapp Notes, 2017/01/24
Papert called it "hard fun". We;ll, it has been fun but I've been swearing a lot recently. Getting to understand technologies like Docker and Vagrant - and all the associated middleware and protocols and conventions - has been a lot to undertake. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Understanding Metadata

Jenn Riley, National Information Standards Organization (NISO), 2017/01/20

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has published an updated guide on understanding metadata (49 page PDF). It's a guide, so it begins at a pretty basic level. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tips for a PhD defense or viva #phd
Inge de Waard, Ignatia Webs, 2017/01/20

Inge de Waard has earned her PhD and by way of celebration she gives us a certifiably useful guide to preparing for your defense (or viva), as it is known in the UK. More...