By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bots go bust
Baptiste Parravicini, ReadWrite, 2017/03/07
I like predictions that go against the grain, especially when I am fundamentally in agreement with them. Here are the predictions:

• Bots go bust
• Deep learning goes commodity
• AI is cleantech 2.0 for VCs
• MLaaS dies a second death
• Full stack vertical AI startups actually work. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bold ideas for a better world
Sam Sebastian, Official Google Canada Blog, 2017/03/07
This is a list of finalists from "the first Google.org Impact Challenge in Canada - a nationwide competition to find and fund the most innovative nonprofits that are using technology to tackle tough social problems." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. We Don’t Need More Mousetraps!
Tim Kastelle, The Discipline of Innovation, 2017/03/07
In the spirit of Who Moved My Cheese, Tim Kastelle makes the case that innovation should not be measured in terms of new discoveries, patents and publications, and instead focuses on "something that solves actual problems for real people." This, he argues, is a circular process. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Education Sweden
Ebba Ossiannilsson, OER World Map, 2017/03/07
This is a very comprehensive look at open education in Sweden, beginning with the country's open access policies in general and proceeding through a detailed list of specific open education and OER initiatives in the country. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Houston school allows students to make rules
Tera Roberson, Click2Houston, 2017/03/17
I'm not sure whether this is an experiment that will spread (because its successes won't be measured in any traditional metric) but I'm still happy to see it taking place. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Group Process Design Principles in Times of Turbulance
Nancy White, Full Circle Associates, 2017/03/17
This is an article that deserves a deeper discussion, but in the space I have here I want to make just one point: the list of effective leverage points in a system, as described by Donella Meadows, is exactly the inverse of the list of effective leverage points in a network. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The college transcript of the future — and the processes holding it back
Brian Peddle, EdScoop, 2017/03/17
Discussion of the concept of a "modernized transcript". It's similar to what I have been calling a "personal learning record", with the main difference being that it is specific to a single institution, as opposed to incorporating data from multiple institutions and specific to a single individual. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teachers’ Awareness of Guidelines for Quality Assurance when developing MOOCs
Ulf Olsson, Seminar.Net, 2017/03/17
This article at least gives a nod to Martin Weller's plea to let MOOCs define their own standards for quality. "Let people play and explore in this space without tying it down with the types of quality overhead we already have in formal education." And then it shrugs as says "whatever". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Problems with Personalized Learning
Dan Meyer, dy/dan, 2017/03/17
Dan Meyer takes a swipe at this article (behind a paywall, for no good reason) in Educational Leadership on “personalized learning” and in passing also raises questions about potential conflicts of interest on the authors' parts (there's an interesting exchange with the publisher in the comments). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. University to monitor student social media to gauge well-being
Richard Vaughan, iNews, 2017/04/18
This is a couple of weeks old but I don't want to let it pass without comment. The interesting thing here isn't that the school is using analytics to help students succeed - this is becoming common - but rather that they are  drawing content not only from the LMS but also from social network. More...