By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MOOCs in Context: the re.mooc in Africa
Stephen Downes, March 11, 2013, EPFL Media Design Lab, Lausanne, Switzerland, via Skype
Organized with Alex Barchiesi, postdoc in EPFL Media Design Lab  (after a PhD in Particle physics), based on his concept of the re.mooc: how to re-use the material coming from the xMOOC and reorganize it in a localized version that could facilitate the "After school" education in African coutries. 

[Link] [Slides] [Audio]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. VISIR Network
VISIR, March 5, 2013
Accoridng to the email, "The VISIR project – Vision, Scenarios, Insights and Recommendations – is the initiative of seven European networks, one research centre and one University involved in the open, distance and e-learning field. It aims to develop a shared vision on how ICT may help making lifelong learning a reality." They have launched their second survey. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Getting More Out of Student Blogging
Sue Waters, Sue Waters Blog, March 5, 2013
The whole concept of educational blogging has faded to the background recently, though you'd think that wth MOOCs it would be more important than ever. You'd think. Anyhow, this post features edublogs staffer Sue Waters reviewing the concept of edublogs, from her perspective, and reiterating their application in learning and how to do it well. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sugata Mitra: Slum chic? 7 reasons for doubt
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, March 5, 2013
Unlike the Nobel Prize, which rewards people for work they've done, the TED Prize is basically startup money for work they're going to do. This with the 2013 prize, which gives Sugata Mitra about $1 million to develop something called  School in the Cloud. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Human Brain Project
Human Brain Project, March 5, 2013
This is what real research in IT looks like. The researchers will bring in all the results from the biological and physiological literature on neural function. They will integrate these findings into a massive simulation of the human brain. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Auti-sim lets you experience the horror of sensory overload
Kyle Orland, Ars Technica, March 5, 2013
What is it like to be autistic? Most of us can't experience sensory overload directly, but with a simulation developed during Vancouver's Hacking Health weekend hackathon we can begin to approximate the sensation. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Naming Conventions For Institutional Repositories: Lessons from CORE
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, March 6, 2013
As Brian Kelly summarizes, "The CORE (COnnecting REpositories) project aims to 'facilitate free access to scholarly publications distributed across many systems'." From the web site, the basic services offered by CORE are:

• CORE Portal - Allows to search and navigate scientific publications aggregated from a wide range of Open Access Repositories (OARs)
• CORE Mobile - An Android application that enables you to search and download open access articles.
• CORE Plugin - A Plugin to Open Access repositories that enables them to search for related scientific publications.
• CORE API - Enables external systems and services to interact with the CORE repository.
• Repository Analytics - A tool that enables to monitor the ingestion of metadata and content from repositories. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teenagers and Abstract Thinking: Unclear on the Concept?
Shawn Cornally, Edutopia RSS, March 6, 2013
Another of my early learning confessions: I had a terrible time with the whole concept of abstract reasoning when I was young. On reflection, I think it was because most of my learning was focused on the concrete: phonics and reading texts, mathematical operations, facts in science and history, and the like. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. inBloom & Microsoftian Over-reach
Tom Hoffman, Tuttle SVC, March 6, 2013
inBloom is basically a learning support application that pulls together student data in order to make recommendations. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Amplify Tablet: A Device Custom Made For Teachers And Students
Jeff Dunn, Edudemic, March 6, 2013
Did the world need "a device custom made for teachers and students?" I don't know, but it now has one, courtesy the the edtech startup Amplify(which naturally launched at SXSW). From my admittedly distance perspective, the designers have confused "education" with "command and control":

• The teacher has the ability to monitor everything happening on the rest of the tablets in the classroom.
• the ability for a teacher to send out an ‘eyes on teacher’ announcement where all devices tell the student to look up at the teacher. More...