By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers
Joyce Seitzinger, Cat's Pyjamas, April 4, 2013
If you use Moodle you may already be aware of this resource. But if not it's worth a look to see what people are doing with the open source learning management system (LMS). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Towards Robot Scientists for autonomous scientific discovery
Andrew Sparkes, H Plus Magazine, April 4, 2013
Interesting article about how scientists like me caan be replaced - well, not me, exactly, because I don't follow enough of a method that my work could be automated, but the process of hypothesis formation and testing in general. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MOOCs to cultivate networked textbooks part 1
Dave Cormier, Dave’s Educational Blog, April 4, 2013
Cave Cormier has observed, as have many of us, that the newer xMOOCs are mostly just online interactive textbooks. Which raises the question, what are the other kinds of MOOCs, if thought of from the perspective of textbooks. Well, something like open textbooks. But the whole domain of open textbooks - it has a long history - is fraught with difficulty. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. US Mooc platforms’ openness questioned
Chris Parr, Times Higher Education, April 4, 2013
The Times Higher Education supplement is now asking the questions we've all been asking. Patrick McAndrew, professor of open education at The Open University, praised the work of platforms such as Peer to Peer University and the OpenCourseWare Consortium for 'really being careful to do everything in a way that truly meets criteria of open'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rate Rule, MOOCs drool
Mike Caulfield, April 4, 2013
Mike Caulfield picks up on the new terminology I've been hearing over the last few days: "The 'wrapped MOOC' has gained attention over the past year as a way to integrate MOOCs into traditional education. ... in practice most educators are not 'wrapping' the cohort experience, but are instead using the MOOC as robust OER." yes, from what I've been hearing, people are using the term 'MOOC' interchangeably with 'online course materialks'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning and the Massive Open Online Course
Stephen Downes, April 4, 2013.

Notes from ELI Online Spring Focus Session,
April 3-4, 2013

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Online Courses or Long Form Journalism? Communicating How the World Works…
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, April 4, 2013
This is an interesting thought: "wouldn't it be wonderful if somebody put together a Coursera course on Bitcoin, covering whole range: crypto, ops, economics, politics?" The idea, as Tony Hirst correctly summarizes, is that an online course, or even a MOOC, could be offered instead of a long-from news article on a topic of economic or political importance. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Hidden Biases in Big Data
Kate Crawford, Harvard Business Review Blogs, April 1, 2013
Norwood Russell Hanson authored one of the most significant attacks on traditional empiricism with ther argument that all data is 'theory-laden', that is, that what counts as data depends on how we interpret what we perceive. The figures in the image above, for example, may resemble antelopes, but in a different context, the same figures may be interpreted as pelicans. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. You didn’t make the Harlem Shake go viral—corporations did
Kevin Ashton, Quartz, April 1, 2013
You are probably aware of the Harlem Shake, which I was told the other day has replaced Gangnam Style (and to which I responded "no-o-o-o..."). We are supposed to believe it's a grassroots meme (and not a product of the K-Pop industry, etc). But according to this article, it's manufactured hype. And they make a good case. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cetis 2013 Keynote - Digital Citizenship: Underpinning Open Education
Josie Fraser, SocialTech, April 1, 2013
Keynote from the recent zombie!Cetis "on digital literacy and in particular, digital citizenship, as critical agendas in terms of supporting access and protecting gains in open education, and enabling participation in society." Speaker Josie Fraser addresses the question of how we ensure people are best able to take advantage of all that the internet and web web offer. More...