By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rockefeller University Press: CC-BY is not essential for Open Access
Richard Poynder, April 1, 2013
I've been arguing this for years and won't belabour it here. But I will quote Richard Poynder: "CC-BY is not essential for OA, or even for text and data mining, and will alienate some of OA’s friends. So why insist on it?" Yes, this aligns me with some commercial publishers such as Mike Rossne who would much rather publish open content under an NC (non-commercial) license. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Thoughts on To Save Everything, Click Here (and Higher Education)
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, April 1, 2013
A couple good reviews of Evgeny Morozov's To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, one from Mike Caulfield, the other from Audrey Watters. I don't have a whole lot to add, except to insist that I'm not a solutionist, that it is reasonable to aergue that the education system (amonbg other things) is broken, and to point to evidence that it is, without at the same time arguing tha 'tech will save everything. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Break a Few Eggs - Stepping Away from Google
Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org, April 3, 2013
Miguel Guhlin reviews what he would have to part with to eliminate his dependence on Google. He depends on the search-engine giant a lot more than I do (I tend not to rely on one provider). I don't really use GMail at all (because if I did, all notifications would by default be sent to GMail, which I don't want). Nor do I use Picassa. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Pre-Hire Assessment Science Revealed: Value for Employers, Value for Candidates
Josh Bersin, Bersin by Deloitte, April 3, 2013
Probably the most common question I am asked about MOOCs is what people will do for credentials if they're not getting degrees from universities. I've talked about mechanisms of direct assessment usin g available data from the open web. Now I can point to an actual instanceof that idea: pre-hire assessment. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Accreditors Without Borders
Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, April 3, 2013
Interesting article (with a terrible world map graphic) on the question of whether U.S.-based accreditors should expand their scrutiny to institutions in other nations (what they call 'foreign'). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rosetta Stone Acquires Online Language Company Livemocha
Business Wire, April 3, 2013
Rosetta Stone has purchased an online language learning community, moving it much more firmly in the direction of distributed social learning. MOOC providers like Coursera should take note, as it points to a community and cloud based future (like cMOOCs) rather than the old-style 'follow the lectures of experts' mode of learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Online Learning: Two Big Distractions
Contact North, April 3, 2013
Unattributed article from Contact North pointing to two big "distractions" that draw our focus from what's really happening in educational technology. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. At the Crossroads for Feed2JS
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, April 2, 2013
Alan levine is looking to shut down Feed2JS, not because of the cost and the hassle (though both are substantial) but because, after ten years, it's time to move on to something else. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Windows 8 in education: Student Demos - Elizabeth
Tim Bush, Microsoft UK Schools News Blog, April 2, 2013
My new Lenovo came with Windows 8 so I've had some experience with it. But I have to confess, far from it being easier to find things, I'm still at the stage where I can't find anything (it doesn't help that the tiles are constantly changing, so there's no visual recognition happening). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Resisting the Marketisation of Learning
Rob Watson, Rob Watson Media, April 2, 2013
It's interesting. One of the predicted side-effects of treating education as a business was that the business would focus more on the customer. Though this sounds good in practice, in fact what has happened is that the new business-like education would determine that students don't have enough money, and that henceforth the customer would be the ultimate 'consumers' of the educational 'product', business and industry. More...