By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why You Should Write Daily
Leo Babauta, Zen Habits, April 26, 2013
Why do I write daily? This: "Writing daily forces you to come up with new ideas regularly, and so that forces you to solve the very important problem of where to get ideas. What’s the answer to that problem? Ideas are everywhere! In the people you talk to, in your life experiments, in things you read online, in new ventures and magazines and films and music and novels. But when you write regularly, your eyes are open to these ideas." Yes, there are some other reasons that involve audiences and persuasion, but for me this is the big one. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. jQuery 2.0 Released
JQuery, April 23, 2013
The modern web is the web intended to support things like Google Chrome add-ons,Mozilla XUL apps and Firefox extensions, Firefox OS apps, Windows 8 Store (“Modern/Metro UI”) apps and BlackBerry 10 WebWorks apps. This web took a step forward today with the release of JQuery 2.0, a set of Javascript functions designed to support dynamic interaction with internet services (what used to be known as 'web 2.0'). What's significant is that JQuery 2.0 drops support for the older Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 browsers (but you can still use JQuery 1.9 for that). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Of Few Letters
Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org, April 23, 2013
Miguel Guhlin points to an essay by William Zinnsser in The American Scholar on the topic of 'men of letters'. It resonates with me in two ways: first, because I achieved the 'Man of Letters' Boy Scout badge after self-publishing 'The Eagle Report', a mimeographed hand-written town newspaper I authored while in grade 5, and the Book of the Month Club (BOMC), which I signed up for with my father around the same time, and through which I was exposed to, among others, Pierre Berton, Farley Mowat, and  William L. Shirer. So I understand Zinnsser's lament for the passing of men of letters. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. European MOOCs
Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu.org, April 23, 2013
This is interesting. From Graham Attwell: "Partners in 11 countries have joined forces to launch the first pan-European ‘MOOCs’ (Massive Open Online Courses) initiative, with the support of the European Commission. MOOCs are online university courses which enable people to access quality education without having to leave their homes... Detailed information about the initiative and the courses on offer is available on the portal www.OpenupEd.eu. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Organization as a Cycling Peloton
Dan Pontefract, April 23, 2013
The cycling pelaton is a classic example of cooperation (as opposed to everybody's favourite, collaboration). The members of the pelaton do not have a shared objective: each member wants a different person to finish first. Nonetheless, they individuals have a better chance of succeeding if they work with the group - even with a group of competitors - than they would working on their own. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Review of Arts Based Research
Melisa (Misha) Cahnmann-Talor, education review, April 24, 2013
The title of Chapter 1 is: "What is and What is Not Arts Based Research?" At the end of this review, I still do not have the answer to that question. As Cahnmann-Talor writes, "The answers to most questions result in further questioning, where even definitions offered remain filled with ambiguity and openness to interpretation". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Will MOOC Technology Break the Education Cartel?
Jonathan Nadler, Education Technology Debate, April 24, 2013
Jonathan Nadler writes, "Once flexible and even user-generated learning content embedded in MOOC’s trickles down to a primary school level, and super-capable mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are deployed widely enough to provide ubiquitous access, its really only the process we use to harness them (especially how to keep some strategic face to face time in the mix) that remains to be solved." The "obligatory history lesson" should include a reminder that trickle-down has never worked, and has only ever served to entrench, not unseat, the cartels. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning Resource Metadata is Go for Schema
Phil Barker, Phil’s JISC CETIS blog, April 24, 2013
Phil Barker writes, "The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative aimed to help people discover useful learning resources by adding to the schema.org ontology properties to describe educational characteristics of creative works. Well, as of the release of schema draft version 1.0a a couple of weeks ago, the LRMI properties are in the official schema.org ontology." To see how LRMI metadata is used, take a look at this resource, first without the metadata, then with the metadata (you'll have to view soruce to see the metadata embedded in the resource). More...