By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. “Is L&D out of touch with reality?”
Jane Hart, Learning in the Modern Workplace, 2015/02/23
There are some problems with this article but it does raise the interesting question of where the learning and development (L&D) industry gets its priorities. My own experience suggests that the industry is driven by customer demand; it follows what customers are willing to pay for. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 'Overnight, everything I loved was gone': the internet shaming of Lindsey Stone
Jon Ronson, The Guardian, 2015/02/23
Another in what I guess is becoming an internet trend: finding people who have been publicly shamed (and often fired) for their transgressions on the internet. Again I point out that if you don't want to be maligned for, say, mocking and flipping off the national cemetery, then don't mock and flip off the national cemetery. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MOOC design : from peer assessment to social networks
Matthieu Cisel, La révolution MOOC, 2015/02/20
Short post in English from the EducPros.fr website. "The high number and the diversity of registrants enables various possibilies as far as collective and collaborative activities are concerned. For instance, team projects have been emphasized on increasingly in recent MOOCs, since it can help to tackle the dropout issue and can trigger interesting learning outcomes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Beat The Rush; A Domain Name For Every Student Offers Great Value
Robert Schuetz, Nocking The Arrow, 2015/02/20
Robert Schuetz took the step recently of registering domainss for his sons on Google Domains. Why? He explains: "George Couros, in a recent post, says there are three things students should have before they leave high school: a personal learning network, a digital portfolio, and an About.me page." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Is Connectivism A New Learning Theory Based on Old Ideas?
Bruna Mazzer, Tecnologias e Educação, 2015/02/18
Bruna writes, "the successful students are usually the ones who understand what they have to reach and which path they need to follow. They are recognized and rewarded (good grades) by their abilities to follow rules..." We've seen this observation before, for example, in John Holt. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. School Is About More Than Training Kids to Be Adults
Michael Godsey, The Atlantic, 2015/02/18
As summarized in the ASCD Smart Brief newsletter where I saw this, "College- and career-readiness lessons sometimes miss the mark, especially with students who see few rewards in adult life, English teacher Michael Godsey writes in this commentary." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Economists Say Millennials Should Consider Careers In Trades
Chris Arnold, NPR, 2015/02/18
I too would recommend people pursue a career in the trades, but I want to add a few caveats that economists aren't yet ready to concede (or so it seems to me). One thing is that we have to reposition trades in society. In many parts of the world - Europe springs to mind - people who work in the trades are respected as professionals, well-paid (often by virtue of their union or trade association) and play a significant role in society. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Techniques for Unleashing Student Work from Learning Management Systems
Justin Reich, Mind/Shift, 2015/02/18
This is a good start and we learn something about the techniques applies (and my own perspective is called "radical" and an "an affront to the profession," but hey, I'm good with it). But I wish we learned more about what happened in the course. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Working out a school's competitive position even when it's not competing
Ewan McIntosh, edu.blogs.com, 2015/02/17
One of the nice things about my new position is that I've been receiving what amounts to a free MBA courtesy the training courses I'm taking as a Program Leader (it's not an official MBA, of course, because there's no recognition). I'll write about that more in the future. More...