By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 7 reasons: Why we need to kill boring ‘learning objectives’!
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2015/03/24
I'm not really a fan of learning objectives either. For the record, here are Clark's seven reasons:

• Objectives make a poor first impression
• Stating objectives defers learner engagement
• They also cause people to stop paying attention
• They are a misapplication of Gagne
• The rule that objectives must be stated is overly prescriptive
• It's difficult to write good objectives, and few master it
• Stating them is a waste of time

From my reading, these sever objections are really just one objection stated over and over. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Binaries, Polarisation and Privacy
Frances Bell, Francesbell's Blog, 2015/03/24
How do you get nuance in a world of binaries? David A. Banks argues, according to Frances Bell, that "the ‘binaries’ of up-voting and down-voting are inadequate for dealing with ambiguity and divisive topics. They are a tool for polarisation not a means of going beyond it." She also looks at the binary of public/private, a binary that has dominated a lot of recent discourse. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Our Approach to Tracking and Cookies
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2015/03/24
Alan Levine writes, "On a personal blog, I am not finding much justification for cookies (one of my Holy Grails is a comment mechanism that eliminates comments). I really loathe blogs where the URLs are all crufted with Google UTM tracking cruft on the end. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 16 of the top 20 Research Journals Let Ad Networks Spy on Their Readers
Eric Hellman, Go To Hellman, 2015/03/24
Via Audrey Watters comes this post from Eric Hellman showing that most research journals allow advertising networks to spy on their readers. "I'm particularly concerned about the medical journals that participate in advertising networks," writes Hellman. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Making the Connection
Kim Cofino, always learning, 2015/03/24

Kim Cofino shares elements of her current keynote at the ECIS technology conference in Munich. "When we learn with technology the way we live with technology, the classroom can be just as relevant and engaging as our everyday digital interactions," she argues. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Virtually unlimited classrooms: Pedagogical practices in massive open online courses
Brit Toven-Lindsey, Robert A. Rhoads, Jennifer Berdan Lozano, Internet, Higher Education, 2015/03/24
There are days I wish I had focused more on making gRSShopper a commercial product. Then it would be more widely used and would be included in studies like this which look at the pedagogies employed by different MOOC platforms. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Doxxing to Defend Student Privacy
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2015/03/23
Bob Braun's website was inaccessible when I posted the story about Pearson's spying on schoolchildren last week, but it's available again and Audrey Watters raises some troubling questions about some of the follow-up coverage. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place?
Bill Raden, Pacific Standard, 2015/03/23
According to this article, "That’s the conclusion of a growing number of researchers who argue that 30 years of test scores have not measured a decline in public schools, but are rather a metric of the country’s child poverty and the broadening divide of income inequality." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Finland schools: Subjects scrapped and replaced with 'topics' as country reforms its education system
Richard Garner, The Independent, 2015/03/23
Even Finnish parents and teachers are protesting the change, we are told. But according to this article, students are already seeing benefits from the redefinition of learning from classes to 'phenomena'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Netflix and education
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2015/03/23

A lot of people have talked about 'the Netflix of learning'. But it's not that easy. More...