By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. IMS Global Announces Initiative to Establish Digital Badges as Common Currency for K - 20 and Corporate Education
Press Release, IMS, 2015/04/21
Knowing IMS, the phrase "common currency" was probably very carefully chosen, and it brings to mind Doug Belshaw's proposal the other day to issue badges using Bitcoin-like encryption. So I wonder whether IMS is thinking that far ahead. More...
04 mai 2015
IMS Global Announces Initiative to Establish Digital Badges as Common Currency for K - 20 and Corporate Education
Patient Zero of the selfie age: Why JenniCam abandoned her digital life
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Patient Zero of the selfie age: Why JenniCam abandoned her digital life
Emma Reynolds, News.com.au, 2015/04/21
The subtext of this item is that there is something wrong with sharing your life online, because after all the original "cam girl", Jennifer Ringley of JenniCan, gave it up after seven years and not has no social networking presence at all. More...
Being There: Heidegger on Why Our Presence Matters
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Being There: Heidegger on Why Our Presence Matters
Lawrence Berger, New York Times, 2015/04/20
On reading the headline I immediately thought of Terry Anderson. He writes of the importance of 'presence' in learning "that views the creation of an effective online educational community as involving three critical components: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence." More...
Education shouldn't be a zero-sum game
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Education shouldn't be a zero-sum game
Andrew Parkin, Academica, 2015/04/20
Is Canada really over-emphasizing university graduation? It has one of the highest rates of university and post-secondary education completion rates in the world: "In Canada, 50% of the adult population has completed tertiary education, easily the highest rate in the OECD." But a recent report for the Canadian Council on Chief Executives recommended cutting back on university degrees. More...
What Harvard Business School Has Learned About Online Collaboration From HBX
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Harvard Business School Has Learned About Online Collaboration From HBX
Bharat Anand, Jan Hammond, V.G. Narayanan, Harvard Business Review, 2015/04/20
I think I have to file this under the category of "catching up" as the 'lessons' learned by Harvard Business School have long been known and studied in the wider online learning and distance education communities. Indeed, some of the recommendations they make - like having people begin by introducing each other in an online discussion, or that "norms of online collaboration can be shaped" - had become clichés long before HBS 'discovered' them. More...
The Open Publishing Revolution, Now Behind A Billion-Dollar Paywall
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Open Publishing Revolution, Now Behind A Billion-Dollar Paywall
Tina Amirtha, Fast Comnpany, 2015/04/20
Mendeley, as the author notes, built a piece of software "aimed at helping researchers organize their papers, annotate them, and share them with each other." In 2013 the company was acquired by Elsevier. More...
The OER15 conference
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The OER15 conference
Grainne Conole, e4innovation.com, 2015/04/17
Grainne Conole summarizes two of four keynotes at the OER15 conference taking place in Cardiff, one by Cable Green and the other by Josie Fraser. According to Green (Conole writes) "it was time for an OER implementation strategy, and in particular a focus on what is needed to achieve change and mainstream OER. More...
VR and consciousness – some truly freakish ideas
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. VR and consciousness – some truly freakish ideas
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2015/04/17
I experience the arbitrariness of consciousness every day. I put on my glasses, and my whole world changes. More recently, I have enjoyed the altered consciousness of being completely immersed in sound by means of my MP3 player and some quality earbuds. More...
Open Web Presentation for BC Campus
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Web Presentation for BC Campus
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2015/04/17
Alan Levine introduces and enmbeds a video entitled The Open Web (a) Lost (b) Reclaimed (c) Co-claimed (d) All of the above? He writes that it "was meant to get at what we see as un-necessary dichotomies in ed tech (and also to poke at multiple choice). More...
Kifi
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Kifi
Website, Kifi, 2015/04/17
I have two major things to say about this site. First, analytics and recommendations are becoming commoditized. This is one of a number of services revolving around the concept of learning about you and recommending resources. More...
