By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fear of Screens
Nathan Jurgenson, The New Inquiry, 2016/01/27

Nathan Jurgenson responds to Sherry Turkle's recent book, Reclaiming Conversation, with the question, "Why would anyone want to believe that people who are communicating with phones have forgotten what friendship is?" More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to Succeed with Badges Without Really Trying
Jared Ward, Canvas, 2016/01/27

Video from the recent Instructure conference. Here's the outline: "Looking to gamify Canvas courses? Want to award badges to students who complete learning objectives". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The PhD is in need of revision
Rosanna Tamburri, University Affairs, 2016/01/27

If you ask me, this is what I think the problem is with PhD programs: “Part of the problem, I think, is that a large part of the academy still believes they are creating Mini-Me’s or clones,” says Dr. Doering. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Gordon: How to get more Canadians into university? Don’t reduce tuition fees
Stephen Gordon, National Post, 2016/01/27
This is an old (old old old) argument, yet it gets trotted out every once in a while by some economist. The perpetrator in this case is Stephen Gordon from Laval. Here's the gist: higher-income students form the majority at universities, so higher-income students would benefit disproportionately from tuition fee reductions, therefore, fees should not be reduced. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. European Education, Training and Youth Forum 2015
European Education, Training, Youth Forum, 2016/01/27

This is the report (23 page PDF) summarizing the results of this conference held in October. It reflects some of the tensions inherent in developing an education strategy in a multi-stakeholder environment. I'm not just referring to nations and nationalities. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Exploring faculty use of Open Educational Resources in B.C. post-secondary institutions
Tajiv S. Jhangiani, Rdebecca Pitt, Christina Hendricks, Jessie Key, Clint Lalonde, BC Campus, 2016/01/27

The subhead of this report (40 page PDF) describes it as follows: "The findings in this report provide a snapshot of the B.C. post-secondary system as a whole, we also explore similarities and differences in OER use among faculty across the three institution types in British Columbia: research-intensive universities, teaching-intensive universities, and colleges/institutes." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Presentation Planning
Common Craft, 2016/01/26

I studied public speaking in school and became quite good at it, winning four championships in six years. Back then I would memorize my talks, then improvise a bit as I spoke. Later, when I began doing academic presentations, the mode de rigeur was to read the paper to the audience. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Pioneering computer scientist Marvin Minsky dies at 88
Michael Pearson, CNN, 2016/01/26

I met Marvin Minsky at Idea City in 2003, where he gave a talk. We did not talk about artificial intelligence. We talked about the glass and light sculptures that were on display at one of the parties. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New Learning Design book is out!
Grainne Conole, e4innovation.com, 2016/01/26
This is the sort of thing that might become a landmark in the field. As a collaboration among a number of different groups of proponents of learning design, it stands as a sort of marker or statement of the core values of the field. The aim of this work is to define and extend the Larnaca Declaration of learning design, first formulated a couple of years ago, which seeks to create a 'notation' to educators can use to describe and share successful strategies. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap”
Ricardo de Querol, El Pais, 2016/01/26

There's a lot to protest, says Zygmunt Bauman, but protest has been ineffective in the social media age, an age in which in which "all agreements are temporary, fleeting, and valid only until further notice". More...