By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Paying Skilled Workers More Would Create More Skilled Workers
Thijs van Rens, Harvard Business Review, 2016/05/20
I've talked from time to time over the years about the skills shortage. It was one of the bases for the LPSS program. While on the one hand this is an educational challenge (and remains so) on the other hand, as suggested by the title of this post, it is also an economic challenge. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Extending Moodle
Stephen Downes, May 19, 2016, Moodle CONNECT - CONNECTER Moodle, Gatineau, Quebec

Discussion of some major trends of recent years, how these have impacted Moodle (including a discussion of some Moodle extensions addressing them) and some observations about future trends that will impact how Moodle developers will want to adapt the technology in the future. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Homework and Adaptive Platforms Are (and Aren’t) Good For
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2016/05/19

This is a follow-up to Michael Caulfield's post on e-Literate earlier this week and looks at the subject of personalized learning in a lot more depth. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dear Mommy Blogger
Josi Denise, 2016/05/19

There's a lot of off-colour language in this post announcing Josi Denise's resignation as a 'mommy blogger'. The full post, though, is worth reading, as it gives us a glimpse of a world in which brands manipulate bloggers and bloggers so whatever it takes to gain readers - and stay in touch with company PR reps. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The empty brain
Robert Epstein, Aeon, 2016/05/19

Please please please read this. If you do any theorizing about learning at all, or want to explain why good pedagogy works, or anything like that, read this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Highly novel research proposals ‘being systematically rejected’
David Matthews, Times Higher Education, 2016/05/19
I can identify with this. "Highly novel research proposals are being systematically turned down because they fall outside evaluators’ paradigms of understanding, a new study suggests." Novel proposals fared even worse if they were within the evaluator's domain of expertise. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Deploy a Website
Codecademy, 2016/05/19

If you don't know how to do this, this will be a really useful skill to learn. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Future of Learning: Digital, Distributed, Data-Driven
George Siemens, elearnspace, 2016/05/18

"We know the names," writes George Siemens. "Vygostky, Freire, Illich, Papert, and so on. We know the ideas. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Partnering with Fishtree brings digital courseware at scale to Blackboard Learn
Blackboard Blog, 2016/05/18
Blackboard is partnering with yet another entrant in the adaptive learning marketplace, FishTree. It's a "personalization platform that combines standard-aligned resources and social media-based tools with world-class analytics to save teachers time, and help students learn. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. We Have Personalization Backwards
Michael Caulfield, e-Literate, 2016/05/18

I'm glad e-Literate asked Michael Caulfield to elaborate on his post, though it still feels abridged to me. More...