By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The enterprise technologies to watch in 2016
Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDNet, 2016/05/31

This list shouldn't surprise readers, though it's interesting to note the influence of consumer technology on the enterprise sectors. The top technologies to watch include MOOCs, microservices, public and hybrid cloud, user experiences, team collaboration, social enterprise, and more. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How Technology and the Changing Needs of the Workforce Will Create the Higher Education System of the Future
Jamie Merisotis, EDUCAUSE Review, 2016/05/31
Good overview article looking at the evolving system of credentials management in U.S. education. But will the One True System do the job? "This new effort, which is linking previously disconnected actors, can be best understood via a new Connecting Credentials platform for these actors to learn and share from each other. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ten years of open practice: a reflection on the impact of OpenLearn
Patrina Law, Anne Jelfs, Open Praxis, 2016/05/31

The best part of this article (7 page PDF) is the last page, where the author draws a number of interesting conclusions from a ten-year review of OpenLearn, an Open University open educational resources (OER) initiative. The paper itself is a bit loose (possibly because of brevity) so we don't see how these conclusions are established. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Framework for the Ethics of Open Education
Robert Farrow, Open Praxis, 2016/05/31
"This paper proposes a framework that focuses on the ethical significance of a particular group of educational technologies usually referred to as open education," writes Robert Farrow, noting " is “a paucity of literature” addressing the socioethical dimensions" and the suggestion that while open learning such as MOOCs is intended to extend access to learning, it tends to support the already privileged. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Scriba Disaster: Sakai-based LMS for UC Davis is down with no plans for recovery
Phil Hill, e-Literate, 2016/05/30

There's open source and then there's open source. One type of open source is more properly called 'community source', and that's what Sakai is. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Africa getting impatient for the dawn of e-learning era
Tom Jackson, Disrupt Africa, 2016/05/30

I've read a dozen or so press releases and articles about the recently concluded eLearning Africa conference in Cairo and this one seems to summarize best the general tenor of the discussion. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Here's how artificial intelligence could solve the biggest problem in education
Rafi Letzter, Tech Insider, 2016/05/30
I confess, I read this item because I wondered what the author considered "the biggest problem in education." Here's what it is: "of the hordes of students that sign up for massive open online classes (MOOCs), an average of less than 7% finish." Well, education has its problems, but I think this is far from the biggest of them. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Psst…Wanna buy a bottle of air?
Grant Frost, frostededucation, 2016/05/30

Best analogy for 'grit' thus far: "when faced with a decreasing demand for a product in one market segment, the internationally massive and multi-billion dollar testing industry would look to create a new product that meets the increasing demands of another," writes Grant Frost. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reclaim the Internet
Various authors, Reclaim the Internet, 2016/05/27

Several studies have just come out describing the uneasy reality of gender non-parity in social networks:

• First, this study from Pew sets the stage, reporting that in the U.S. people now get most of their news from the internet. As Mashable reports, "Those surveyed also reported getting news from Yahoo’s Tumblr, Vine(!) and Snapchat, which didn’t even make it onto the 2013 survey."
• Second, a study published on PLOS One reports that men and women conduct themselves differently on social networks. As reported in the New York Times, "women's writing largely reflected compassion and politeness compared with men, who were hostile and impersonal."
• Third, a study published by Demos reveals a staggering scale of social media misogyny on Twitter. As the Guardian reports, "over three weeks from the end of April.. it found that 6,500 individuals were targeted by 10,000 aggressive and misogynistic tweets."

This link points to a British initiative, Reclaim the Internet. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. You’re the Variable
Alfred Thompson, Computer Science Teaacher, 2016/05/27
Algebra has once again come under challenge and in response there have been the usual defenses, such as this article on why we need algebra. To me (as I do things like measure the amount of paint required to cover a four bedroom house) the answer is pretty clear. But people like Andrew Hacker argue it should be dropped from the curriculum because it's a leading cause of dropouts. More...