By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Building a News Bot for Facebook Messenger
Julien Genestoux, 2016/11/04

Building a Facebook news bot is all very fine, but there's this: it's easy (relatively speaking) to import content into Facebook. My own gRSShopper did that, and gRSShopper is also a web aggregator. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 21st Century Learning, 20th Century Classroom
Zoe Branigan-Pipe, CAE Canada Education, 2016/11/04

"It’s time to match classroom and school design with our changing philosophies and teaching practices," argues Zoe Branigan-Pipe. From the way children sit, the way they are isolated from each other, to the way they are lumped into age-based groups, the realities of the 21st century school reflect an earlier age. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Research
Rebecca Pitt, Beatriz de los Arcos, Rob Farrow, Martin Weller, PressBooks, 2016/11/04

You'll find that this 'textbook' based on the open course of the same name is a very quick read. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Future OER
Norman Bier, Brandon Muramatsu, 2016/11/04
From the website: "What is the future of Open Education? This panel and audience discussion will explore possible visions of open education in 2036, using a series of broadly solicited papers as a starting point. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Udacity and EdX Want to Trademark the Degrees of the Future—and What’s at Stake for Students
Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge, 2016/11/04

So this is not good. "No one owns the term “master’s degree.” But upstart education providers dream of getting a lock on the words for the next generation of online graduate certifications. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Durability and Fragility of Knowledge Infrastructures: Lessons Learned from Astronomy
Christine L. Borgman, Peter T. Darch, Ashley E. Sands, Milena S. Golshan, ArXiv.org e-Print archive, 2016/11/07

Yes, it's a specialized case: "Research reported here draws upon a long-term study of scientific data practices to ask questions about the durability and fragility of infrastructures for data in astronomy." But from what I observe these trends exist in every discipline (and most fare worse than astronomy). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Art & Design Students Produce Virtual Reality Musical
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, 2016/11/07

These are probably the same people who will be pioneering this art form professionally in a few years. Hands-on experience like this is invaluable. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter
David Rock, Heidi Grant Halvorson, Harvard Business Review, 2016/11/07

This article cites a couple studies arguing that ethnic, racial and gender diversity increases returns and growth in corporations. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Planning for educational change: what is education for?
Dave Cormier, Dave's Educational Blog, 2016/11/07

We can't, of course, stop having this conversation. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. BC Open Educational Technology Collaborative
Clint Lalonde, BC Campus, 2016/11/07
I'm not suggesting so much that you join this group (unless you live in British Columbia) as I am recommending this document (and Mattermost, an open source software alternative to Slack) as a model for the formation of your own cooperative with similar objectives. More...