By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Husband-Wife Team Pays It Forward By Bringing E-Learning To The Philippines
Casey Hynes, Forbes, 2016/12/30
I think this is probably a useful service but only Forbes would call starting a for-profit education business as "paying it forward". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. This Is How Artificial Intelligence Will Shape eLearning For Good
Kyle Hauptfleisch, e-Learning Industry, 2016/12/30

This is a high-level overview of how artificial intelligence works (some of it, at least) and how it will shape e-learning in the future. The article cautions (and I agree) that AI is just a tool. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to Replace Windows Essentials 2012 After Support Ends in January
How-to-Geek, 2016/12/30
Some of these are my most-used applications, so I thought I should pass this along. The following will no longer be supported (which means no downloads, no patches, no security updates - but you can still use them). Here are the apps impacted: Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, OneDrive, Family Safety, Mail, or Live Writer. Two of them - Family safety and OneDrive - are built into Windows 10. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fast Topic Matching
Brave New Geek, 2016/12/30
I've always had in mind the idea to allow OLDaily subscribers to pick the topics they're interested in, and send them only that. I haven't, for two reasons. This article addresses the first: actually makng it work for thousands of topics and/or thousands of subscribers is a bear. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Beacons: A Shiny New Tool for Delivering Context-Specific Content
Pamela Hogle, Learning Solutions Magazine, 2016/12/30

So - I don't know. Do I want my mobile phone to accept bluetooth messages from the ambient environment? This article touts it as a good thing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Be Healthy or Else: How Corporations Became Obsessed with Fitness Tracking
Cathy O’Neil, Backchannel, 2016/12/30

I've talked quite a bit about the Personal Learning Record (PLR) over the last few years as part of the overall concept of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Second Life's creator is building a 'WordPress for social VR'
Nick Summers, Engadget, 2016/12/29

Virtual worlds and virtual reality are natural partners. So there's no real surprise that Second Life is looking to develop to support Oculus Rift and similar technologies. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Finding the squishy middle (before fact-checking everything drives you nuts)
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2016/12/29

It's easy to say we should fact-check the internet (or at least that part of it pirporting to be news and information). Actually doing it is a lot harder. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Little Ilustrated IT Security Guide
École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne EPFL, 2016/12/29

This short guide (16 page PDF) calmly discusses the key elements of IT security for the average user. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Genuine Science Of Learning
Keith Devlin, Edge, 2016/12/29

There are four really good points in this quick overview of the future of learning. Keith Devlin is optimistic overall, saying we may be at the beginning of a genuine science of learning, much as medicine was at the beginning of the 20th century. More...