By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Building Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for Academia and Industry, Onlea promotes economic diversity in Alberta
Jim Armstrong, TEC Edmonton, Jul 02, 2014
My longtime colleague Jennifer Chesney has joined up with two others at the University of Alberta to launch "a not-for-profit spin-off from the University of Alberta producing flexible, mobile-friendly, interactive learning courses, educational experiences, and assessment solutions that can be distributed across the wide variety of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Facebook psychology experiment raises ire
Staff, Globe, Mail, Jul 02, 2014
There has been quite a bit of negative reaction to the revelation that Facebook has been experimenting on its users (this, of course, won't stop Facebook from experimenting like this, but it will stop them from publishing the results). Here's what you need to know, according to GigaOm, about the experiments. Here's Facebook's defense. Still, some people (including Audrey Watters) wand to de-Facebook. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The digital degree
Unattributed, The Economist, Jul 01, 2014
If the Economist says something is good, I begin to worry. And so too with this article touting the destruction of the universities at the hands of the MOOC. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Microsoft joins key industry groups to deliver on promise of the Internet of Things
Kevin Dallas, The Official Microsoft Blog, Jul 04, 2014
If you're not watching developments in this arena, you should be. How do we "get the benefit out of the more than 212 billion 'connected things' IDC predicted we’ll see by the end of 2020?" The time is now to think about (say) how things will help us learn and how we'll interact with them. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to Create Your Own Illustrated Characters in PowerPoint
Tom, The Rapid eLearning Blog, Jul 04, 2014
I wonder what the 'completion rate' is for this bit of learning. Does it even matter? It help my attention right to the end, and I think I might try creating animated characters using PowerPoint some time in the future. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rhizomatic Learning – a somewhat curious introduction
Dave Cormier, Dave’s Educational Blog, 2018/12/28
This is an introduction from Dave Cormier on Rhizomatic Learning. It's mostly a history of the development of the concept from his perspective. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google Builds a Digital Reproduction of the National Museum of Brazil After its Tragic Destruction
Colossal, 2018/12/28
A digital reproduction is, of course, no replacement for the original. But when you have lost the original, the digital replacement is a whole lot better than nothing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dave Winer on Medium
Dave Winer, Scripting News, 2018/12/28
I've commented off and on recently that blogging remains a vital force on the web. It's true that a lot of blogs have disappeared from Blogger and WordPress, but it's equally true that Medium is becoming the site-of-record for a lot of leading edge developments in technology (for example, if you're studying blockchain online, you'll be reading a lot of Medium articles). More...