By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Machine Readable Rights and the News Industry day 2013
International Press Telecommunications Council, March 21, 2013
The W3C's Phil Archer expresses the dilemma of rights on the web in a nutshell: "Expressing rights statements on the Web is easy. Getting people to listen is hard — what's in it for them?" And this was in essence the question explored at the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) meetings on machine readable rights last week. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How could cMOOCs be designed and incorporated under an institutional framework?
Sui Fai John Mak, Learner Weblog, March 21, 2013
I wrote a brief item a few days ago on evaluating MOOCs. I write: "I then ask whether it satisfied the properties of a successful network. I can do this from two perspectives: first, from a process perspective; and second, from an outcomes perspective. The process perspective asks whether the MOOC satisfied the criteria for successful networks... The outcomes perspective looks at the MOOC as a knowing system." The current post is Sui Fai John Mak's response to my post, where he raises learning contracts. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Aussie Coursera? A new homegrown MOOC platform arrives
Bella Counihan, The Conversation, March 23, 2013
According to this article, "The first Australian free online education platform has been launched in Canberra today, by tertiary education minister Chris Bowen. Open Universities Australia, a private distance and online education organisation, has stepped into the world of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with a new online platform called Open2Study." I'm thinking right now that traditional LMSs could have countered this whole trend simply by having an 'open courses' option on their LMSs. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Does Europe need its own Mooc?
Alex Katsomitros, The Guardian, March 29, 2013
This article takes the perspective tha the only activity related to MOOCs is happening in the United states and raises the question of whether Europe should get its own MOOC. More...