By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Of Machine Guns and MOOCs: 21st Century Engineering Disasters
Pat Lockley, Hybrid Pedagogy, April 25, 2013
As someone heavily implicated in the development of MOOCs, I have to be accountable if, as this author suggests, the impact of the MOOC is more skin to that of the machine gun than to anything that would actually help massive numbers of people. But I am not a member of the military-industrial complex (nor even a particularly good public servant) and it is not with the militarization of learning in mind that the MOOC was developed (the author's allusions to COBOL and SCORM, neither of which have anything to to with MOOCs, notwithstanding). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tin Can API Version 1.0 Released
Rustici, April 25, 2013
The US-based Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) led the development of a project now called the Experience API, the purpose of which is to formalize the recording of learner interactions with learning resources. The non-ADL version of this is the Tin Can API, featured here by Rustici software (though so far as I can tell, Experience API and Tin Can API are the same thing). Tomorrow (Friday) will feature the launch of the Tin Can API version 1.0 specification. Thanks to Andy Whitaker for sending me the Tin Can information. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Future of Digital Identity
Hans de Zwart, Technology, Innovation, Education, April 25, 2013
Identity is an ongoing concern, both in the news and in our daily lives. Digital identity creates constraints around what would once have been an anonymous activity - buying a magazine, for example - while at the same time streamlining others - like online banking, for example. Surveillance and biometrics solve serious criminal threats, but when used to constrain legal demonstration, pose the possibility of suppression. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. News of the Week: Robo-Grading Debate, MOOCs Promoting Peer Collaboration & New Ed-Tech Tool
Debbie Morrison, online learning insights, April 21, 2013
This is a summary article of the week's events in educational technology, but it contains a good summary of the debate around (what I guess we are now calling) robo-grading, including links to a NY Times article (with more than 1000 comments), a petition against robo-grading, and arguments against edX on the basis of robo-grading. The same article looks at a new platform called NovoEd , including challenges posed by peer grading. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How resilient is “open”?
Brian Lamb, Abject, April 21, 2013
More on the influence of wealth and power on history, open content and open source. "It’s not as if “closed” systems are particularly resistant to the influence of money and power. But resting assured that “openness is the best disinfectant” is likely to fail us as well". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Pick My NCTM Sessions For Me. Please.
Karl Fisch, The Fischbowl, April 22, 2013
I thought this was a clever way of (semi-)randomizing his participation at an upcoming conference on education and mathematics. You are presented with a list of sessions, a way to select one, and room for comments. Of course I helped Karl Fisch pick his sessions; my comment at the end: "It's like there's two tracks through this conference, baby-math (aka common core) and adult math (the others). Stay with the adult math". More...