By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Education and Personal Learning
Stephen Downes, Apr 23, 2015, Open Education Global, Banff, Alberta
In this presentation I outline major aspects of the learning and performance support systems (LPSS) program as it relates to open education environments. In particular I focus on understanding OERs as words, aggregating and analyzing OERs, data representation, and learner production and sharing of OERs. I conclude with a number of brief case studies of how work in LPSS supports this perspective.  Full paper available here: http://www.downes.ca/files/docs/Open_Education_and_Personal_Learning.docx. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Open Publishing Revolution, Now Behind A Billion-Dollar Paywall
Tina Amirtha, Fast Comnpany, 2015/04/20

Mendeley, as the author notes, built a piece of software "aimed at helping researchers organize their papers, annotate them, and share them with each other." In 2013 the company was acquired by Elsevier. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The OER15 conference
Grainne Conole, e4innovation.com, 2015/04/17
Grainne Conole summarizes two of four keynotes at the OER15 conference taking place in Cardiff, one by Cable Green and the other by Josie Fraser. According to Green (Conole writes) "it was time for an OER implementation strategy, and in particular a focus on what is needed to achieve change and mainstream OER. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Web Presentation for BC Campus
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2015/04/17

Alan Levine introduces and enmbeds a video entitled The Open Web (a) Lost (b) Reclaimed (c) Co-claimed (d) All of the above? He writes that it "was meant to get at what we see as un-necessary dichotomies in ed tech (and also to poke at multiple choice). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. McGraw-Hill, Microsoft Embrace Open Learning
D. Frank Smith, EdTech, 2015/04/13

According to the McGraw-Hill press release, educators will be able to build what they call "compound learning objects" using Microsoft Office and syndicate them using the McGraw-Hill platform. More...