By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Is Curriculum Development
Dinant Roode, trenducation, 2020/01/02
This post is from October but I only found this feed today and I felt it would be useful to add a wider perspective to the instructional slash experience design discussion. The post itself is fairly introductory, explaining what curriculum development is, describing why it's important for teachers, and identifying three types of curriculum design: subject-centered, learner-centered, and problem-centered. I would imagine there are more (for example, performance-support-centered or task-centered). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ten weird tricks for resisting surveillance capitalism in and through the classroom . . . next term!
Erin Glass, HASTAC, 2020/01/02
These are tricks for resisting surveillance in general, and not merely surveillance capitalism (though  probably most surveillance is ethically questionable). The article is written in that snappy sort of meme-aware jargon the well-informed like to use (with the weird tricks meme in the headline leading the way). But some of the information is good (and some of it is loopy). Maybe skip suggestions number 1 and  (which involves using "that wry teacherly snark you have" to "inform students on" various conspiracy theories). But exploring community-driven tools (like Commons in a Box) is a good idea. So is having students read terms of service. Definitely explore downloading your personal data (but maybe don't delete it until you have a back-up). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Eduspaces Crosses the Pond to Mystery New Home
The EduSpaces debacle is being resolved with the same attention to communications and good public relations as was the original closure: it was announced that the community will be hosed by TakingITGlobal. Graham Attwell comments, "Members of the network are grateful for the support but non-plussed as to who TakingITGlobal are and why they have been chosen as inheritors of eduspaces." After all, numerous others had offered to host the community, but their offers were (apparently) rebuffed. "Longer term this should be a wake up call to the community. A new eduspaces community may arise. But this time the community has to develop forms of organisation. TakingITGlobal can be members of such a community. But they cannot be allowed to 'own' Eduspaces in the way Curverider did. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Travian
The sort of thing that threatens to become addicting: "Travian is a browser game with a world full of thousands of users who all begin as the leaders of small villages." The use of dependencies and resources is interesting, as well as the merchants and trade. But most interesting of all, I think, is the dynamics of forming agreements and alliances. The massively multi-player online game is browser-based and required no download and only an email registration. As has become typical for such games, you can pay real money to get in-game gold (which is too bad, really, because it distorts the outcome). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Evolution Is a Blind Watchmaker
Interesting video demonstrating a computer program that emulates the random generation of accurate clocks from a pile of clock components. This was the first time I had seen this particular response to the teleological argument for the existence of God (aka, the argument for God as watchmaker) and what was interesting to me was the way computer programming and video were combined to crate a compelling case in a way that would have been almost impossible in written text. More...