By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Could Do Better: A Checklist for Participatory Communication for Development.
Probing questions, a list of dimensions of 'participatory communications' from G.A. Dragon, and even a citation from Illich's To Hell With Good Intentions: "By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class 'American Way of Life,' since that is really the only life you know." Well, yeah, and I can't help being anything other than an opinionated Canadian with a healthy disrespect for power and control. And the Finns I've seen carry their Finnishness with them, and the Brits their Britishness, and so on. So what do we do when we reach out to another culture? I had to find my own way teaching in First Nations communities. And the main thing I decided was to not try to be something other than what I am. The place where I draw the line is in trying to make other people into images of me (though I have to say, it's really tempting). They have to find their own way - and me, well I'll just be maximally me and they can take whatever they want from that, or nothing, if that's what they want. But I'm not going to pull back, to be less of who I am. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Setting up your first assignment face-to-face in class using Peergrade
W. Ian O'Byrne, YouTube, 2019/02/12
As the caption to this 7 minute video says, this is "a quick overview of how I use Peergrade as an activity in class to work through the process and expectations of peer evaluation and assessment." He outlines an exercise using a video on digital literacy; after watching the video, they use the application in class, and tghen use PeerGrade to write some quick responses. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tinkering with the system won’t help reinvent the purpose of education
Jenny Mackness, Jenny Connected, 2019/02/11
I listened to the same episode of Brian Alexander's Future Tech Forum (all episode recordings here) and had the same reaction Jenny Mackness did. "The event was advertised as ‘reinventing education’, but for me the discussion was more about how and what changes could be made to the existing education system (in this case the American education system)... the future of education is not the same thing as the future of collegess". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What's The Value of OLDaily?
Sephen Downes, 2019/02/11
I wrote on Mastodon a few days ago, "I'm not sure anyone has any status in online learning any more. I'm wondering, maybe it's not even a discipline any more. There's learning analytics and open pedagogy and experience design, etc., but I'm not sure there's a cohesive community looking at what we used to call ed tech or e-learning." [Comment]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Obsessed with Putting Ink On Paper
OK, in the end, this has nothing to do with online learning, has nothing to do with why I clicked on it in the first place, and in the end, is an advertisement. But what really strikes me about this piece - which is about software that writes musical notation - is the way the author is concerned about the details. Now I have just spent all day writing code and looking at some editing, which means I've spent all day being really picky about semi-colons and the proper reference of pronouns. Picky stuff which (to be honest) most people don't care about. But - and this article makes the point so nicely - the beauty is in the details (same with Harold Jarche's sailboat - it wasn't the 50K, it was the zillion hours spent making sure every board was exactly right). So that's worth passing along. Now - why did I click on this in the first place. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Characteristics of High-Performance Personal Networks
Well the website's a bit wonky right now - it's a combination of some less than perfect code and getting slammed by search engines (if you get 1000 hits a day, 999 of them will be search engine hits - that's a real challenge for anyone writing software). (Or maybe it's a DOS - I 'killall' but then all the httpd threads start right up again... sigh). Ross Dawson attempts to identify what makes personal networks work well, and hits on a number of things familiar to readers of these pages - things like diversity and dynamism. The article also describes "six key behaviors that create energizing relationships" - things like "have and communicate a compelling vision", "seek and acknowledge quality contributions", "give genuine attention to people." Well - ok. But, it seems to me, if you do these things in order to create or cultivate a personal network, they will be hollow and strained. Rather, these activities are ends in themselves - and a personal network is just one of the things that grows out of them. More...