By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Education Sweden
Ebba Ossiannilsson, OER World Map, 2017/03/07
This is a very comprehensive look at open education in Sweden, beginning with the country's open access policies in general and proceeding through a detailed list of specific open education and OER initiatives in the country. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Houston school allows students to make rules
Tera Roberson, Click2Houston, 2017/03/17
I'm not sure whether this is an experiment that will spread (because its successes won't be measured in any traditional metric) but I'm still happy to see it taking place. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Group Process Design Principles in Times of Turbulance
Nancy White, Full Circle Associates, 2017/03/17
This is an article that deserves a deeper discussion, but in the space I have here I want to make just one point: the list of effective leverage points in a system, as described by Donella Meadows, is exactly the inverse of the list of effective leverage points in a network. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The college transcript of the future — and the processes holding it back
Brian Peddle, EdScoop, 2017/03/17
Discussion of the concept of a "modernized transcript". It's similar to what I have been calling a "personal learning record", with the main difference being that it is specific to a single institution, as opposed to incorporating data from multiple institutions and specific to a single individual. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teachers’ Awareness of Guidelines for Quality Assurance when developing MOOCs
Ulf Olsson, Seminar.Net, 2017/03/17
This article at least gives a nod to Martin Weller's plea to let MOOCs define their own standards for quality. "Let people play and explore in this space without tying it down with the types of quality overhead we already have in formal education." And then it shrugs as says "whatever". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Problems with Personalized Learning
Dan Meyer, dy/dan, 2017/03/17
Dan Meyer takes a swipe at this article (behind a paywall, for no good reason) in Educational Leadership on “personalized learning” and in passing also raises questions about potential conflicts of interest on the authors' parts (there's an interesting exchange with the publisher in the comments). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. University to monitor student social media to gauge well-being
Richard Vaughan, iNews, 2017/04/18
This is a couple of weeks old but I don't want to let it pass without comment. The interesting thing here isn't that the school is using analytics to help students succeed - this is becoming common - but rather that they are drawing content not only from the LMS but also from social network. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Putting data in the hands of students
Timothy Harfield, Blackboard Blog, 2017/04/18
This is a key point: "Largely absent from mainstream conversations about educational data and student success is a consideration of the role of the student as a learner." It's not surprising to research underline the importance of this. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. University of California researchers make lithium ion batteries last five to ten times longer
Jayson MacLean, CanTech Letter, 2017/04/18
Because of concerns about the availability of lithium I am not sanguine about this technology in general for the long term. I expect carbon (and more specifically, graphene) to offer a long-term solution. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Of Progress, Problems, and Partnerships
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2017/04/18
So we know now why students will have to pay for Lumen learning's new 'open' educational resources. More...
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