By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap”
Ricardo de Querol, El Pais, 2016/01/26
There's a lot to protest, says Zygmunt Bauman, but protest has been ineffective in the social media age, an age in which in which "all agreements are temporary, fleeting, and valid only until further notice". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Review of Continued Progress: Promising Evidence on Personalized Learning
William R. Penuel, Raymond Johnson, National Education Policy Center, 2016/01/26
This is a review of a report titled Continued Progress: Promising Evidence on Personalized Learning (57 page PDF) which summarizes finding from three projects based on the idea of personalized learning. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What a Million Syllabuses Can Teach Us
Joe Karaganis, David McClure, New York Times, 2016/01/25
This is an article in the New York Times about The Open Syllabus Project. So far this site, as the name suggests, has "collected more than a million syllabuses from university websites." More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Stanford professor who pioneered praising kids for effort says we’ve totally missed the point
Jenny Anderson, Quartz, 2016/01/25
We've probably all heard the sarcastic comments about giving every kid a prize for trying, instead of awarding one prize to the winner. The idea of praising effort rather than results is scorned and ridiculed. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The sky is falling on print newspapers faster than you think
Richard Tofel, Medium, 2016/01/22
Having been writing this newsletter for a long time, I can still recall the days when pundits were saying print newspapers would disappear while critics were saying people would never abandon the comfort of print and paper. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The 7 Devices of Transformation in Education
Vicki Davis, The Cool Cat Teacher, 2016/01/22
This is a terrific post. The core message is that "technology change is about people." And Vicki Davis pulls that apart and comes up with seven spot-on observations (mostly my own wording):
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Higher Education in Developing Countries is Getting Harder
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2016/01/22
This is an interesting set of observations. Development, argues Alex Usher, is getting harder because countries can no longer foster development through export-driven manufacturing. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. From Bricks to Clicks: the potential of data and analytics in Higher Education
Philip Norton, Sarah Porter, The Higher Education Commission, 2016/01/22
This is a reasonably detailed view (76 page PDF) of learning analytics from a policy perspective and contains a series of recommendations pertaining to data ownership and use, ethical issues, the nature of the data collected, and implementation issue. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What a post-Persona landscape means for Open Badges
Doug Belshaw, Open Educational Thinkering, 2016/01/22
Mozilla is shuttering its 'Persona' project, which has an impact on the Open Badges project. Users needed a secure login to access the badge Backpack, which is what Persona provided. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Centennial College to scrap Saudi training program
Toronto Star, 2016/01/22
I think all my readers agree that education should be provided to both men and women. This is true even in Saudi Arabia, which has the world's largest women-only university. More...
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