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By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why I, Too, Killed My LinkedIn Account.
OK, that's just the title, I haven't deleted my LinkedIn account, Luis Suarez has. But my own social media deletions are probably nor far in the future, though. Here's Heather Bussing: "I don’t agree to their Terms of Service, and I don’t need LinkedIn enough to put up with it." The terms give them permission to sell my information, to control who sees my information and to block competitors. They prohibit me from linking to strangers, from posting information that doesn't belong in a field, and from sharing content from LinkedIn with other services. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A to Z of Learning.
rom aLearning to eLearning to zLearning - a good idea, but I think Donald Clark missed the mark on a few letters. Like rLearning, which he says must be 'Redundant Learning', really (it seems to me) would be better suited for 'Rote Learning'. vLearning he calls 'Various Learning' but it should obviously be 'Virtual Learning'. xLearning he called 'Xenodochial Learning' but really should be 'eXtended Learning' as in TEDx, EdX, and xMOOCs. 'yLearning' should be 'You L:earning', 'uLearning' should be 'Ubiquitous Learning'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. More on Connectivism: a response to Stephen Downes.
Jon Dron has replied to my earlier response to him. There may be some good in it, but it is buried in layers of rudeness, pedantry and continued misunderstanding of my work. I don't have to respond to claims that my work is  "more of a specious attempt at sophistry than a serious attempt to further understanding," especially from the same person who commented he only "skimmed" my work, rather than reading it. I hope others find use in Dron's post; meanwhile I direct Dron to Connectivism and Connective Knowledge where he will learn what I actually think (for example, that the 'Groups versus Network' distinction has nothing to do with strong and weak ties). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Economics students call for shakeup of the way their subject is taught.
The students, I think, understand more than their professors. Economics students are saying that "the dominance of narrow free-market theories at top universities harms the world's ability to confront challenges such as financial stability and climate change" and are calling for a change in how economics is taught. "The crisis has laid bare the latent inadequacies of economic models. These models have failed to make sense of the sorts of extreme macro-economic events, such as crises, recessions and depressions, which matter most to society." Not to mention things like climate change and pervasive surveillance, to name a couple. Here is the students' manifesto. Via Sheri Oberman (thanks!). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Design a xMOOC / cMOOC Hybrid? LTCA Theory.
Matt Crosslin follows up an earlier post with an explanation of why he thinks it would be a good idea to build a cMOOC/xMOOC hybrid. He writes, "the idea of MOOC layers is really looking at a four pronged approach to the idea of teaching and learning as communicative actions using LTCA theory." This theory, he writes, is  being created by Scott Warren at North Texas, based Jurgen Habermas, and breaks learning down in to four majopr activities, some of which are subsumed by xMOOCs and some by cMOOCs. More...