By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ubiquitous Learning Project Using Life - logging Technology in Japan
Noriko Uosaki, Bin Hou, Mengmeng Li, Hiroaki Ogata, Kosuke Mouri, Songran Liu, Educational Technology & Society, May 22, 2014
You may not think that life-logging and online learning are linked, but if you think of online learning as a ubiquitous services that learns from your every move, you can see how tightly the two may be linked. This paper presents a system called SCROLL (System for Capturing and Reusing of Learning Log). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Evolution of Cooperation
Robert Axelrod, May 23, 2014
From the perspective of game theory, Robert Axelrod asks, "Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?" Cooperation can develop even among people with competing agendas (as in, for example, a war). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Amazing Starling Flocks Are Flying Avalanches
Brandon Keim, Wired, May 23, 2014
I'm giving a talk on MOOC research on Friday, and while I've previously documented my thoughts on research methods (or the lack of same) the question nonetheless occurred to me, "how do you research chaotic systems like MOOCs?" Analytics aren't really useful, as numbers and quantities are essentially meaningless. Then I wondered, how do scientists research murmurations? These are flocks of songbirds that act as one fluid whole, like a network. More...