By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What’s the difference between skills and competencies?
Sarah Beckett, HRSG, 2015/08/14

According to Sarah Beckett, skills represent the 'what' while competencies represent the 'how'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning Styles, Mindsets, and Adaptive Strategies
Matt Bury, matbury.com, 2015/08/14

This is a really nice contribution in support of the concept of learning styles that reinterpretings it away from the 'fixed mindset' model, where styles are more like innate properties of a person, and toward a 'growth perspective', where learning styles can change and develop as a person matures. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Time For Change
Julia M. Stasch, MacArthur Foundation, 2015/08/13

The president of the MacArthur Foundation announces a significant change of direction. "In the future, we will work primarily through programs and projects that are larger in scale, time-limited in nature, or designed to reach specific objectives. We will place less emphasis on program areas with an indefinite lifespan". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Pedagogy Behind MOOCs: What eLearning Professionals Should Know
Marisa Keramida, e-Learning Industry, 2015/08/13

From the intro: "What are the peculiarities of designing an online course that addresses to such a big audience? What does it mean in terms of instructional design? And is there an ideal pedagogy behind MOOCs". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. An Obstacle to the Ubiquitous Adoption of OER in US Higher Education
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2015/08/12

I don't want to be the sort of person who always says "I said this first", but I would be remiss in not pointing out that the solution advocated here by David Wiley was the central recommendation, oft-repeated, of my paper on OERs written for OECD in Malmo. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Random Thoughts on Passive Learning and Lectures
Karl Kapp, Kapp Notes, 2015/08/12

Let's begin here: “Passivity isn’t wrong because it’s boring; it’s wrong because it doesn’t work.” The post is on lectures and it surveys the evidence. But in an inference like this I tend to ask whether we understand the premise. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Is It Really Possible to Re-do Ed Tech From Scratch?
Matt Crosslin, EduGeek Journal, 2015/08/12

As Matt Crosslin summarizes, "Jesse Stommel and Sean Michael Morris asked an interesting question at Hybrid Pedagogy a couple of days ago: 'Imagine that no educational technologies had yet been invented — no chalkboards, no clickers, no textbooks, no Learning Management Systems, no Coursera MOOC. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teaching with the Internet; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Google In My Classroom
Adeline Koh, Hybrid Pedagogy, 2015/08/12
"Why is it that although as educators we largely understand that there are valid criticisms of the lecture format, that we continue to reproduce that format whenever we meet professionally?" Adeline Koh is here questioning the use of lectures as keynote addresses at conferences, and actually presents one where she has people do a literature exercise in small groups. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Classroom Blogging Options (August 2015)
Wesley A. Fryer, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, 2015/08/12

It has been a while since I ran a good 'blogging in schools' post, but the activity - and the advice - still makes as much sense today as it did in the heyday of blogging. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Perspective and Empathy
Maggie Hos-McGrane, Tech Transformation, 2015/08/12

This diagram has been making the rounds in social media recently (reminding me that I wish Facebook would remember what I've seen and not show me the same memes over and over). More...