By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MOOCs And Privacy, German Fears About Online Student Data
Hannes Grassegger, Johannes Boie, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2015/12/14

This is a retelling of the dispute between mathaematics professor Paul-Olivier Dehaye and Coursera. Dehaye, you may recall, is the instructor who pulled all his materials from Coursera mid-course. This telling of the story is a lot friendlier to Dehaye. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 2016 – the year of MOOC hard questions
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2015/12/11

Martin calls these "hard questions" for MOOCs, but to me they're an indication of how deeply the concept of open online learning has been co-opted. Consider:

• "Now we are seeing pricing models for MOOCs, it turns out that in order to amass enough credits for a degree, you’d end up paying quite a lot."
• "Surprise! They’re not that cheap, particularly because unis often want them to be showcase products..."
• "iTunes brand trumped the University one effectively.... I think a similar ‘MOOC platform trumps university brand’ battle may arise with MOOCs."
• "the typical demographic of MOOCs being highly qualified, independent learners from a well off background."

So, maybe all these re issues. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Making Space for Inquiry-Focused Maker Spaces at School
Camille Rutherford, 2015/12/11
Camille Rutherford writes, "the maker movement in education is founded upon inquiry-based learning within a hands-on focused environment. Consequently, maker education should be considered an evolution of constructivist philosophy that views learning as a highly personal endeavor that is student-driven and requires educators to act as inquiry facilitator rather than simply a disseminator of knowledge". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Relating the Learning Ecosystem to other Ecosystems
Wendy Wickham, In the Middle of the Curve, 2015/12/11

This is just a snapshot, some thoughts in the process of being thought, illustrating the sort of thinking people should be thinking in today's learning environment. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Creatures avoiding planks planks_blog
Hardmaru, 大トロ, 2015/12/10

What we have here are sim creatures equipped with nothing more than neural networks for brains. They live in an environment filled with dangerous planks. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Create cognitive plugins for Minecraft with Bluemix, Docker, and Watson
Kyle Brown, IBM Developer Works, 2015/12/10
OK, this is really really brilliant, but it will take a lot of brainpower to comprehend and even more to follow the instructions and make the whole thing work. But the concept behind what's happening here must not be passed by, and knowledge of some of the mechanics is essential to understanding the new world of applications programming. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Johann Friedrich Herbart
Alan Kim, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015/12/10
Some good stuff in this new article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and some dead ends. The subject is Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), "known today mainly as a founding figure of modern psychology and educational theory." Herbart argues that "consciousness is nothing more than the continuous stream of representations." What are these representations. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. When Personalized Learning Gets Too Personal: Google Complaint Exposes Student Privacy Concerns
Dawn Chmielewski, Re/Code, 2015/12/10
In this item, "a United States Federal Trade Commission complaint filed last week by the Electronic Frontier Foundation accusing Google of collecting and using personal student information for non-education purposes and in violation of its K-12 Student Privacy Pledge." More...