By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. AutismFather is creating A Safe Minecraft Community for Children with Autism
Stuart Duncan, Patreon, 2016/02/09

This is a fundraising page (where people pledge to contribute monthly, rather than one large donation all at once) for a Minecraft community that has been created for children with autism, Autcraft (Facebook). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Internet is a Global Public Resource
Mark Surman, Mozilla Blog, 2016/02/09

The Mozilla Foundation's Mark Surman writes a longish post describing access to the internet as a basic right, akin to access to food, water or shelter. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. It’s not Cyberspace anymore
Danah Boyd, Points, 2016/02/09
Dana boyd has a short but effective 'Fear and Loathing in Davos' moment in this article laamenting the passing of John Perry Barlow's 'A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' into a regime where "not only was everyone attached to their iPhones and Androids, but companies like Salesforce and Palantir and Facebook took over storefronts." Sure. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. When the scaffolding shifts under your feet
Giulia Forsythe, G-LOG, 2016/02/09
Is this true? Sean Michael Morris writes "Any effort on my part to scaffold (and effort to scaffold learning at all) would be colonial, patriarchal, and disempowering." It's a challenge that flies in the face of the educational enterprise as a whole (and especially the learner-empowering constructivists who employ scaffolding as a proxy for didacticism). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Creating an Infrastructure for Open Access
Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed, 2016/02/08
According to Barbara Fister, Rebecca Kennison and Lisa Norberg have come up with a plan "to build a new system for funding humanities and social sciences publishing that would make it open to all while preserving it for the future." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OpenStax already saved students $39 million this academic year
Press Release, Rice University, 2016/02/08

The data is coming in, and it is as expected: open access saves students money. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Report: Make Textbooks Affordable
Ethan Senack, Robert Donoghue, Student PIRGs, 2016/02/08

I'll just quote the key findings from this report (24 page PDF) and let them speak for themselves:

• Almost one-third (30%) of students replied that they had used financial aid to pay for their textbooks.
• For those that used financial aid, the amount of financial aid dollars they put toward purchasing textbooks was more than $300 on average per semester.
• Textbook prices disproportionately impact community college students. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why kids — now more than ever — need to learn philosophy. Yes, philosophy.
Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, 2016/02/05

If you read this more closely (like a philosopher would) you can see that what Valerie Strauss really means here is that kids should be taught how to reason more effectively. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. On Old School Social Bookmarking
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2016/02/05

Interesting look back at what we used to call 'social bookmarking' - that's where you record the URLs of interesting links and then 'tag' them with meaningful (to you) words and phrases. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Vancouver’s Just10 launches privacy oriented, ad free social network
Terry Dawes, CanTech Letter, 2016/02/05

I'm thinking 'no' but I still want to send this along, because the service might succeed after all. More...