By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Natural Verus Unnatural Learning
Jackie Gerstein, User Generated Education, 2016/02/22

It's tempting to want to support informal learning because formal learning is unnatura. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Composition over Inheritance
Mattias Petter Johansson, YouTube, Funfunfunction, 2016/02/19

This video is about software architecture, but there are some deep thoughts here - philosophical thoughts, even - about whether to structure your software functions based on inheritance or composition. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How Leaderless Groups End Up with Leaders
Srini Pillay, Harvard Business Review, 2016/02/19

Is 'leadership' just a figment of our imagination? Maybe not. I'm not sure I believe the conclusions drawn from this study. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. We have fetshised 'Leadership', we're all leaders now, rendering the word meaningless
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2016/02/19

A couple posts on leadership, just for fun. "We have fetishised the word 'Leader'," writes Donal Clark. "You're a leader, I'm a leader, we're all leaders now - rendering the very meaning of the word useless." Maybe. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A hands-on approach on botnets for a learning purpose
João Pedro Dias, Speaker Deck, 2016/02/19
A 'botnet' is a system where computer programs are surreptitiously placed onto computers connected to the internet which are later activated by a master computer program. They are used to send spam emails from a large number of unwitting hosts, thus increasing the number of messages sent and making them harder to identify and block for anti-spam software. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. In Defense of Essays
Martha Schulman, Gwen Hyman, Inside Higher Ed, 2016/02/19

Most of the writing I read is poor. This is equally true of academic writing and business communication. Part of it is because students graduate without good writing skills. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Inside the Artificial Universe That Creates Itself
Metafilter, 2016/02/19
Just to awe you a bit: "A team of programmers has built a self-generating cosmos, and even they don’t know what’s hiding in its vast reaches. Through the use of procedural generation, No Man’s Sky ensures that each planet will be a surprise, even to the programmers. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Amazon's Plans for OER
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2016/02/18
As Audrey Watters notes in this post, Silicon Valley is not helping (nor should be be relied upon) to solve the high cost of textbooks. For example, "what we might actually read from Jobs’ plans is less about a shift from 'expensive' to 'free' than a shift in power from governmental bodies to technology platforms as the locus of control." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The idea of the commons and the future of capitalism
Yochai Benkler, Creative Commons | YouTube, 2016/02/18

I listened to this on the way into the office this morning. It's quite a good talk that depicts the commons (as defined by, say, Creative Commons) as anew model of capitalism. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Encrypt
Various authors, Mozilla, 2016/02/17

"Choosing what's public and what's private allows you to be you." That's the tagline from this short video from Mozilla. It's part of an effort to make internet users more aware of personal privacy and security, and to support privacy-preserving mechanisms in web browsers and websites. More...