By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the Pursuit of Quality Education for All: A Statement of Support from Education International and ASCD
ASCD, Education International, 2016/02/17
In my email today: "ASCD and Education International (EI) ... are calling for a clear definition of quality education that places the needs of the child at the fore." From the press release you can link to this declaration, which piggybacks on the U.N. declaration to advance their own agenda (they don't even link to it). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Personal and Personalized Learning
Stephen Downes, Feb 17, 2016.

It may be preferably to embrace an alternative to personalized learning, which might be called personal learning. In the case of personal learning, the role of the educational system is not to provide learning, it is to support learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Proceedings of the European Stakeholder Summit on experiences and best practices in and around MOOCs (EMOOCS 2016)
Mohammad Khalil, Martin Ebner, Michael Kopp, Anja Lorenz, Marco Kalz, ResearchGate, 2016/02/16
This is the full collection of papers from the European MOOCs Stakeholders Summit. If it had been up to me, I probably wouldn't have crammed all these papers into one single PDF, since you're faced with an all-or-nothing download (as I with an all-or-nothing decision about linking). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Shaping the Future of the Internet
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2016/02/16

Set in the context of the Winter 2016 issue of the arts journal Dædalus (only the editorial is open access) dedicated to the internet, this article explores the changing future of the internet, and specifically, notes its not-so-subtle drift from being an open platform for innovation to a closed platform dominated by a few huge players. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Coursera Pilots Mentor-Guided Courses
Dhawal Shah, Class Central, 2016/02/16

In its ongoing effort to make MOOCs more and more like traditional education, Coursera has launched 'mentor-guided courses' for the cost of $US 248. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Boys play with dolls, and girls play with spaceships. Someone tell the toy makers.
Rebecca Hains, Washington Post, 2016/02/16
I think of this as an education issue, not a toy issue. Games and toys are among the most important educational devices we build. And so I wonder why it is so important for toy builders in the United States to create completely separate lines of toys for boys and girls. More...

Comment valoriser l’alternance pour en faire, aux yeux de tous, une filière d’excellence ? Voilà la question à laquelle ont tenté de répondre les master classes de l’alternance organisées par Opcalia le 1er mars à Nantes.
Si l’alternance n’est plus considérée comme une voie de rattrapage, la méconnaissance, par le grand public, de ses caractéristiques (étendue de l’offre de formation, conditions d’accès, rémunération…) contribue à ne pas la voir encore comme une voie d’excellence. Voir l'article...

Le numérique et son impact sur les métiers, la formation et la relation formation-emploi, tel était le thème de la conférence-débat organisée par l’Association française pour le développement de l’enseignement technique (Afdet) des Pays de la Loire le 2 mars dernier. Voir l'article...