By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. From Written to Digital: The New Literacy by Phillip Ventimiglia and George L. Pullman
Helge Scherlund, Helge Scherlund's eLearning news blog, 2016/04/13

Summary and review of this book on digital literacy. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to Build an Engaged Event Community
DoubleDutch, 2016/04/13

Relatively light (11 page PDF) but generally useful guide on the use of social media to support an event. The publishers produce event apps, so they have an interest in this, but it doesn't appear until the last page. And they capture the pain point nicely: "56% of marketers still list the ‘inability to tie engagement to business outcomes’ as the largest pain point of measuring social media ROI." I agree. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Great Leaders Embrace Office Politics
Michael Chang Wenderoth, Harvard Business Review, 2016/04/11
So says the Harvard Business Review: "There is strong evidence that our work ratings, bonuses, and promotions are weakly correlated to actual performance — in fact, performance may even matter less to our success than our political skills and how we are perceived by those who make the decisions." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Does neuron ‘feedback’ let the brain trick us?
Jocelyn Duffy, Futurity, 2016/04/11
"Seeing something that isn’t really there could be your brain reacting to feedback between neurons in different parts of the visual system, according to new research.... it signifies that studying neuronal feedback is important to our understanding of how the brain works to process stimuli." This is interesting. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Linking online identities and content in connectivist MOOCs across multiple social media platforms
Anatoliy Gruzd, Ryerson University | Social Media Lab, 2016/04/11

I love the colourful diagrapm that accompanies this post. And the content is pretty good too. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Building the Goodwill of Networks
Simon Terry, 2016/04/11

I'm not sure exactly what to make of this post. Sure, the author points to a series of problems that plague network behaviour, from the problem of noise, to requests for information that can be found in the manual, to unclear requests, to people making requests without providing responses of their own. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Creative Learning and the Future of Work
J. Philipp Schmidt, Mitchel Resnick, Joi Ito, Mit, 2016/04/06

Good article, with a focus on the '4Ps' of creative learning (quoted):

• Projects - We learn best when we are actively working on projects - generating new ideas, designing prototypes, making improvements, and creating final products.
• Peers - Learning flourishes as a social activity, with people sharing ideas, collaborating on projects, and building on one another’s work.
• Passion - When we focus on things we care about, we are likely to work longer and harder, to persist in the face of challenges, and to learn more in the process.
• Play - Learning involves playful experimentation — trying new things, tinkering with materials, testing boundaries, taking risks, iterating again and again. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The scholarship of teaching and learning: what works, and why
Jessica Riddell, University Affairs, 2016/04/06

One acronym, which I kept reading in two senses:

• SoTL - State of the Literature
• SoTL - Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Self Determination Theory
Various authors, Self Determination Theory, 2016/04/06

I was talking about this topic over lunch and then Jon Dron came up with a slide pointing to this site during his talk. Essentially, intrinsic motivation exists only if there is autonomy, competence and relatedness. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. First steps in integrating LATs OER into Moodle open book
David T. Jones, The Weblog of (a) David Jones, 2016/04/04
This post is a little bit 'inside baseball' but it explores the sort of question that's becoming more significant to us as we accelerate development of our personal learning environment, so it's interesting to me. Something typical: "Ahh, broken link.  The IMS version links back to Blackboard.  The equivalent web version has the open link." Bleah. More...