By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teaching in our right minds: critical digital pedagogy and the response to the new
Sean Michael Morris, Digital Pedagogy Lab, 2016/04/22
Good article again questioning the concept of 'rigor'. "In our collaborative article, “Beyond Rigor”, Jesse Stommel, Pete Rorabaugh, and I argue that: Intellectually rigorous work lives, thrives, and teems proudly outside conventional notions of academic rigor." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Learning for Smart Education
Christian M. Stracke, Slideshare, 2016/04/22

102 slide presentation (!) looking at a number of projects dedicated to open learning. It, however, takes a quality focus, defining 'open education' as "innovations for changing and opening up education to improve the quality." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Man Who Studies the Spread of Ignorance
Georgina Kenyon, BBC, 2016/04/22
Today's new word is 'agnotology', the deliberate spreading of ignorance. In internet and education technology, it has traditionally been known as FUD - "fear, uncertainty and doubt," which are the major means of manufacturing ignorance. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New Guide: How To Engage Your Supporters with Social Listening
Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog, 2016/04/22

I can't say I'm a great social listener. But if I were interested in promotion rather than, say, design or discovery, I would want to focus a lot more on it. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Acquisition Grammatical Categories Through Qur'anic Memorization
2016/04/22

This isn't a post about religious studies, but rather an examination of how much grammar people can learn without explicit instruction. And as Arika Okrent reports the answer is: quite a bit. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Bit More on the Personal API
Tom Woodward, Bionic Teaching, 2016/04/22

Good post on some of the challenges inherent in what has been called variously 'reclaim hosting' or 'personal API'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ed Tech Moonshot
Stephen Downes, Apr 21, 2016, , Arlington, Texas

This tongue-in-cheek title was used for the whole day of discussions George Siemens and I and guests had at the LINK center at the University of Texas in Arlington (Part One, Part Two, Part Three). This presentation was delivered impromptu to an assembled audience at noon. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Microsoft Joins the Club with ‘Classroom’ App and Office 365 Education Updates
Tony Wan, EdSurge, 2016/04/20

We have Google's Classroom, Apple's Classroom App, and now Microsoft's Classroom, free for Office 365 Education users. "Each Classroom is an online homepage where teachers can create student groups, distribute assignments and files, and share events and reminders via Outlook. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reconsidering Rigor in Schools
Mike Crowley, The Synapse, 2016/04/20
I've never been a fan of so-called 'rigor' in schools. This article makes the case against nicely as it reviews Thom Markham's description of "a demand for more personalized learning, brain-friendly environments, less recall and more thoughtful application of knowledge, optimal conditions for eliciting intelligent behaviors, constructivist tools, and respectful, caring relationships that honor the learner." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Worrisome Decline of Corporate Blogs
William Comcowich, CyberAlert, 2016/04/20

I know that blogging seems to some like a lost art, and I am away that I am expressing my inner curmudgeon when I take to that venerable form, but the fact is that there are are risks, for both myself and for corporations, in taking to social media as the primary means of expression. More...