By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Free Arabic-language online courses thrive in popularity
Rahilla Zafar, Financial Times, 2016/11/23

Some nice news about MOOCs working as intended. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Patience, persistence, and a willingness to grow
George Couros, Connected Principals, 2016/11/23

There's this common belief among innovators and thought leaders that if other people do the same thing they did, they can achieve the same results. That's true to some extent - if you read and write newsletters for fifteen years like I did, you'll attain a similar base of knowledge. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Generations of service, love and respect
Unattributed, New Zealand Education Gazette, 2016/11/28

We don't see stories like this enough in the news. What's important here is not technology, content, or test scores, but the deliberate modeling of values educators would like to see carried on. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Trends in education: Facts, Fads and Fiction
Stephen Downes, Nov 26, 2016, Digital trends challenging learning and training in the workplace, Brussels, Belgium

This talk looks at a number of current trends in online learning and sorts then according to their likelihood of success. In general, those that depend on significant human intervention - such as, for example, creating competency definitions - are expected to be failures. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Flicking the switch: taking digital technology education further
Unattributed, New Zealand Education Gazette, 2016/11/21

This article describes some projects that support the new local digital technologies curriculum in New Zealand. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Students Pop in for Pop-Ups
Kasia Kovacs, Inside Higher Ed, 2016/11/21

I thought this was an interesting idea, so though the story is a few days old I thought it worth a mention. The idea of the pop-up - as in pop-up restaurant and pop-up store - is that it is occasion-specific and temporary. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Analytics Literacy is a Major Limiter of Ed Tech Growth
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2016/11/21

Substantial and weighty article from Michael Feldstein dealing with the topic of the day south of the border: the failure of analytics. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. With its new app, RadioPublic wants to tackle podcasting’s lingering challenges
Shan Wang, Nieman Lab, 2016/11/21
It's like Ed Radio, but written by real programmers and available to whole communities. RadioPublic has three objectives: "improving show discovery, improving how (and how deeply) listeners engage with their favorite shows, and improving channels through which show creators can make money." It was introduced Friday. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Post-Truth And Fake News
Stephen Downes, Nov 21, 2016.

Yes, by all means, do something about the fake news that is propagating through Facebook and Twitter. But let's not forget that we have been in the post-truth era for some time. More...