Accenture and Microsoft give millions of refugees digital IDs
BBC News, 2017/06/21
I have nothing against digital identities (provided we can have more than one of them, and provided we can choose our own usernames and email addresses). But this practoce of experimenting with new technology on disaster victms should stop. More...

New Study Shows the Impact of PBL on Student Achievement
Nell K. Duke, Anne-Lise Halvorsen, Edutopia, 2017/06/21
When I was in school my favourite and most impactful learning was project-based learning. So I've had a soft spot for it ever since. More...

Innovation Starts At Home…?
Tony Hirst, OUInfo, 2017/06/20
This commentary from Tony Hirst is true not only of OU but also of every large organization - public secort and private sector - I have ever encountered. With size comes control. More...

Whither Moodle?
Phil Hill, e-Literate, 2017/06/20
"The trajectory of Moodle new implementations (higher education degree-granting institutions moving from another LMS to Moodle as the primary LMS) is striking," writes Phil Hill. What's striking, of course, is the downward momentum, trending toward zero. More...

Meet Matter Seven
Ben Werdmuller, Medium, 2017/06/20
Ben Werdmuler: "Unlike most journalism, these stories are two-way: you can reply to the journalist and have a conversation. And unlike most conversational platforms, you’re always talking to a real person, not a bot. More...

Facebook and Twitter are being used to manipulate public opinion – report
Alex Hern, The Guardian, 2017/06/20
From where I sit, this is a case of the latest centralized news media being used for the same purpose centralized news media have always been used: to, um, educate the public. 'The reports... cover nine nations including Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States. More...

To study real thinking, scientists shouldn’t give easy tasks
Mike Williams-Rice, Futurity, 2017/06/20
I've prefaced a few of my talk recently with some caveats about models. The selection of a model, I argue, presupposes the ouycome of the research in which it is used. More...

A Model of Personal Learning (Take Two)
Stephen Downes, Jun 20, 2017, Learning Tech Day, Ghent, Belgium
In his talk, I look at the daily routine of a personal learner, filled with examples and demonstrations. Tagline during the whole talk will be Connectivism, the importance of a Personal Learning Network and the ARRFF model of learning activities (Aggregate Remodel Repurpose Feed Forward). More...

With a ‘students-first’ motto, can Udacity make ‘lifelong learning’ mainstream?
Harshith Mallya, Harshith Mallya, YourStory, 2017/06/19
There are two stories in this item. First is the story itself, which is about Udacity's presence in India, and its provision of "education across platforms from the web to its mobile app and even offline sessions and ‘hiring drives’, codenamed ‘Propel’." The second is the YourStory platform itself, which is basically an entrepreneur's network. More...