Udacity Official Declares MOOCs ‘Dead’ (Though the Company Still Offers Them)
Jeffrey R. Young , EdSurge, 2017/10/16
Udacity's latest word on MOOCs, reported first by Economic Times in India: “Our mission is to bring relevant education which advances people in careers and socio-economic activities, and MOOCs aren't the way.” I don't think that's an accurate statement of Udacity's mission. I think that what drives the company is investor demands for profits. Really, I don't know why for-profit companies bother with a mission statement that says anything else, because we all know that they're in it for the money, nothing else - that's not a criticism, just a statement of fact. More...

Celebrating ORCID@5 with the launch of new resources!
Laura Wilkinson, 2017/10/16
ORCiD is an identification system for scholars and researchers, and is often used in journals to establish unique identity. This is useful because different researchers often have the same name (in my case there's another Stephen Downes who works in philosophy of mind - very confusing). More...

The crowdsourcing fallacy
Jake Orlowitz, Wikimedia, 2017/10/16

Jake Orlowitz makes the important point thta crowdsourcing isn't simply about assembling a crowd. More...

Pedagogical Principles of Design for Active, Reflective and Self-Regulated Learning
Stephen Downes, Oct 16, 2017.

Session summaries from the World Conference on Online Learning, Toronto. More...

The medium is the message
Harold Jarche, 2017/10/23
This is about right. "The web started as a text-based medium but has flipped into a new form of broadcast television... Social networks, though, have since colonized the web for television’s values." Not only that. Contrary to connections and organization, it is the mass that is valued in Facebook and Twitter. More...

Redefining "failure"
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2017/10/23
I wisbh we could redefine 'success'. In the current world it has to do with mass - accumulating money, accumulating fame (or likes, or followers), accumulating possessions. This makes success scarce, and as Alastair Creelman says, "If success is so rare, then partial success or a lack of success are the norm." And it's often arbitrary. More...

Gaming the system
Brian Koerber, Mashable, 2017/10/23
I love YouTube but what I don't love are advertisements on YouTibe. That's because they convert the platform from being about user-generated content to commercial publication scams designed to game the system - or worse. This time I'm afraid it's worse. More...

How Money Became the Measure of Everything
Eli Cook, The Atlantic, 2017/10/23
This story documents the conversion of the social order from one based on people to one based on money (and especially the accumulation of masses of money). It's not something that just happened; it is the result of years of media pressure. More...

À l’heure de l’industrie 4.0 et au moment où les besoins de recrutement sont très forts, quelles sont les compétences nouvelles attendues et les parcours des salariés qui entrent dans l’industrie ?
Dans la continuité de la conférence sur les Métiers demain organisée le 23 mars dernier, les structures labellisées Orientation tout au long de la vie de Sarthe Centre organisent une table-ronde :

L’industrie et ses transformations :
quelles sont les compétences nouvelles, les parcours et les formations ?

Jeudi 11 janvier 2018

Vous êtes professionnel de l’orientation et de la formation ou enseignant et souhaitez actualiser votre connaissance du secteur de l’industrie, cette action est faite pour vous. Plus...