Vienna Photos
This may be my best collection of photos to date, so I hope you'll take the time to have a look. Remember that all my photos are licensed under Creative Commons, and you may use them without charge for any non-commercial purpose. More...

Proposal For a Universal Lifelong Learning Credit System
Ronny De Winter, Class Central, 2018/09/06
The old standbys never really disappear. The idea of a single credit standard has been around for as long as I have, which I regret to say, is a long time. The basis for the current proposal. More...

Shuls: Do Charter Schools Take Districts’ Money? Only If You Think Children, & the Funding That Comes With Them, Are District Property
Laura Fay, The 74, 2018/09/06
This is a crass piece of propaganda that needs to be called out as such. It is written in response to the oft-made argument that private schools drain resources from the existing public school system. Laura Fay writes, "How would you respond if you stumbled across a headline that asked, 'How much do farmers markets cost Walmart?' It’s a ridiculous question." Yes, stated that way, it's ridiculous. More...

For safety’s sake, we must slow innovation in internet-connected things
Martin Giles, Technology Review, 2018/09/06
This story relates the views of internet security expert Bruce Schneier, "who fears lives will be lost in a cyber disaster unless governments act swiftly." Even if I thought this would be a good idea (and I don't, really) I wonder how it could be implemented. Will everyone in the world simply agree to put down their digitl development tools? Probably not. More...

Build Your Own Learning Tools
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2018/09/06
Tony Hirst explores the idea of creative reusable learning resources with Jupyter Notebooks. Because: "the computational engine that is available to us when we present educational materials as live Jupyter notebooks means that we can build quite simple computational tools to extend the environment and allow students to interact with, and ask a range of questions of, the subject matter we are trying to engage them with." My question is, can we put them in an RSS feed and syndicate them. More...

Dan Pontefract: Open Thinking
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2018/09/06

Do you take the time to pause and reflect. Do you allow your mind to wander? Are you organized? Do you take account of facts? Are you willing to revisit a decision? Are you in charge of your focus? Are you acting with reserve and patience. More...

New online tool will equip Canadian teachers to better support students’ mental health
Erik Rolfsen, University of British Columbia, 2018/09/05
To be clear, I am really in favour of projects like this. Teach Mental Health is a free and open access course on teaching mental health. It's a follow-up to Bringing Mental Health to Schools for grades 7-12. It's a great topic, and the price is right. It started a couple of weeks ago but the resources are still available. It could do without the spamwall registration form, however. More...

Radical open-access plan could spell end to journal subscriptions
Holly Else, Nature, 2018/09/05
This is movement in the right direction. Eleven research funders in Europe have announced ‘Plan S’ "to make all scientific works free to read as soon as they are published." Not surprisingly, the publishers have begun to immediately protest. More...

Design Thinking Is Fundamentally Conservative and Preserves the Status Quo
Natasha Iskander, Harvard Business Review, 2018/09/05
I think Natasha Iskander has a point here. When I think of 'design thinking' I think of designing as a way to think out loud, exploring possibilities and seeing whether some wild idea will work at all. But that's not what it has become over the years. More...

25 Years of Ed Tech: Themes & Conclusions
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2018/09/05
Martin Weller wraps up his review of the recent history of ed tech with some review and conclusions. Some of the themes are no surprise at all - education is a slow-moving, conservative and ponderous industry that will resist pretty much any change that comes along. Meanwhile, proponents of ed tech come from other industries, don't know the history, and make the same mistakes over and over. And yet, despite this, innovation happens. More...