A foundational badge system design
Carla Casilli, Persona, March 23, 2014

One of the isssues with a badge system is granularity. On the one hand companies and institutions want large-objective top-down locked badges. On the other hand, individuals and small groups want more fine-grained flexible badges that can be created and awarded on the fly. This proposal addresses that by creating a three-tier interlocked badge system compliant with Mozilla's badge architecture. More...

Memorandum of Understanding on Open Educational Resources
Various authors, Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, March 23, 2014

By email from Paul Stacey: "The Premiers of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan (the three most western provinces) have released a Memorandum of Understanding on Open Education Resources, which will see the three provinces work together to make higher education more affordable by developing Open Education Resources within their advanced education sectors." As he say there's not much to it (the third page of the PDF is completely blank) but it of course serves as the sprringboard for further activities and initiatives. More...

The Rise of MOOCs: Past Successes, Future Challenges
Stephen Downes, March 24, 2014, ICT advisory board meeting, Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization, Tunis, Tunisia

(Photos: Demetrios Sampson)

In this presentation I outline the major influences leading to the development of MOOCs, including learning objects and open educational resources. I then describe the basis for the creation of our original connectivist MOOCs, describe the learning theory behind them, and review attribues of a number of cMOOCs over the years. Finally I develop the concept of the personal learning environment as it is being implemented in our LPSS program.

[Link] [Slides] [Audio]. More...

Creative Commons engage Cetis to co-lead the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
Press Release, CETIS, March 17, 2014

From the press release: "Cetis has been commissioned by Creative Commons to help manage the third phase of the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI). The project, which builds on the work of Schema.org, aims to support the discovery of relevant education resources on the web." I'm not sure how exactly Creative Commons ended up doing learning resource metadata (I remember the heady days of a few years ago when it was done by organizations like IMS and ADL; now LRMI is co-led by Creative Commons and the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP)). More...

Online university courses can't change the world alone
Gayle Christensen, Brandon Alcorn, New Scientist, March 17, 2014

According to New Scientist, "Ultimately, MOOCs are not by themselves a mechanism for development but require certain levels of education and technology. They are reaching millions of people around the world, but to truly revolutionize access, improvements in the broader education and technology ecosystem are vital." I guess this is true, but would be true of any form of education. More...

How To Think
Shane Parrish, Farnham Street, March 17, 2014

Doug Belshaw shared this piece over the weekend and while I think it's an inspirational story I think that it's misleading in a fairly pernicious way. In a nutshell, the basis of the story lies in describing the methods used by an inner-city school with poor and minority students to create chess champions out of them; all the other champion schools, we are informed, are private or elite school. More...

Serious Elearning Manifesto
Michael Allen, March 17, 2014

For those who waited with bated breath for the release of the 'Serious E-Learning manifesto' and then (like me) missed the carefully timed launch because they were doing other things, well, here it is, fresh from last Friday. More...

Instructivism, constructivism or connectivism?
Ryan Tracey, E-Learning Provocateur, March 21, 2014
I think this is a really good post even if I disagree with it. The premise is that while popular perception sees constructivism as replacing instructivism, and connectivism as replacing constructivism, in reality each of them has its place, and they should be viewed as complementary approaches rather than in conflict. So why do I disagree? Because while as pedagogies it is easy to imagine them being alternated, as theories they contradict each other. More...

Journeys of the Mind: Yes, We Went to the Moon

Bonnie Bracey Sutton, educational technology & change, March 13, 2014

I watched what I assume was the first episode of the New Cosmos series with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and had the usual reaction for people my age to the effect that he is not Carl Sagan. More...

Does teaching presence matter in a MOOC?
Terry Anderson, Virtual Canuck, March 13, 2014

Terry Anderson reports on a studty of a Coursera MOOC showing "that teacher presence had no significant relation to course completion, most badges awarded, intent to register in subsequent MOOCs or course satisfaction." This may concern teachers, but one of the aims of the MOOCs we've designed is to support presence with student-student interaction. More...