By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ai in Learning Thought Paper
Marek Hyla, SlideShare, 2018/12/16
On slide 16 of this 30 slide deck Marek Hyla asks the key question, "How will AI be placed in learning?" His answer: "AI has the potential to make learning accessible to more people," he writes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Serverlessness
Tim Bray, Ongoing, 2018/12/16

This is the cover page for a five part series on the subject. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sharing MOOC resources - whatever happened to open?
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2018/12/16
"I really thought the whole idea was to share expertise and make education available to everyone," says Alastair Creelman. But it "is sad to see that the MOOC movement, built on the concept of openness, has resulted in silos of locked content that may in the future be unlocked to those willing to pay for membership." I agree. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. If we’re serious about lifelong learning and re-framing learning around the creation of new knowledge through action, it will require us to re-think our educational institutions from the ground up.
John Hagel, Edge Perspectives, 2018/12/21
"If we’re serious about lifelong learning and re-framing learning around the creation of new knowledge through action, it will require us to re-think our educational institutions from the ground up," writes John Hagel. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blockchain Could Rewire Higher Ed. But Should It?
Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge, 2018/12/21

This post contains the most unusual explanation of blockchain I've seen. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The 'Future Book' Is Here, but It's Not What We Expected
Craig Mod, Wired, 2018/12/21

The main point the author wants to make is that, despite all the technology, the book hasn't really changed. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Aggregated knowledge from a small number of debates outperforms the wisdom of large crowds
Joaquin Navajas, Tamara Niella, Gerry Garbulsky, Bahador Bahrami, Mariano Sigman, arXiv, 2018/12/21
This paper (27 page PDF) looks at alternative methods of obtaining a consensus from a group of people (aka 'the wisdom of crowds'). While it's true that a crowd can outperform an individual, the authors suggest that dividing the crowd into small groups of five, and having the five come to a consensus, can when averaged produce better results than average produced by the large crowd. More...