By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. No. 8 aha moment: web 2.0 will change everything in online learning
Tony Bates, online learning, and , distance education resources, March 25, 2013
The latest in his series of 'aha moments' from Tony Bates, this one enters more familiar territory: "web 2.0 will change everything in online learning." So what does that mean. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MTOPs: Micro-Targeted Online Programs - (The Anti-MOOC?)
Joshua Kim , Inside Higher Ed, March 25, 2013
Asking, "Why should MOOCs get all the ink?," Joshua Kim describes the "anti-MOOC", an "online (or blended) program with 50 or fewer students per year, Narrowly focused, with a specialized curriculum and student demand profile...." etc. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. If you like learning, could I recommend analytics?
Bill Jerome, e-Literate, March 25, 2013
Quick summary of learning analytics. I like the tack taken, as Bill Jerome begins by emphasizing that there aren't easy analytics to be had (at least, not in learning). "Don’t get me wrong," he writes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Coursera composition course
Laura Gibbs, Google+, March 22, 2013
I have said in the past that the xMOOCs like those offered by Coursera will need to become more like connectivist courses over time. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What I wish Tim Berners-Lee understood about DRM
Cory Doctorow, The Guardian, March 22, 2013

Cory Doctorow takes Tim Berners-Lee to the woodshed on DRM in web standards. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New Adblock Plus Doesn’t Need No Stinking Google Play Store
Scott Gilbertson, WebMonkey, March 22, 2013
What bothers me is that I was enjoying my new Android phone and gushing over its features, and then Google has to go all anti-competitive what with shutting down Reader, opposing RSS, and of course kicking the very useful Ad Blocker off the play store. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. IndieAuth: Sign in with your domain name
IndieAuth, March 18, 2013
Here we go: "This is an IndieAuth login prompt. To use it, you'll need to:

• Add a link on your home page to your various social profiles (Twitter, Github, etc) with the attribute rel="me"
• Ensure your profiles link back to your home page.

Read the full setup instructions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Centralized Collection and Control of Personal Data
Arvind Narayanan, March 18, 2013
Presentation and paper from Air Mozilla on the subject of distributed authentication. "While the Internet was conceived as a decentralized network, the most widely used web applications today tend toward centralization. Control increasingly rests with centralized service providers..." The paper argues that decentralized authentication faces difficult hurdles. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Source Project Mimics Yahoo Pipes on Your Own Machine
Klint Finley, Wired, March 18, 2013

One of the problems with Yahoo Pipes or IFTTT is that they can turn it off whenever they feel like it - this is what happened to people using IFTTT with twitter recently. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Who Owns a MOOC?
Ry Rivard, Inside Higher Ed, March 19, 2013

IPR follies and MOOCs. Faculty in California have a hard-won right to own their own academic material. More...