By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Is there a Canadian market for American online programs?
Tony Bates, online learning and distance edcuation resources, 2014/09/18
Really good article from Tony Bates that comprehensively answers the question in the title. It begins with a dead-on accurate remark about hiring consultants, and then explains why the Canadian higher education market is what they call 'mature'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Open Education Professional Directory
Various authors, Open Education Consortium, 2014/09/18
If you're looking for speakers, consultants or experts to assist you with issues related to open educational resources, you can't do better than the The Open Education Professional Directory. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Moocs are free – but for how much longer?
Chris Parr, Times Higher Education, 2014/09/02
You can't just say “Moocs have started out as a free opportunity – and free is a great way to get people interested,” as Stanford's John Mitchell does. MOOC means free. If academia wants to charge tuition for instruction, I won't complain, since academia has been doing that for 2,500 years. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster, Coordinator of Scholarly Communications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Richard Poynder, Open, Shut, 2014/09/02
Long, interesting, and important essay by Richard Poynder on open access (20 page PDF). The context is an interview with Paul Royster (pictured), who has established the second largest institutional repository in the US at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with some 60K open access works. A great accomplishment. But he is surprised to see it attacked by open access advocates. "He was startled to hear SPARC announce to delegates that henceforth the sine qua non of open access is that a work has to be made available with a CC BY licence or equivalent attached... the OA movement no longer views what he is doing as open access."
Well, I've had this argument with people before. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Educator’s Guide to LiveBinders
Justin Stallings, The Edublogger, 2014/09/02
Overview of what looks like a really interesting tool, Livebinders. "To accommodate this ever evolving world of information, teachers and students both need an online tool where they can collect, share, reflect, and grow from their learning. This is where a tool like LiveBinders comes in. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Community Source Is Dead
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2014/09/02

I've never been a proponent of what is sometimes called 'community source' (but which is really a closed federation posturing as though it were some sort of open source). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reflecting on reflection
Harold Jarche, 2014/09/02
I have often described the 'Downes Theory of Education' (which is not original to me, and which is too simple to be called a theory) as follows: "To teach is to model and demonstrate; to learn is to practice and reflect." So much writing focuses on the first pair of activities; the bulk of educational literature is focused on how to teach. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The challenges of open data: emerging technology to support learner journeys
Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu.org, 2014/09/02
One of the consequences of an outcomes-driven competency-based education system is that it creates the risk of running through the gamut of issues surrounding metadata that characterized the development of online learning resources. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Malawi app 'teaches UK pupils 18 months of maths in six weeks'
Spencer Kelly, BBC News, 2014/09/08

There's all kinds of ways this can be an overstatement and that the results in widespread practice would be nowhere near the test case (or not long-lasting, nor not transferable, or some such thing). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Twitpic is shutting down
Press Release, TwitPic, 2014/09/08
I don't know whether Twitpic is actually shutting down or whether this is just posturing to get Twitter to pack down, but either way it demonstrates how we can't depend on web service providers to have our interests in mind when they begin fighting (as they always do) among themselves. More...