By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. This Is Why Your Newspaper Is Dying
Scott Beale, Laughing Squid, July 31, 2011.
Dolors Reig shares this on Google+, and I've seen it making the rounds. That's probably because it's accurate - newspapers have yet to understand the web form - and because it is transferable to other domains, such as education. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Introducing Trapit Education!
Ethan Siegal, The Daily Trap, October 28, 2012.
Ethan Siegal sent me this link and I've been using Trapit for a few days now. It has a few quirks (clicking the 'x' removes the article, not the Trapit frame the way other link sites function) but the interface is elegant and it seems to be finding me resources I mind not otherwise see. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. WeMo: a Wonderful Way to add Visual Cues to Organize Your Life
Vicki A. Davis, Cool Cat Teacher Blog, November 2, 2012
Yesterday I talked about FunF, which connects data from a variety of different sources to your information landscape. Today I link to this discussion from Vicki Davis of WeMo, which is a set of devices and an application to let you manage your personal appliances. Basically, weMo provides a plug-in switch controlled remotely by the application. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Udacity snags $15M to continue its assault on higher education
Paul Sloan, CNet News.com, October 28, 2012.
From CNet News.com: "Udacity just raised $15 million in a financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz and existing investors Charles River Ventures and longtime entrepreneur Steve Blank All told, the company has raised $21.1 million. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. FunF
Alexander Hayes, Uberveillance, November 1, 2012.
If you're wondering what comes after MOOCs, it includes something like this ("The Funf Open Sensing Framework is an extensible sensing and data processing framework for mobile devices, developed at the MIT Media Lab. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What you would do with $1 million to inspire change in the world
Morton Bast, TED, May 31, 2013
Not that I would ever fit into the TED mindset, nor am I nominating myself, but it's still an interesting exercise. Were TED to give me a million dollars, I would put it in the bank and live on the interest. This would enable me to leave my job and do what I'm doing now, without the overhead, writing, thinking and speaking on issues related to learning and access to education, and working on projects like PLEs and MOOCs and open learning generally (anyone else with a million dollars is free to contribute should TED not recognize the wisdom of my plan). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Refactoring Coursera
Mike Caulfield, May 31, 2013
Now that we've had a year or so of 'disruptive technology' from the likes of Coursera, writes Mike Caulfield, it's time to take stock. The original premise of Coursera was massive enrollment, elite professors, streamlined technology, and open admission. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MOOCs, History and Context
Arthur Levine, Inside Higher Ed, April 29, 2013
This is a bit of an odd article, describing as it does the history of post-secondary education in an America-centric and sonetimes inconsistent manner. The term "Democracy's College", for example, is a parochialism that misrepresents both college and democracy. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. You didn’t make the Harlem Shake go viral—corporations did
Kevin Ashton, Quartz, April 1, 2013
You are probably aware of the Harlem Shake, which I was told the other day has replaced Gangnam Style (and to which I responded "no-o-o-o..."). We are supposed to believe it's a grassroots meme (and not a product of the K-Pop industry, etc). But according to this article, it's manufactured hype. And they make a good case. More...