By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Drawing a line from @elgg to @withknown: an adventure in #edtech and #indieweb
Ben Werdmuller, Aug 06, 2014
I personally think that the line from Elgg to Known runs through Explode!, but that's not the way Ben Werdmuller tells it. "From the beginning, it was important to us that users got to control their own space," he writes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OLDaily Reader Survey
Stephen Downes, OLDaily, 2014/12/01
Do you read OLDaily? Would you like to send me your opinions? This is your chance! Click on the link to go to my 2014 OLDaily reader survey and let me know what you think. Thanks!

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Campus Tech 2014: Reinventing Higher Education
Tara E. Buck, Ed Tech, Jul 30, 2014
I like data as much as the next person. Probably more. But I'm fussy. And while I'm impressed by 3 billion data points in EdX, I first of all know that this is a relatively small amount of data, only a fraction of the actual reading and learning that happens online, and that it is a terribly unrepresentative sample, coming from only one platform representing only one approach. But based on the Universal Theory of the Social Sciences ("every person is like the students taking my class") we obtain some generalizations. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ed tech promoters need to understand how most of us learn
Annie Murphy Paul, The Hechinger Report, Jul 28, 2014
This article dredges up the straw men arguments offered by Paul Kirschner et.al. against self-directed learning: people don't know enough about the subject to make good choices, people choose to learn what they like rather than what they need, and the making of choices interferes with learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Feed WordPress 101: The Basics
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, Jul 15, 2014
This is the first of a five part series providing an overview of content syndication as it relates to WordPress. This is an essential component of a cMOOC-type course using WordPress. This first section covers the basic concepts of syndication, and so is appropriate for a wider audience. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 25 Tips to Turbo Charge Your Leadership with Evernote
Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org, Jul 15, 2014
I don't use Evernote, but that's only because I have my own systems (especially gRSShopper) for doing a lot of what Evernote does. But I would be the first to recommend it as a productivity tool (not just for 'leaders' - that whole 'leadership' jargon thing is getting out of hand). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Desire2Wha?
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, Jul 22, 2014
This will be (I hope) the last of the posts on D2L's name change. This post from Michael Feldstein essentially expresses incredulity at the verbiage and scepticism about the business plan (to the point of questioning one of D2L's recent acquisitions). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes on the Personal Learning Environment at the LSE
Mark Johnson, Improvisation Blog, Jul 21, 2014
There's enough in this post to catch my eye for its different perspective (and yes, a perspective I don't agree with):

• first, the proposition that it is "ironic" that I would speak at the London School of Economics about shifting the locus of control from institutions "at one of the great institutions of the social sciences (from whom control might be wrested)," to which I respond in a comment
• the suggestion that PLEs failed because PLEX failed, even though ti was similar to things like the app stores
• a paper framing the questions he would ask me about the personal learning environment, since he and I are both still working on it
• the "technological reifications" of "idealised learning" are becoming "quite common, and becoming increasingly common in education: we should be worried about this"
• the assertion that "Downes is stuck because he's obsessed with learning. Yet, all around him he's confronted by evidence that his learning theories cannot be right (MOOCs)."

All good stuff. More...