Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. VR and consciousness – some truly freakish ideas
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2015/04/17

I experience the arbitrariness of consciousness every day. I put on my glasses, and my whole world changes. More recently, I have enjoyed the altered consciousness of being completely immersed in sound by means of my MP3 player and some quality earbuds. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Web Presentation for BC Campus
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2015/04/17

Alan Levine introduces and enmbeds a video entitled The Open Web (a) Lost (b) Reclaimed (c) Co-claimed (d) All of the above? He writes that it "was meant to get at what we see as un-necessary dichotomies in ed tech (and also to poke at multiple choice). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Kifi
Website, Kifi, 2015/04/17

I have two major things to say about this site. First, analytics and recommendations are becoming commoditized. This is one of a number of services revolving around the concept of learning about you and recommending resources. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. California’s multi-million dollar online education flop is another blow for MOOCs
Ryan Derousseau, The Hechinbger Report, 2015/04/15
According to this article, "the Online Instruction Pilot Project has become another expensive example of the ineffectiveness—so far, anyway—of once-vaunted plans to widen access to college degrees by making them available online, including in massive online open courses, known as MOOCs." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The numbers game
Steve Wheeler, Learning With Es, 2015/04/15
The assignment of a numeric value to student work is a technology. It's actually a relatively recent technology. Why did we adopt it? Steve Wheeler asks the question and the closest he comes to an answer is in saying "marking of students' work is... about how their work measures up against standards." In the wider scheme of things, though, surprisingly few assessments are made this way. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Against close reading
Alex Reid, Digital Digs, 2015/04/15

There are some really good observations in this post. The practise of 'close reading' as it is widely taught involves "the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text." A common criticism of social media and online reading is that students "find nuance, complexity, or just plain length of literary texts less to their liking than we did." I don't think they ever found it to their liking, but let's assume they do. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Maryland 'Free Range' Kids Taken Into Custody Again
Emily Shapiro, ABC News, 2015/04/14

I have to wonder what's missing to children who are raised in constant custody until their mid-teens. This story concerns a 10-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl who were picked up by police when seen playing by themselves in a park; their parents have been charged. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Survival to Success: Transforming Immigrant Outcomes
Government of Canada, 2015/04/14

A panel "led by experts in the areas of newcomer integration, diversity and certification" is conducting interviews in a bid to determine how best to help new Canadians integrate into the economy. There is an online consultation available here. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Someone Calculated How Many Adjunct Professors Are on Public Assistance, and the Number Is Startling
Jordan Weissmann, MoneyBox, 2015/04/14
When people are living on low wages in North America, the government is essentially subsidizing their employers. It's as though we are saying "we (the taxpayers) are willing to contribute directly to their basic needs for food and shelter so you can have low prices at Walmart and McDonalds.". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Corporate Culture in a Venn Diagram
Dan Pontrefact, 2015/04/14

You can read the article for yourself; I want to use this post to flag the misuse of the term "Venn Diagram". In this article, the diagram has four circles, while in a proper Venn diagram there are only three. More...