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. Major Players in the MOOC Universe
Nigel Hawtin, Xarissa Holdaway, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2013
There's some interesting on the Twitter about how the Chronicle has "jettisoned" any reference to the original MOOC authors (and somehow promoted Khan Academy to MOOC status. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Outsourcing Blogger Comments to Google+
Alex Chitu, Google Operating System, April 29, 2013
I think Blogger is probably on the way out. The evidence for this (beyond the demise of other Google products people actually like) is the development of Blogger's new comment system, which is essentially Google+ comment system (with all the weaknesses that entails). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rage at the Dying of the Light! Restore RSS for .@Evernote Notebooks
Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org, April 29, 2013
People ask me sometimes what the difference is between the sort of system I advocate and cloud-based note-taking services such as Evernote. Here it is, in a nutshell: I advocate that people own their own software, so features they rely on don't disappear because the service provider decides they're too much trouble. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The unsung local heroes who are really changing Africa
eLearning Africa News Portal, April 29, 2013
This is really intersting; I wish there were more sources of inffermation about what's actually happening in East Africa (I have to depend on the blogs and reports writtern by the World Bank and other such agencies, exactly the opposite of what's being presented here). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web.
What MOOCs Will Really Kill Is The Research University
Tim Worstall, Forbes, July 28, 2013
This article is mostly tripe from a partisan source, but the headline tells an important story. Research is big business and I have no doubt there are private agencies - including less reputable places like the Adam Smith Institute in London - who would be eager to divert research money away from universities and into their own coffers. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is
John Naughton, Tne Guardian, July 29, 2013
Sadly, I agree with this article. Anyone working in a position of any degree os sensitivity will need to stop using cloud services provided by U.S. service providers (and it is causing this loss of income, not the security breach, that is Snowdon's realcrime). More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Truths about MOOCs, Rees v Chait, and a bunch of other MOOC article links
Steve Krause, stevendkrause.com, July 29, 2013
In a longish and comprehensive piece covering most of the recent (ie., last week's) coverage of MOOCs Steve Krause tries to set the record with 'two truths' about MOOCs:
While I appreciate the effort, I have to say from my experience with media that there's probably no repairing the dostortions and exaggerations. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fighting Facebook, a Campaign for a People’s Terms of Service
Woodrow Hartzog, The Center for Internet, and , Society, May 29, 2013
There's a strong similarity between a "people's terms of service contract" and Creative Commons - both are initiatives intended to move complex legal processes from the darkness of lawyer's offices to the light of common usage. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Anti- IPA Position Paper: A reply from an Educator to the International Publishers' Association Position Paper
Rory McGreal, Athabasca Landing, May 29, 2013
The International Publishers' Association has released a short position paper on open educational resources (OERs) that makes the arguments you might expect, "sceptical however about the capacity of OERs to provide high quality content in core curriculum subjects in the longer term." Rory McGreal has responded, saying "publishers and Open Educational Resources both have value and are not mutually exclusive." He points out that the same challenges facing OERs - sustainability, quality, and efficacy - are also challenges for commercial content. More...
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