By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Introduction to Open Education: Towards a Human Rights Theory
TJ Bliss, Patrick Blessinger, International Journal of Open Educational Resources, 2018/10/23
This is an overview of openness in education and in educational resources in particular and takes a human-rights perspective on the subject. It's a fairly long article, but relatively introductory. Its almost entirely US-based history dates the beginning of open content from 1998, which is a (large) number of years too late (again, my 1995 openly-licensed Fallacies guide was following examples already widelky found the field even by then). More...
Has L&D been hijacked by ‘identity’ politics?
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Has L&D been hijacked by ‘identity’ politics?
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2018/10/23
I'm sympathetic with this sentiment from Donald Clark, having seen my share: " Gone are the days when HR and L&D were at the forefront of personal development. Much ‘training’ is now targeted at protecting the organisation from their own employees. A tsunami of compliance and identity training has overwhelmed L&D." I also agree that "I have values and have no interest in HR telling me what my values should be." But we shouldn't confuse between bad training and bad ideas. More...
The Road to Sharing is Not Paved With Licenses
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Road to Sharing is Not Paved With Licenses
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2018/10/23
"Share for gratitude," writes Alan Levine, "not for rules and license terms." I agree (and I have my own stories about home someone just uses some of my content for a project or whatever). What the whole copyright and licensing debate has done is to move the ethos of the crass commercial from the corporate sphere into the personal sphere. More...
Meet the modern learner: Engaging the Overwhelmed, Distracted, and Impatient Employee
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Meet the modern learner: Engaging the Overwhelmed, Distracted, and Impatient Employee
Todd Tauber, Wendy Wang-Audia, Bersin by Deloitte, 2018/10/23
This is a scraped blog post (may or may not be framed) containing a framed version of a Bersin by Deloitte PDF-based report uploaded and shared through Slideshare. I can think of easier ways to offer this content (but I follow e-learning, conocimiento en red for the content, not the convenience). More...
With what do you want to light the torch? Say things in full, bedlamite!
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. With what do you want to light the torch? Say things in full, bedlamite!
Wordshore, Metafilter, 2018/10/23
This year marks, more or less, the 40th anniversary of the Multi-User Dungeon, or MUD. This post on Metafilter focuses on the first MUD, ultimately called MUD2, licensed to CompuServe, and later killed by that company. MUDs really began to proliferate with the LPMud, created by Lars Pensjö, which, first, was extensible, and second, spawned numerous free and public domain versions of the code (many of which predate the 'official' invention of free software at Stanford in 1989). More...
Learner Model's Utilization in the e-Learning Environments
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learner Model's Utilization in the e-Learning Environments
Vija Vigale, Laila Niedrite, University of Latvia, 2018/10/29
This is quite a good paper describing the need for, creation of, and use of a learner model in support of adaptive learning. In current systems, the learner model is at the core of such systems. In conjunction with a domain mode, which maps the learning required in a field, the adaptive system employs an adaptive model to generate the activity, resource or intervention required. More...
Towards Better Frameworks for Social Media Data Archiving
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Towards Better Frameworks for Social Media Data Archiving
Axel Bruns, Snurblog, 2018/10/29
Snurblog summarizes a number of presentations from the recent iCS Symposium on Challenges to Studying Disinformation, including this keynote from Katrin Weller. It addresses some of the challenges in collectiong and sharing data from social media platforms. More...
Here's What I Covered In My 4 DevLearn Presentations
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Here's What I Covered In My 4 DevLearn Presentations
Mel Milloway, Blog, 2018/10/29
Mel Milloway had a pretty busy conference. In his first session he has "the audience go through my Is It Edible? activity and guess what JavaScript was used." Thast's a nice way to do a "how do do it with Javacript" session. More...
Call for Proposals: Skills, education & skills development
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Call for Proposals: Skills, education & skills development
Mowat Centre, 2018/10/24
This call from the Mowat Centre might attract some interest from readers. They're looking for research regarding the state of skills and skills development in Canada addressing specifically questions of equity, the future of work, and what skills matter. The deadline is October 31. More...
How to build a learning city?
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to build a learning city?
UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2018/10/24
It's not called a MOOC, of course, but this series of videos from UNESCO is closer to a MOOC than any other form of learning. " The tutorials are based on the 2015 Guidelines for Building Learning Cities and consist of seven infographic animation videos addressing cities around the world to support them in the process of building learning cities." There's a hashtag - #Buildlearningcities. More...