Stephen Downes

Coronavirus / Covid19 quick reference kit, to take your class or conference online cheaply and in a hurry:

Creating an Online Class or Conference - Quick Tech Guide

A New Measurement Framework for the Digital Economy

I hadn't really thought of it this way (because I don't care) but on reflection it turns out that the vast bulk of my contribution to the world does not contribute one iota to the GDP (except perhaps through some very indirect measures). So much the worse, I say, for the GDP as a measurement tool. There are two problems with GDP. First, it does not measure the value of things that are free, even though society benefits greatly from them. Second, it does measure the value of things that are not free, even if they represent no form of production at all (for example, bank profits). It's not clear to me, additionally, that we should measure 'benefit to society' in terms of 'capital' at all. A peaceful moment is worth nothing, yet it is everything. Image: Big Think, The Gross Failures of GDP.

Today: 108 Total: 108 Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2022/01/10 [Direct Link]

Coaching as a learning reinforcement method

I'm linking this mostly to note the reference to Kolb's experiential learning cycle (and to suggest once again that education qua discipline should stop naming things after people, and start naming things according to what they are; there is in fact a long history of research into each of these things, and naming them after certain individuals trivializes the work that came both before and after). Anyhow, the point of this article is to examine the role of coaching in experiential learning. As Timothy Gallwey says, "Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them."

Today: 99 Total: 99 Panos Malakoudis, Chief Learning Officer, 2022/01/10 [Direct Link]

Crypto Theses for 2022

This is an absolutely outstanding bleeding-edge looooong overview of the coming year in blockchain and associated technologies. If you're at all interested in web3, DAOs, decentralized storage, or crypto technology, you want to take a Saturday and read this cover to cover. On the way you'll encounter concepts like the flippening, the use of RabbitHole for learning, the evolution of owned media, and so much more. Really. If you're serious about hard tech, don't miss this one. 165 page PDF.

Today: 171 Total: 197 Ryan Selkis, Messari, 2022/01/10 [Direct Link]

Groundhog day in online learning? What’s different this time

Tony Bates says what I said, but much more diplomatically: "Government action regarding improving Internet access though is still terribly slow here in Canada. Much more urgency is required. Even more concerning appears to be the lack of learning in the k-12 system, especially by administrators, about the best way to provide online learning for school children. Apparently some are still requiring students to spend up to six hours a day on Zoom calls... After nearly two years, this failure to adapt teaching methods to what is appropriate for online learning in school systems is becoming inexcusable."

Today: 13 Total: 235 Tony Bates, Online learning and distance education resources, 2022/01/07 [Direct Link]

About Perusall

I'm not a huge fan of social annotation, but it has proven popular, with applications like hypothes.is leading the way. Today, following up a link to a Wesleyan mini-course on philosophy I encountered Perusall. This is, if you will, the Harvard version of social annotation - packaged and bundled into LMSs and coordinated with publishers to help students purchase e-books. I'll add it to the list of things that were developed elsewhere but were 'invented' by one of the elite universities.

Today: 12 Total: 183 2022/01/07 [Direct Link]

Everything