Stephen Downes

Intro to OER: A Wider Spectrum

The bulk of this post is a revised outline of an introduction to open educational resources (OER) with a lot of links to sources and resources. This is prefaced with an explanation of that structure. "I try to work from the typical conception of OER towards what I feel like are less considered elements," writes Tom Woodward. "That leads to starting with courses/textbooks... I drift a bit farther afield here and start to look at tools for faculty to create OER content... close with social bookmarking."

Today: 108 Total: 108 Tom Woodward, Bionic Teaching, 2018/10/03 [Direct Link]

Why History Matters

Audrey Watters is, as always, interesting, and in this article as in so many there are some great observations. Such as: "much of the pace of change can be accounted for by the fact that many new technologies are built atop – quite literally – pre-existing systems." But there's also this: "[a] key piece to remember about the history of computing technology and the history of education technology: they are deeply intertwined with the military and with technologies of war." And my thought when I read this was: "well sure, in the U.S. maybe, but what about everywhere else?" Despite noting the use of slates for centuries, Watters relates the story of the 'invention' of the blackboard at West Point, but we can read elsewhere that "James Pillans, Headmaster of the Old High School in Edinburgh, Scotland has been credited with the invention.," using it to teach geography. Not war.

Today: 102 Total: 102 Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2018/10/03 [Direct Link]

A Comparison of Social Learning Systems: Crochet Alongs and MOOCs

This is a great paper that introduces us to a type of MOOC that is more like a MOOC than the MOOCs offered by most MOOC providers. The category is the 'Along', as in "Crochet Along', as in'crochet along with me'. "The term Crochet Alongs (CALs) is used by crocheters (sometimes known as hookers) to describe Internet-based crochet projects whereby participants are working together on their own instantiation of an artefact (such as a blanket), following instructions available online and sharing their experiences across an Internet platform such as Facebook, many participations start as soon as a CAL is launched, but completion times vary." The upshot of the work is a set of amendments to Conole's rather institution-focused classification schema for MOOCs.

Today: 124 Total: 124 Shirley Williams, E.J. Highwood, European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 2018/10/03 [Direct Link]

What does the Top Tools for Learning 2018 list tell us about the future direction of L&D?

I referenced Jane Hart's list of top e-learning tools yesterday and noted how few of the top results were actually e-learning tools. This post from Hart looks at her own views on what the list means. "it requires a very different (organisational) learning mindset; it’s not designing, delivering and managing stuff for people, but enabling and supporting people to do much more for themselves – in the ways that best suit them. And secondly, the L&D people who do get involved with this new work will need to be proficient modern professional learners themselves; because it’s much more about “do as I do, not do as I say”! "

Today: 120 Total: 120 Jane Hart, 2018/10/03 [Direct Link]

10 key facts about SAFE Network

As I've been suggesting in recent months, the structure of the web is changing at the lowest levels. It's not clear how this will ll shake out yet. On the one hand we have HTTP/2 (criticized by some as "a protocol by Google for Google" - see this interview). On the other hand we have SAFE - "Secure Access For Everyone" - which is "a network like the Internet but created by connecting users’ devices together rather than relying on centralised servers." See also the SAFENetwork Primer.

Today: 152 Total: 152 SAFE, 2018/10/03 [Direct Link]

John Urschel Goes Pro

This article is the story of the development of a math PhD student - who had to decide between this and a career in football. "The world is on the lookout for football players. His coaches at Canisius, an all-boys Jesuit high school, continually encouraged him to think big, bigger, biggest. If he worked at it, he could play in college. He could play in the Big Ten. There was a chance he could play in the NFL. From his math teachers? Zero." Great article.

Today: 129 Total: 249 Jordan Ellenberg, Hmm Daily, 2018/10/02 [Direct Link]

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