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Introducing Claude for Teachers
Anthropic, 2026/07/15

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Not being a verified K-12 educator in the U.S., I can't test Anthropic's brand new Claude for Teachers myself, but it looks clever. "Claude for Teachers connects to Learning Commons, giving Claude access to academic standards across all 50 states—and beneath each standard, the smaller learning competencies... Claude for Teachers also brings in trusted curricular resources like OpenSciEd and IM v.360 from Illustrative Mathematics." Via Marcus Green. See also Chalkbeat.

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Strada announced as new host for Digital Credentials Consortium
Strada, 2026/07/15

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The Digital Credential Consortium is moving from MIT to Strada, an education foundation, where it will be refocused and renamed the Digital Credential Commons (DCC). It "will build upon the infrastructure incubated at MIT Open Learning to scale an open-source and open standards-based ecosystem in which learners fully own, control, and can use verifiable digital records of their skills and achievements." Obviously this is something I want to support in my CList personal learning environment. via Doug Belshaw.

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How Taylor Swift Fans on Reddit Source Their Information
Samantha Vilkins, Sebastian Svegaard, Axel Bruns, Katherine M. FitzGerald, Snurblog, 2026/07/15

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This is a set of slides from a conference presentation that treats a set of Reddit subreddits as epistemic communities, in this case, a set of them specific to Taylor Swift. To a large degree, sourcing matters to people who post (less so for people who comment) and while the usual media of record is relied upon, there are some surprises (such as one sub classifying the NY Times as no more credible than a gossip column). I wouldn't exactly consider Reddit a reliable source (though that varies widely by sub) but I do think studying the communities' epistemic practices is important and informative.

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Becoming an Audiobook Reader
Sarah Clinton-McCausland, ACRLog, 2026/07/15

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The suggestion here is that "The more audiobooks I’ve read, the more I’ve finally embraced the reality that listening to audiobooks is reading." Sarah Clinton-McCausland adds, "Recent research has started confirming what audiobookworms have known all along: a 2019 study, for instance, found that 'the semantic representations evoked by listening versus reading are almost identical.'" That's my experience as well; I see myself as having 'read' Moby Dick even though I actually listened to it.

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Q&A: Chris Agnew on AI and the Future of Schooling
Tara Moon, FutureEd, 2026/07/15

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This article unintentionally points to the danger of 'evidence-based' strategies. Different evidence points different ways. So, near the start we read, "immersive, experiential, relevant learning was impactful for kids, but it’s way too expensive to be accessible to all." Ok. But the actually proposals are based on "10 skills that research links to long-term success... if these are learning experiences we know matter, what’s preventing schools from providing them today?" These are two very different things. The research on what skills were needed in the past may be totally irrelevant to future needs, and anyhow doesn't speak to immersive and experiental learning at all. The evidence underdetermines the need.

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2026 Q2 Review: Online learning developments in UK higher education
Neil Mosley, Neil Mosley Consulting, 2026/07/15

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The bulk of this article is a 'greatest hits' of UK Ed Tech news from the last quarter, but the interesting bit is the intro discussing the University of Manchester's announcement it will offer work placement to all students, contrasted with previous announcements about online learning. The two actually go together, but it's not clear this is understood. Neil Mosley writes, "if universities really want to signal that they are supporting people with career-focused study motivations, they could do a lot worse than seek to develop more flexible and accessible forms of study, such as online learning…and maybe talk about it once in a while."

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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