Something I'd like somebody to build omne day is a function that tracks concepts over time across articles, publications and popular discourse. I say this not so much as a criticism of this paper, because it's not doing anything uniquely wrong, but because it would track the related concepts of punk, open learning and DIY back through the Edupunk days of Jim Groom from one reference to the next through to papers like that where the original idea has become lost in time. Anyhow, this article revisits the concept through the mechanism of a literature review (sans Groom) and semi-structured interviews with 22 participants last year. \"Open education functions as a contested space where learners actively reclaim agency through practices that align with punk ethos and rhizomatic engagement. Learner autonomy in this context operates as a form of resistance against institutional constraints... unlike the view that DIY practices are simply a reaction to a lack of resources, these acts are intentional and political.\" Image: Jim Groom.
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-10T16:02:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78965", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78965", "external_url":"https://higheredstrategy.com/skills-innovation-quality-blindness/", "title":"Skills, Innovation, Quality, Blindness", "content_html":"Alex Usher wants to redefine two things in this short post: innovation, and skills. For the first, instead of the usual definition of innovation, \"about discovering some new idea or application and then building a world-beating company,\" he says it should be thought of as \"the general application of new ideas to all processes across the economy as a means to bring about not just novelty but greater efficiency and value as well.\" I read this as meaning that innovation includes building markets (which includes building skills in the use of the new products). But then his take on skills is puzzling. \"Instead of focusing on the number of graduates we are producing in a given field, why not put the emphasis on a relentless improvement in the quality of graduates?\" That's a strategy that would seem to accelerate inequality in society, undermining any effort to build markets (not to mention undermining society itself). I'm not opposing the idea of redefining innovation and skills, but I think we have to get out of the old way of market-based thinking to do it. Something to think about.
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-10T10:32:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78964", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78964", "external_url":"https://impeccable.style/", "title":"Impeccable: Design skills for AI harnesses", "content_html":"OK, I haven't tried this, and I think the left-right sliders over the examples are a usability fail (you'll see what I mean) but I find the concept intriguing so I thought I'd share. Here's the idea: this website and service offers people a way to describe their design preferences to an AI even if they don't really have the design language skills they need to do this well. \"Great design prompts require design vocabulary. Most people don't have it. You can't ask for \"more vertical rhythm\" if you've never used those words. Impeccable gives you commands that put designer language in your hands.\" Basically, you use a 'command', and the service expands that into more complete instructions for the AI. Here's the command cheatsheet (which I can imagine being expanded in the future).
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-10T09:46:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78963", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78963", "external_url":"https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/07/reader-mode/", "title":"The web is bearable with RSS", "content_html":"This article starts off as praise for RSS and ends up as a lament for the web in general. The RSS part boils down to essentially this: \"Imagine reading the web without popups, without ads, without nag screens. Imagine reading the web without interruptors or 'keep reading' links... RSS readers are really easy to set up and - crucially - make using the web much easier.\" The lament for the web is... well, you can imagine. Cory Doctorow's 'history of RSS' is different from my own history, and Google plays a much larger role in his. True, Google and Apple and Spotify and the rest have all tried to kill RSS. But in tech you can't kill what you don't own, and nobody owns RSS, so it continues to work - and always has worked since its early exciting days in the late 90s.
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-10T09:38:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78962", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78962", "external_url":"https://www.inc.com/joel-comm/the-hidden-advantage-of-being-over-50-in-the-age-of-ai/91312602", "title":"The Hidden Advantage of Being Over 50 in the Age of AI", "content_html":"I'm not really sure I'm convinced by this argument, despite being one of the ones having the advantage of experience. I mean, I learned how to operate a card punch and to program a computer by flipping switches. These skills aren't really useful today. But here's the argument. \"AI is different. You don't need to learn a programming language; you need to ask better questions. And asking better questions isn't a technical skill - it's a judgment skill. The leverage in AI doesn't come from typing prompts quickly; it comes from knowing what matters, what doesn't, and what consequences might follow. That's pattern recognition, and pattern recognition is built over decades. It's something AI is really good at, and it turns out those with experience are as well.\" Ah yes... but the core question is: does pattern recognition improve over time, or is there an inflection point? Does pattern recognition improve at an equal rate for all people? Are some things - like experiencing new things - better for pattern recognition, while others - like ossifying rumination - worse?
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-10T09:10:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78961", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78961", "external_url":"https://www.atu.ie/news/a-new-generation-of-apprentices-she-started-her-career-at-18-and-hasnt-looked-back", "title":"A new generation of apprentices: She started her career at 18 and hasn’t looked back", "content_html":"I really have mixed feelings about this. Starting a career at 18 has many advantages - by contrast, my 'career' (properly so-called) started when I was in my 30s. By the same token, my years between the ages of 18 and 35 weren't exactly 'wasted youth'. I made the most of the free time chronic unemployment and persistent poverty gave me. Kate Gaffrey, the subject of this story, meanwhile, works four days a week, studies the remaining day, and has no summers off. Now if what she wants to do with her life is all and only engineering, that's great. But it feels to me there should be more room for exploration. On the other hand, this kind of work experience learning is extraordinarily valuable. \"The biggest benefit of working while studying is having fully qualified engineers around you who are willing to help,\" she said. \"Whether it's calculations or project ideas, there is always someone you can sit down with. Even listening to engineers solve problems teaches you something.\" So like I say, I have mixed feelings.
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-10T09:01:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78960", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78960", "external_url":"https://educationexpress.uts.edu.au/blog/2026/03/09/making-breakfast-on-a-burning-planet/", "title":"Making breakfast on a burning planet: a parent’s perspective on a GenAI future – ", "content_html":"I'm sure this article will resonate with a lot of educators because (a) it speaks to how AI takes away from learning, and (b) because it introduces the concept of care to expertise. But I think each of these is an error. For the first, Shaun Bell asks, \"what does 'learning' mean when access or retrieval is effortless, when drafting is outsourced, when a conversational agent can simulate understanding on demand?\" I've argued before that learning isn't (and never was) any of these things. For the second part, Bell sets up what is needed: \"the scarce resource becomes something else: sustained attention, relational responsiveness, and giving space and time for the slow formation of judgement.\" And this sets up the case for care. But the model Bell is working with is the care of a parent for a child - and that just seems to be to be the wrong frame in which to view either care or expertise. Via Paul Walk.
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-09T17:03:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78959", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78959", "external_url":"https://substack.com/home/post/p-189710997", "title":"The one science reform we can all agree on, but we're too cowardly to do", "content_html":"This is a longish article revisiting an issue we've covered on numerous occasions here: the broken system of academic publishing. This is a great line: \"These days, Springer Nature, Elsevier, Wiley, and the like are basically giant operations that proofread, format, and store PDFs. That's not nothing, but it's pretty close to nothing.\" One interesting note: the pattern of use of the (pirate site) SciHub matches the pattern of researchers with the best access to legitimate sources. \"Why would researchers resort to piracy when they have legitimate access themselves? Maybe because journals' interfaces are so clunky and annoying that it's faster to go straight to SciHub... for-profit publishing only 'works' because people find ways to circumvent it.\"
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-09T16:53:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78958", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78958", "external_url":"https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2026/03/09/peer-a-technique-for-brainstorming-interviewees-and-story-sources/", "title":"PEER: a technique for brainstorming interviewees and story sources", "content_html":"This is a useful article meant for journalists but worth reflecting on for all of us. It outlines the PEER mnemonic (based on a previous post) for remembering the following four types of source: Power, Expertise, Experience, and Representative. Part of the issue with journalism (in my own opinion) is that writers unimaginatively return to the same old sources in each of these groups. That's why I prefer the PEER'D alternative, where D stands for diversity. Good journalism tries to get sources from a spectrum of each type of source - not always the same authorities, not always the same expertise. I think especially they should avoid deferring to (what they believe) is the 'elite' level for each of these, because this usually reflects wealth, connections and influence more than it does actual power, expertise, experience or representation.
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-09T16:29:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"78957", "url":"https://www.downes.ca/post/78957", "external_url":"https://jondron.ca/is-higher-education-broken-not-exactly/", "title":"Is higher education broken? Not exactly.", "content_html":"Jon Dron applies something like a systems analysis to the question in the title, asking essentially, \"what does it mean for higher education to work?\" In one role, teaching, it doesn't perform especially well, due to conflicts with its other roles. But in another role, 'surviving', it has done remarkably well, having persisted for centuries and having expanded around the globe. I do question, though, whether this is true: \"The main technological features that universities acquired in the first century of their existence are still fully present, in virtually unaltered form. Courses, classes, terms/semesters, professors, credentials, methods of teaching, organizational structures, methods of assessment, and plenty more are visibly the same species as their mediaeval forebears, and remain the central motifs of virtually all formal higher education.\" Are they really? I wonder about that. (I suppose I could ask ChatGPT...)
. ", "image":"", "date_published":"2026-03-09T15:57:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"}, { "id":"1", "url":"http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm", "external_url":"http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm", "title":"OLDaily", "content_html":"OLDaily, HTML edition", "date_published":"2017-05-17T12:08:00-05:00", "author":"Stephen Downes"} ] }