INDUSTRY INSIGHTS YOUR PEERS ARE READING
We launched the course this week and I did a bunch of things to get ready. This summarizes them in no particular order (except that they were all done in the last few days in a frantic rush). Videos Videos are an important part of any MOOC and these MOOCs are no exception. MORE
Short response to a questionnaire. What is Digital Literacy Digital literacy is a type of literacy, specifically, the type of literacy that arises in the digital context. By 'the digital context' we mean the multimedia and inter-networked context enabled by digital technology. MORE
In my post referencing the ICDE's Global Guidelines: Ethics in Learning Analytics yesterday I said: This document summarizes the considerations of an ICDE working group on learning analytics. MORE
OER stands for 'Open Educational Resources' and as readers know I have been a long-time proponent of free and open learning resources. So why would I call them a fabrication in the title of this post? It's a response to OER @ 16, "Where are You?" MORE
Ethics I've just finished sending off the ethics review board (REB) documents for research ethics review. This is something I should have done in August, not October, and something that was done in all our previous MOOCs, but by someone else more competent than me. MORE
Over the holidays this year I indulged myself in some guilt-free play: learning Electron. I ran across it reading my Medium feed, via this article demonstrating how to build a sound-machine app using Electron. I didn't build the sound-machine, but I built a bunch of other stuff. MORE
NB This is only a very preliminary sketch of what should really be a longer treatment. I was asked: 1) Today I found a great idea in your work that I've been thinking about a lot recently. MORE
One of the fun things about working with software I wrote myself is that I get to try new things. For example, instead of creating a course simply by filling in boxes in predefined forms, I can think about the structure and format ahead of time and design it exactly how I want. MORE
Activities Each week of the course will feature some events. These are mostly live video conferences with guests. I also want to be able to show slides and to include the activity feed. I've been creating these using xSplit and then broadcasting the entire screen, but it's a bit unreliable. MORE
Image: Sui Fai John Mak - [link] Martin Weller makes some excellent points in his recent post on connectivism and scale, and they merit a short response. MORE
During yesterday's Future Trends Forum conversation featuring Kathleen Fitzpatrick - the author of Generous Thinking and proponent of reasoned debate between opposing parties - I asked a question that went roughly along the following lines: What if reason is what's at fault here? MORE
Joanne Jacobs links to an article titled Why I Wish I Hadn’t Gone to College by Keri Savoca. Savoca writes that she would have been a lot better off had she spent the 11 years doing something else. "I MORE
I am participating in a series of Open Science consultations within NRC, an effort that I hope will have long-term value for the organization and for Canadians. MORE
Continuing from Part 1 The story so far In Part 1 I covered the basics of Electron up to and including building executable applications from the Node.js application. MORE
The Badge API and Setting Up Badges This actually represents almost a week's worth of work. MORE
Badges I looked at openbadges.me and Badgr and selected the latter mostly because it's where the Mozilla Backpack project landed. My allegiance will last as long as it works. MORE
The New York Times today came out with a list of "the 25 works of art made after 1970 that define the contemporary age, by anyone, anywhere." What struck me as most significant was how little any of the works meant to me. Most of them I had never heard of. MORE
In response to Alex Usher (and in anticipation of future posts in his series): This is an interesting start, though I would have hoped for a more tightly bound definition at least by the end of part one. Each of the four senses of neo-liberalism that you raise can be qualified in important ways. - MORE
Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Jean-de-Luz, photo by the author. Prompted by a sketch on CBC radio, I was curious this morning to see how Google would answer the question, "Does God exist?" To my mild surprise, the first page of results consisted of statements that God does, in fact, exist. MORE
Summary notes from the Tony Bates presentation at the World Conference on Online Learning , Toronto. Building an Effective Learning Environment What is knowledge, and how does learning occur. Analogy: coal. MORE
We have a new organization and a new manager, and one of the questions we as staff are being asked is "what's interesting?" with responses to be at least one sentence and less than one page. This is my submission. MORE
Getting Ready Connectivism is based on the idea that knowledge is essentially the set of connections in a network, and that learning therefore is the process of creating and shaping those networks. MORE
Harvesting, Again I'm having issues with the harvester again. There are two distinct problems: - The harvester isn't harvesting - When I do harvest, it's downloading things that were downloaded before I'm going to deal with the second thing first. MORE
The word 'whence' means " from what place, source, or cause", and that is the question I would like to address with respect to the virtue of 'open'. The question is raised in the context of Heather Morrison's recent comments on The Dialectic of Open. MORE
Steve Wheeler posted a nice article called 12 Tips for Great Speaking today.He's s had a lot of experience on the public speaking circuit and there's no doubt his tips hit the mark. I've also had some experience on the circuit, so I thought it would be useful to add to his remarks. MORE
In the previous segment I decided to create a course with modules and sections, and set up the modules. I'll fill out the actual content of those modules over time. But now I need to stance face-to-face with something I've been dreading. MORE
Photo: Caitlin Tomotsugu throws a pitch. Photo credit: Darryl Gershman, MLB Baseball is of course a great sport. But there's no end to the things people want to do to make it 'better'. For example, some changes will be tried out in the Independent Atlantic League this year. MORE
[ Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - ] I have the basic structure of the course in place and now I want to fill it out with some content. The course starts in a couple of days and it's important to ensure people have something to see and work with. MORE
OK, before you panic, I'm not thinking of quitting OLDaily. It's not that kind of post. But still. When I changed email providers a few months ago I lost a lot of readers and my totals never did recover. (*) Nor am I being invited to speak at conferences any more. MORE
A week ago, by way of a post in the Creative Commons Open Education Platform discussion list, I became aware of the Creative Commons Certificate course, "an in-depth course about CC licenses, open practices and the ethos of the Commons." MORE
If you take a look at this George Couros post, you'll learn that the "Sunday Seven" is by the Burgess Consulting community, of which “IMPress Books” is a part of as a subsidiary company. I have nothing to do with either - but you can get my Sunday Seven without waiting for Sunday, buying a book or signing up for a publisher's promotional mailing list. MORE
Phil Hill Summary notes from the presentation at from at the World Conference on Online Learning , Toronto. Slides: [link] We forget about the perspective of time. Let’s look at 2011-2017. Thrun was saying (2012) 50 years from now there will only be ten institutions delivering higher education. MORE
This is the result of a quick survey I did today on the Canadian governments' stance on cryptocurrency, responding to an internal request. This is a policy-neutal document; that is, I don't advocate one way or another for any of the items described below. MORE
This article in a London School of Economic blog touts the benefits of the digital driver’s licence created by the Alannah & Madeline Foundation in Australia, and notes that some 22% of Australian schools have registered for it. MORE
This is in response to the following question from a student in Iran: I am going to start an academic project on the application of connectivism in the context of foreign language acquisition. MORE
"Pick any article from the newspaper," I would say to my students. Bring it in and we'll analyze it." This was one of my favourite - and my most effective - activities in my critical thinking classes. I never knew what the students would bring in. With each article we would have to begin afresh. MORE
This is based on my contribution to the new Creative Commons 'Education Platform' discussion of issues related to open educational resources (OERs). This is the next step following the development of a set of principles for the Platform. (I’m MORE
So I don't have an original bone in my body, as proven by this blatant rip-off of Ken Bauer's post of the same title and theme. Three Decade Mark I will turn 60 in April and so far things have turned out pretty well. MORE
Syndication Syndication is the core of the cMOOC approach to learning and we haven't talked about it at all yet. It's pretty easy to get caught up in things like video events and content and to forget that the true purpose of the course is connection. MORE
The fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal continues to roil. Ethan Zuckerman has left the Media Lab. MORE
I read today in an article that "Modern liberals have no working theory of authoritarianism. Of its causes. Its spark. Its fuel." I'm not sure that this is true, and I'll return to this article a bit later in this post. First I want to return to my visit to Colombia a couple of weeks ago. MORE
Who is this course for? If you're reading this, then this course is for you. You've demonstrated the main criterion: some degree of interest in the subject matter of the course. You might be thinking: this course looks too difficult, too technical, or too high level. MORE
Workflow The next step in the use of badges is to develop a mechanism for awarding them. This is something that can generate a lot of labour in a hurry (9 modules times 10 people means 90 badges issued.). MORE
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JUNE 19, 2019
The word 'whence' means " from what place, source, or cause", and that is the question I would like to address with respect to the virtue of 'open'. The question is raised in the context of Heather Morrison's recent comments on The Dialectic of Open.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
SEPTEMBER 12, 2019
This is the result of a quick survey I did today on the Canadian governments' stance on cryptocurrency, responding to an internal request. This is a policy-neutal document; that is, I don't advocate one way or another for any of the items described below.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
The fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal continues to roil. Ethan Zuckerman has left the Media Lab.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
APRIL 26, 2019
Image: Sui Fai John Mak - [link] Martin Weller makes some excellent points in his recent post on connectivism and scale, and they merit a short response.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JULY 16, 2019
The New York Times today came out with a list of "the 25 works of art made after 1970 that define the contemporary age, by anyone, anywhere." What struck me as most significant was how little any of the works meant to me. Most of them I had never heard of.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
APRIL 14, 2019
You sometimes hear me stumble over the word 'value', the way I did in a recent interview. Let me explain why. The word 'value' is widely used in our field and elsewhere.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
SEPTEMBER 18, 2018
Who is this course for? If you're reading this, then this course is for you. You've demonstrated the main criterion: some degree of interest in the subject matter of the course. You might be thinking: this course looks too difficult, too technical, or too high level.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
NOVEMBER 26, 2018
This is in response to the following question from a student in Iran: I am going to start an academic project on the application of connectivism in the context of foreign language acquisition.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JANUARY 15, 2019
Continuing from Part 1 The story so far In Part 1 I covered the basics of Electron up to and including building executable applications from the Node.js application.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JUNE 7, 2019
During yesterday's Future Trends Forum conversation featuring Kathleen Fitzpatrick - the author of Generous Thinking and proponent of reasoned debate between opposing parties - I asked a question that went roughly along the following lines: What if reason is what's at fault here?
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
MARCH 13, 2019
In my post referencing the ICDE's Global Guidelines: Ethics in Learning Analytics yesterday I said: This document summarizes the considerations of an ICDE working group on learning analytics.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
DECEMBER 30, 2018
Joanne Jacobs links to an article titled Why I Wish I Hadn’t Gone to College by Keri Savoca. Savoca writes that she would have been a lot better off had she spent the 11 years doing something else. "I
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
MARCH 23, 2019
Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Jean-de-Luz, photo by the author. Prompted by a sketch on CBC radio, I was curious this morning to see how Google would answer the question, "Does God exist?" To my mild surprise, the first page of results consisted of statements that God does, in fact, exist.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JULY 13, 2018
OER stands for 'Open Educational Resources' and as readers know I have been a long-time proponent of free and open learning resources. So why would I call them a fabrication in the title of this post? It's a response to OER @ 16, "Where are You?"
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
MARCH 30, 2019
So I don't have an original bone in my body, as proven by this blatant rip-off of Ken Bauer's post of the same title and theme. Three Decade Mark I will turn 60 in April and so far things have turned out pretty well.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 8, 2018
Getting Ready Connectivism is based on the idea that knowledge is essentially the set of connections in a network, and that learning therefore is the process of creating and shaping those networks.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
AUGUST 19, 2019
If you take a look at this George Couros post, you'll learn that the "Sunday Seven" is by the Burgess Consulting community, of which “IMPress Books” is a part of as a subsidiary company. I have nothing to do with either - but you can get my Sunday Seven without waiting for Sunday, buying a book or signing up for a publisher's promotional mailing list.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JUNE 9, 2019
NB This is only a very preliminary sketch of what should really be a longer treatment. I was asked: 1) Today I found a great idea in your work that I've been thinking about a lot recently.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
MAY 21, 2018
Steve Wheeler posted a nice article called 12 Tips for Great Speaking today.He's s had a lot of experience on the public speaking circuit and there's no doubt his tips hit the mark. I've also had some experience on the circuit, so I thought it would be useful to add to his remarks.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
FEBRUARY 10, 2019
OK, before you panic, I'm not thinking of quitting OLDaily. It's not that kind of post. But still. When I changed email providers a few months ago I lost a lot of readers and my totals never did recover. (*) Nor am I being invited to speak at conferences any more.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
MARCH 30, 2018
"Pick any article from the newspaper," I would say to my students. Bring it in and we'll analyze it." This was one of my favourite - and my most effective - activities in my critical thinking classes. I never knew what the students would bring in. With each article we would have to begin afresh.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 21, 2018
We launched the course this week and I did a bunch of things to get ready. This summarizes them in no particular order (except that they were all done in the last few days in a frantic rush). Videos Videos are an important part of any MOOC and these MOOCs are no exception.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
DECEMBER 12, 2018
Workflow The next step in the use of badges is to develop a mechanism for awarding them. This is something that can generate a lot of labour in a hurry (9 modules times 10 people means 90 badges issued.).
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
SEPTEMBER 27, 2018
In the previous segment I decided to create a course with modules and sections, and set up the modules. I'll fill out the actual content of those modules over time. But now I need to stance face-to-face with something I've been dreading.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
MARCH 9, 2019
Photo: Caitlin Tomotsugu throws a pitch. Photo credit: Darryl Gershman, MLB Baseball is of course a great sport. But there's no end to the things people want to do to make it 'better'. For example, some changes will be tried out in the Independent Atlantic League this year.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JANUARY 13, 2019
Over the holidays this year I indulged myself in some guilt-free play: learning Electron. I ran across it reading my Medium feed, via this article demonstrating how to build a sound-machine app using Electron. I didn't build the sound-machine, but I built a bunch of other stuff.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JANUARY 4, 2019
Short response to a questionnaire. What is Digital Literacy Digital literacy is a type of literacy, specifically, the type of literacy that arises in the digital context. By 'the digital context' we mean the multimedia and inter-networked context enabled by digital technology.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
SEPTEMBER 25, 2018
One of the fun things about working with software I wrote myself is that I get to try new things. For example, instead of creating a course simply by filling in boxes in predefined forms, I can think about the structure and format ahead of time and design it exactly how I want.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 25, 2018
Ethics I've just finished sending off the ethics review board (REB) documents for research ethics review. This is something I should have done in August, not October, and something that was done in all our previous MOOCs, but by someone else more competent than me.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 16, 2017
Summary notes from the Tony Bates presentation at the World Conference on Online Learning , Toronto. Building an Effective Learning Environment What is knowledge, and how does learning occur. Analogy: coal.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
MAY 15, 2018
I read today in an article that "Modern liberals have no working theory of authoritarianism. Of its causes. Its spark. Its fuel." I'm not sure that this is true, and I'll return to this article a bit later in this post. First I want to return to my visit to Colombia a couple of weeks ago.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
NOVEMBER 16, 2018
Harvesting, Again I'm having issues with the harvester again. There are two distinct problems: - The harvester isn't harvesting - When I do harvest, it's downloading things that were downloaded before I'm going to deal with the second thing first.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
DECEMBER 13, 2018
I am participating in a series of Open Science consultations within NRC, an effort that I hope will have long-term value for the organization and for Canadians.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
DECEMBER 2, 2018
The Badge API and Setting Up Badges This actually represents almost a week's worth of work.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
APRIL 30, 2018
We have a new organization and a new manager, and one of the questions we as staff are being asked is "what's interesting?" with responses to be at least one sentence and less than one page. This is my submission.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 18, 2017
Phil Hill Summary notes from the presentation at from at the World Conference on Online Learning , Toronto. Slides: [link] We forget about the perspective of time. Let’s look at 2011-2017. Thrun was saying (2012) 50 years from now there will only be ten institutions delivering higher education.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 10, 2018
Activities Each week of the course will feature some events. These are mostly live video conferences with guests. I also want to be able to show slides and to include the activity feed. I've been creating these using xSplit and then broadcasting the entire screen, but it's a bit unreliable.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JANUARY 18, 2019
This is based on my contribution to the new Creative Commons 'Education Platform' discussion of issues related to open educational resources (OERs). This is the next step following the development of a set of principles for the Platform. (I’m
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 30, 2018
Syndication Syndication is the core of the cMOOC approach to learning and we haven't talked about it at all yet. It's pretty easy to get caught up in things like video events and content and to forget that the true purpose of the course is connection.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
NOVEMBER 27, 2018
Badges I looked at openbadges.me and Badgr and selected the latter mostly because it's where the Mozilla Backpack project landed. My allegiance will last as long as it works.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 26, 2017
This article in a London School of Economic blog touts the benefits of the digital driver’s licence created by the Alannah & Madeline Foundation in Australia, and notes that some 22% of Australian schools have registered for it.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 8, 2018
[ Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - ] I have the basic structure of the course in place and now I want to fill it out with some content. The course starts in a couple of days and it's important to ensure people have something to see and work with.
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
NOVEMBER 20, 2017
In response to Alex Usher (and in anticipation of future posts in his series): This is an interesting start, though I would have hoped for a more tightly bound definition at least by the end of part one. Each of the four senses of neo-liberalism that you raise can be qualified in important ways. -
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