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On Connectivism and Scale
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
Value
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.
On the Creative Commons Certificate Course
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
APRIL 23, 2019
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."
Learning Electron - Part 2
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.
Connectivism and Language Learning
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.
Approaching E-Learning 3.0
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.
Call for Proposals #StephensNext60
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.
Notes On "Global Guidelines: Ethics in Learning Analytics"
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.
The Wrong Choice
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
Making Baseball Fun Again
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.
What is the Value of OLDaily?
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.
The Fabrication that is OER
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?"
E-Learning 3.0 Course Synopsis
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 5
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 13
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.).
Learning Electron - Part 1
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 2
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.
What is Digital Literacy?
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.
12 Deeper Tips for Great Public Speaking
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.
Critical Thinking for Educators
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 10
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 1
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 6
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.
Open Science Value Proposition
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.
New Issues for OERs
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
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 12
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.
Science and Society
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
APRIL 22, 2019
I was asked: I'm a second-year student at Sciences Po Paris on the Nancy French-German campus. As part of a research project on the link between science and society, I'm working with a small group of other students on the concept of MOOCs. Therefore, I have been reading a lot about how they work and the different objectives behind their use.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 4
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 8
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 11
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.
What Peace Means to Me
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.
Teaching in the Digital Age: Guidelines for Designing Teaching and Learning
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 3
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.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 9
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
NOVEMBER 4, 2018
The RSS Feed The course isn't truly distributed until it has an RSS feed. We'll use the course newsletter as our RSS feed, except we'll publish the output in rss2 format instead of HTML. So, exactly as before, we'll build the RSS page in the page Editor.
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper - 7
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 27, 2018
[ Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7] OK, I've put on some Cœur de pirate and am set for today's work. Feeds One of the key attributes of gRSShopper is the harvester.
What's Interesting
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.
An Emoji Language
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
SEPTEMBER 3, 2018
Reading this month's First Monday , which was a special issue on the emoji, inspired me to a creative thought, which I document here.
Assessing Evidence in CPD: Meeting Standards and Missing Goals
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
OCTOBER 1, 2018
This is a summary of the talk "Assessing Evidence in CPD: Meeting Standards and Missing Goals" (aka Baffled, Befuddled and Bemused) by Michael Allen, at the 10th National CPD Accreditation Conference. In the media, we often see conflicting information abut science, especially nutrition studies.
The Future of Learning Management Systems: Development, Innovation and Change
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.
Let's Take the Digital License Quiz
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.
Plans
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
JANUARY 4, 2019
As always, I (a) have plans, and (b) know that the plans never survive very long. That's OK; I include options and backups in my plans, and I'm always ready with the tools I need to take advantage of any opportunities that arise. Courses Offering online courses allows me to test my ideas in the real world, both in terms of the course design and software itself, as well as in terms of the ideas presented through the course. Last year's E-Learning 3.0 course was an excellent example of this.
A Quick Definition of Neo-Liberalism
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. -
Open Learning MOOC Test Post
Stephen Downes: Half an Hour
MARCH 13, 2019
testing with a lable, because RSS won't work without it. openlearninghub
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