Author: Stephen Downes

This is a summary of a talk by Diane Larsen-Freeman at TESL 2015. It was a treat to listen to. Errors and omissions are entirely my own.This is a beautiful location – and I hear that Canadians are fond of nature. And you’ll hear a lot today about econogy and

I am voting for the NDP in the upcoming federal election and I think you should too. In this post I’d like to offer some reasons why. Why I support the NDP?   Because the NDP stands for something, and it mostly stands for the things I stand for. The NDP,

In an article last year (and soon-to-be book) Tom Nichols complained about the new relativism brought about by Wikipedia and Google and bemoaning the declining authority of the expert. I encountered his article today via Facebook; I’m not sure whether the source of this information had any impact on its

I posted an item in OLDaily today from Forbes touting the benefits of formerly ‘useless’ liberal arts degrees. In this item Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is quoted: “Studying philosophy taught me two things,” says Butterfield, sitting in his office in San Francisco’s South of Market district, a neighborhood almost entirely

We are now reading that the exodus of people from New Brunswick through the winter was the largest it has been since 1976. It’s the 17th quarter in a row the province has lost people. And it shows no sign of slowing. I live in Moncton, supposedly the most prosperous

The current government plans to deface some pristine Cape Breton wilderness with a ‘Mother Canada’ monument. Here’s the proposal. Here’s some coverage of opposition. A photo below:   What I find a bit puzzling is why Canada’s conservative government – the same government that wants to erect a ‘victims of

There are three separate threads in Siemens’s response to my last post, all of which are fascinating: The thread concerning whether or not the study he published was bad, The thread examining the question of whether universities can be a valuable force for social equity, and My own experiences of

I wrote the other day that the study released by George Siemens and others on the history and current state of distance, blended, and online learning was a bad study. I said, “the absence of a background in the field is glaring and obvious.” In this I refer not only

Defending himself against my criticism of his recently released research study on distance and online learning, George Siemens tweets: Au contraire mon frère. There are many non-research articles cites, with a particular preference toward foundations, consultants, a few blogs and news and magazine articles. The non-research citations are as selective

Article and photo by Stephen Downes This is a summary of Mozilla CEO Mark Surman’s talk at Open Education Global in Banff April 24 (today). It is a paraphrase with lots of direct quotation, but shouldn’t be taken as word-for word literal. All errors are my own. We need to

Drafted in January and just released, the Johns Hopkins statement on academic freedom will no doubt be widely cited.I cite the full text below. This post is a version of the document designed to draw out and represent exactly what it says, and to examine the assumptions underlying the document.

Patrick Dunleavy offers this list of ten typical questions that might be asked on your PhD oral exam. I always felt I would have aced my oral exam, but I never got to take it because my examiners did not want me to work on network theory.So how would I

Summary of a panel at the Hewlette Grantees’ Conference. Errors are again my own. Pete Forsyth, Wiki Strategies(See also his blog post with resources for this panel at http://wikistrategies.net/oer-wikipedia-getting-started/ ) In the past we’ve been saying that it’s important to the field of OER to improve content. But really, it’s

This is a summary of a debate including four participants, listed below, at OER2014. Errors and omissions are still my own. What is your mission in OER and what is your business model? David Harris – OpenStax It’s really about access, providing access to the highest quality OERs possible. A

This is a summary of a talk at the Hewlett Grantees’ Meeting, San Francisco, March 25, 2015. Errors (and typos, etc) are my own. Douglas GayetonLexicon of Sustainabilityhttp://lexiconofsustainability.com Our food system is opaque. We asked people to develop a lexicon around food sources We started with the word ‘sustainability’. That

In this paper I would like to address the core design elements in the development of a personal learning architecture being developed in the National Research Council’s Learning and Performance Support Systems program. This program was developed and approved to address the issue of skills shortages in technical and professional

Rob KadelThe Untapped Potential for eLearningPearson Research & Innovation Network / University of Colorado Denver– learning to think laterally, or to think divergently (think outside the box)    – instead of thinking of one answer, thinking of many possible answers    – example: alternative ways to commute to work – Research &

Like pretty much everyone else in the field I’ve been immensely enjoying Tony Bates’s work-in-progress, an online open textbook called Teaching in a Digital Age. Having said that, I think my perspective is very different from his, and this summary post offers me an opportunity to highlight some of those

The province has just announced that it is appointing David W. Campbell it’s “chief economist”. Campbell discusses the appointment here. Regular readers know I have responded to Campbell frequently in these pages. Just before his appointment (or maybe on knowing he will have it) Campbell posted an “economic development magnum

There are two types of MOOCs. On the one hand, there is the xMOOC – this is a formal course created in a site like Coursera or EdX. An xMOOC will have regular lessons, videos and assignments, be led by an elite university professor, and attract a large online audience.