Author: Stephen Downes

Educational Technology Strategies Conference – Toronto Simon Pugh-JonesTeacherWrithlington School, (UK) David CrellinCreative Director for the Mendip Studio SchoolWrithlington School, UK David Participate – was a 3 million pound, 3 year project – 2005    – looked at creating sensing systems that would measure air quality in Bath, UK    – integrated with

Honourable Liz SandalsMinister of EducationOntario Ministry of Education This is a paraphrase summary, not direct quotes (though often quoted words are used). Sorry about spelling mistakes. Not an official transcript, but just me typing as she spoke. All errors are mine (especially spelling errors). (Ministry of Ontario vision video) What

Jonathan TepperExecutive Director of Information TechnologyGreenwood College School BYOD – being able to take your personalized device from homee, and use it at work or school Greenwood – small independent school in Toronto – 425 students    Mission: embrace a student-focused education    Started with a 1:1 laptop program        – worked

I’ve covered work by Audrey Watters a dozen times or more now and she’s never had a problem with it – at least, none that ever made it into a column about my coverage. This week, though, I said there was “a certain cynicism” in a recent list of articles

There’s a standard trope in the government policy arena around the idea of ‘picking winners’. It is based around the argument that government ought not be subsidizing specific companies, because this amounts to selecting which companies will be more successful in the marketplace. The idea is that the marketplace should

The New Brunswick government is looking to cut $400,000,000 to balance the budget. Let’s look at this logically. Cutting Wages Stacy Mowatt In the wage release the other day…so of the NB power employees were making more the the Doctors…. so by cutting at the top would be a big

Organizations aren’t thinking about the ‘networked individual’ – the networking choices and patterns of individual Internet users. They’re still focused on their own organizational information systems and traditional institutional networks. — William H. Dutton Saint John Andrea and I began the New Year waking up in the port city of

I posted this: The conundrum of creating an open course in a closed site – Storyboard OOC updateGabi Witthaus, Art of e-learning, Dec 22, 2014 So this, I think, is the opposite of a MOOC: “We chose to use a platform that requires people to have accounts and sign in,

Reusable Learning Resources The initial development of online learning technology began at scale with the development of the learning management system (LMS) in the mid-1990s. These systems were modeled on distance education resources such as programmed texts and course workbooks. These were designed originally by organizations such as the Open

Alan TaitFrom Distance Learning to Open Education – ICT is now normal – we don’t talk about distance learning, but ‘technology enhanced learning’– students learn as much outside the classroom as inside– I wonder if OERs are really delivering on their promise    – there’s a huge number of resources    –

Summary of a debate at Online Educa Berlin. Note that the debate format is not serious and that participants to not necessarily agree with the points that they are making. I am summarizing talks, so if the first person is used, it is the voice of the speaker. Enjoy. This

These are summary notes of the presentations at Online Educa Berlin, 2014. If the text uses the first person, it is the presenter speaking, not me. Aida Opoku-MensahE-Learning AfricaI’ve seen the impact of e-learning. In countries where we can not invest enough in schools, e-learning is the only option. There

E-Portfolio Workshop, Online Educa Berlin: These are content summaries; if written in the first person it is the speaker speaking, not me. Some comments in parentheses are my own. Launch of the Europortfolio German Chapter during the Workshop Igor Balaban – Europortfolio Community and Portalhttp://www.europortfolio.org We’ve completed one year of

Hiya Steve, I’m not religious and I don’t celebrate Christmas. That’s my choice and I don’t expect or require anyone else to do the same. So far as I’m concerned (and so far as pretty much every other person in my position is concerned) it doesn’t matter to us whether

This is an assignment for a grade 12 philosophy course. Proposition Most theories of knowledge depict knowledge as a type of belief. The idea, for example, of knowledge as ‘justified true belief’ dates back to Plato, who in Theaetetus argued that having a ‘true opinion’ about something is insufficient to

A few months ago Fred M Beshears and I discussed Constructivism and Materialism. He compiled the conversation and posted it here. ——————————————–Stephen Downes We don’t reason over perceptions or construct meaning, etc- there’s no mechanism to do that – rather, we gradually become better recognizer The basic constructivist premise (and

This is an outcome of a conversation with Rita Kop regarding the article The View from Nowhere. She writes, data scientists use their quantitative measure, as positivists do, by putting a large number veneer over their research This misrepresents positivism. The core of positivism is that all knowledge is derived

Responding to Linda Harasim’s comment, here: To Mohsen Saadatmand: there is indeed significant overlap between communities of interest and cMOOCs and the underlying mechanisms are the same. The difference between the communities and the MOOCs is that the former are persistent while the latter are occasional. Thus, the two play

For those who are on audio, I want to acknowledge Samuel Noekowsky, who just spoke. This talk is basically what he said, except he said it in the French way with complex theories, while I’m going to give it in the prickly, analytical, English kind of Canadian, dry presentation. But

Bader A. Alsaleh (Professor, Instructional Design and Technology, King Saud University) @ba_alsaleh On 40 minutes, will present a number of ideas. Why are we interested in social media? What is the importance of talking about it? What is the relation to education? And what are the implications on pedagogy? Pedagogists