I watched the City Council meeting via the live video coverage online Tuesday September 4 and followed all the debate on the downtown. I did not have access to the reports (it would be nice if they were made available to internet viewers). Then I read Brent Mazerolle’s coverage, which
Continue readingAuthor: Stephen Downes
Half an Hour: Connectivism and the Primal Scream
Keith Brennan writes a well-thought-out and evenly expressed criticism of connectivism as it is applied in connectivist MOOCs. It’s worth taking the time to read it in full before proceeding with this post: here it is. His argument is based on his experiences in cMOOCs and he says it’s best
Continue readingHalf an Hour: Technology Integration in K-12
I was asked, I’m curious as to what you think the three most important things for newteachers to know about technology integration in k-12? 1. Community – teaching can be a lonely profession, and it’s easy to think you face problems nobody else faces. One of the greatest aspect of
Continue readingHalf an Hour: RSS Changeover Day Experiences
So today is the day Google Reader is vanishing from the web. What next? Well, I’ve done my duty and saved my Google RSS data, and now I’m looking for a new reader. Digg RSS Reader – http://www.digg.com/reader/ This is I think the one with the most promise on Day
Continue readingHalf an Hour: What I Wish I Had Learned in School
School for me was not really a pleasant experience. Oh, sure, it had its moments, but it was a struggle. On the one hand, we had the typical high school curriculum, which was about as exciting as paste, and on the other hand, we had the Darwinian social environment red
Continue readingHalf an Hour: The Open Road
Right now, the government awards road-building contracts to large construction companies. But imagine the government decided to end these contracts, and to simply grant anyone who wanted to build a road a license to build a road. It would still be a complex process, of course. Road-builders would have to
Continue readingHalf an Hour: Ongoing Digital Citizenry Training
Responses to comments on my recent online talk, in preparation for my keynote in Caracas in a couple weeks. Commenter voices are in italics. The original forum and comments are all in Spanish; I’m working through an interpreter. · Perhaps the greatest challenge lies in introducing technology in classrooms through
Continue readingHalf an Hour: On Being in the Public Service
I could probably obtain employment in the private sector, and it remains my back-up plan should the current gig at NRC come to an end (I continue to be ‘unqualified’ to obtain employment at a university). I’m sure I could earn more money, one way or another, working in the
Continue readingHalf an Hour: What’s Ours
As it was purchasing Tumblr, Yahoo was also quietly making changes to the Flickr photo sharing service. Flickr has been one of Yahoo’s few success stories recently, and this was the first major revision to the site in a number of years. The change came without warning, it dramatically changed
Continue readingHalf an Hour: MOOC – The Resurgence of Community in Online Learning
In this presentation Stephen Downes addresses the question of how massive open online courses (MOOCs) will impact the future of distance education. The presentation considers in some detail the nature and purpose of a MOOC in contrast with traditional distance education. He argues that MOOCs represent the resurgence of community-based
Continue readingHalf an Hour: MOOC – La résurgence de la communauté dans l’apprentissage en ligne
Texte de ma conférence a Edmunston – pour plus, svp voir http://www.downes.ca/presentation/317 Dans cette présentation, Stephen Downes aborde la question à savoir comment les MOOC (massive open online courses) influenceront l’avenir de la formation à distance. La présentation examine de façon détaillée la nature et l’objectif des MOOC comparativement à
Continue readingHalf an Hour: A Theme Park E-Learning Application
Here’s the challenge (from the E-Learning Professionals Group): “Can anyone give me suggestions of how to blend learning objectives with ELearning. My goal is to have the user not know they are taking a course.” Here’s the context: ” Based on his other questions, Brian is looking to develop training
Continue readingHalf an Hour: CN1376 AcadMOOC
7:54 pm Stephen Downes T -5 minutes 7:55 pm Mary Zedeck Hi Stephen! 7:55 pm Janesh Sanzgiri Excellent. Almost midnight here. 7:55 pm Javier Benítez disconnected 7:57 pm Susan Dixon Aloha from Hawaii! 7:57 pm Javier Benítez connected 7:57 pm Kenneth Ronkowitz disconnected 7:58 pm JH Shannon connected 7:58 pm
Continue readingHalf an Hour: Open for business: Refocused NRC
So here is what has been roiling Canada’s National Research Council over the last three years: NRC held a press conference in downtown Ottawa this morning with Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology), John R. McDougall, President of the National Research Council of Canada and, Deputy Leader of
Continue readingHalf an Hour: Assessment in MOOCs
I was asked: “I was wondering how they might work with the Humanities, as I teach Seventeenth-Century Literature, Shakespeare and other related subjects, which require research papers and final examinations. I can see using MOOCs for people who simply have a (non-credit) interest in these subjects, but I can’t see
Continue readingHalf an Hour: McLuhan – Understanding Media – Summary of Chapters 11-14
My contribution to the Understanding Media Reading Group Chapter 11 McLuhan writes, in Chapter 11 of Understanding Media, that “The mysterious need of crowds to grow and to reach out, equally characteristic of large accumulations of wealth, can be understood if money and numbers are, indeed, technologies that extend the
Continue readingHalf an Hour: The Great Rebranding
Responding to Michael Feldstein, who on summarizing the recent EDUCAUSE MOOC conference (see my summaries from this blog) represents MOOCs as yet another form of artifact in support of traditional instruction, diagrammed as follows: I was at the same conference of course and viewed it a bit differently. The attendees
Continue readingHalf an Hour: Who is Funding the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation?
I think it’s time to ask who is funding the self-styled Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation, and what they are funding them to do. A little transparency here would go a long way. Certainly they do not represent taxpayers – as a taxpayer, I’ve never been invited to vote for my CTF
Continue readingHalf an Hour: Advice to OcTEL
Context: email to David Jennings, on the occasion of the start of the OcTEL MOOC, in which participants have been flooded with introductory emails from the course mailing list. Hi – here are some suggestions – posted here because you’ll probably not get them if I send an email (heh)…
Continue readingHalf an Hour: The MOOC as a Vehicle for Learning: Observations and Conclusions
Summary with speakers Malcolm Brown, Veronica Diaz, Michael Feldstein, Phil Hill Phil: There has been a very rich discussion about the different reasons for participating in MOOCs, the variety of people participation in MOOCs. I’ve also been interested in the channels of communication here, there’s been an active discussion in
Continue reading