Author: Stephen Downes

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. OPML Now that we

[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. This application scans websites for

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. So if you’re wondering why

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

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.

-1. 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. A connectivist course is focused on developing two types of knowledge: personal knowledge, your own network of

[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

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.  Why? Podcast: Best Science 1. Surrogates

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… Events I had a colleague tell me a

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

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. This will be true

Notes from Dan Pontefract’s talk at Focus 2018, Montreal Beginning with the idea of being distracted, rather than ruminating in thought. We have accepted that. That’s what’s happening in society – technology aids and abets it. Do we have to outsource our thinking to Siri or whatever? I’m not sure

Reading this month’s First Monday, which was a special issue on the emoji, inspired me to a creative thought, which I document here. The thought has two parts: – first, there’s the (probably unoriginal) thought that the existing and future set of emoji (or, related, emoticons, or icons (including, say,

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?” by Gordon Freedman, a

Steve Wheeler posted a nice article called 12 Tips for Great Speaking today.He’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

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

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. When asked, I tell people that I work at the

My own sense of morality has always been from the perspective of the more powerful. This is not because I am the most powerful person in the world; far from it. Indeed, I am always sensitive to the actions (and frequent immorality) of those more powerful than I. But that

“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

Responding to: Wynne’s ploy to buy Ontarians’ votes is admirably shameless: Robyn Urback The author writes, “Few politicians would dare campaign on a platform so estranged from the principles of sound fiscal policy.” First of all, this is transparently false. Everyone is familiar with the pattern of ‘election goodies’ prior