The Failure of Reason
During yesterday’s Future Trends Forum conversation featuring Kathleen Fitzpatrick – the author of Generous Thinking and proponent of reasoned debate between opposing parties – I asked a question that went…
Stephen Downes
On Connectivism and Scale
Image: Sui Fai John Mak – https://suifaijohnmak.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/bubblus_pln_ple_rev1.png Martin Weller makes some excellent points in his recent post on connectivism and scale, and they merit a short response. Weller is writing…
On the Creative Commons Certificate Course
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…
Science and Society
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…
Value
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…
Call for Proposals #StephensNext60
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…
Does God Exist?
Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Jean-de-Luz, photo by the author. Prompted by a sketch on CBC radio, I was curious this morning to see how Google would answer the question, “Does God…
Open Learning MOOC Test Post
testing with a lable, because RSS won’t work without it.
Notes On "Global Guidelines: Ethics in Learning Analytics"
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. For the…
Making Baseball Fun Again
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…
What is the Value of OLDaily?
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…
New Issues for OERs
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…
Learning Electron – Part 2
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. In particular…
Learning Electron – Part 1
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…
What is Digital Literacy?
Short response to a questionnaire. 1. What is Digital Literacy Digital literacy is a type of literacy, specifically, the type of literacy that arises in the digital context. By ‘the…
Plans
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…
State of the Universe
Yes, the world probably existed before me, and it will probably continue to exist after I’m gone, but for me, my life is the universe, and vice versa. This is…
The Wrong Choice
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…
Open Science Value Proposition
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. My first input…
Designing E-Learning 3.0 in gRSShopper – 13
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…