Foradian Technologies Interview
Questions 1. Please introduce yourself to our readers. I am a researcher for Canada’s National Research Council, the federal government scientific agency. I specialized on online learning, media and collaborative…
Stephen Downes
Two Comments on ‘Open’
Response to David Wiley (his post) > Which initiatives that use “open” properly would you suggest the whole world read about instead of the Fauxpen Education Alliance? I don’t want…
Notes from ALT-C
“The notion of students as change agents is a relatively new concpt.” — Malcom Ryan Rachel Winston How we can shape the development of a new culture of learning by…
gRSShopper Setup (2)
Making Optlists Preparing for the MOOC-REL course I filled in a full set of optlists. An ‘optlist’ is the information required to create a dropdown list. These lists create predefine…
gRSShopper Setup Log
This is from another site (more shortly) but I’d like to share he especially for people interested is messing around with gRSShopper but not being able to get it to…
‘Completely Wrong’ but Not In Error
David Wiley writes, “A careful reading of the post he links to, however, shows that this is completely wrong. The problems described in the post are the result of two…
Moncton’s Downtown Debate
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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’…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…