Stephen Downes on a model of personal learning #learningtechday

STephen looks great while he takes the stage, and delivers an authentic, humorous talk with lots of ideas to reflect upon, while all the time simply sharing his experiences and thoughts. I must admit… I have a lot of speaking flow to learn.

Streaming life from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnI5NBo13y4 see the full talk there.

A model is somethign that seems to always be a defined object, but research and life shows that the application of a model predetermines what comes out of a model. You practically determine what comes out at the other end… how well does this approach increase learning … the conclusion is built into the model. You always find what you are looking for and a model does just that.

If a model comes into play, i twill only be at the end of the journey. Stephen refers to old age, the moment where you have the idea that ‘I get it, finally!’.

What is missing in the standards based approaches and the models-based approaches is what we used tot hink of as BAD (Bricolage, Affordances and Distribution). Technology should be build for affordances… not predicting what people will do with that technology (Inge: think Iron Bridge approach).

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A day in the life of Stephen…. Tech selections and purposes

Sharing what I do, looking for similarities and then having a laugh at what we do.

The tech we are introduced to, is the tech that we will absorb to use, that is the ‘real point of reference’.

(everycloudtech.com is used to filter out spam, but still a lot is still).

Postlayer.com

The starting page is an overview of all he does.

Using RSS feeds to get information from others (feedly).

Stephen does not care about too much information, but to make sure he is getting enough of a snapshot of the world. IN a sense the feeds are random, as they multiply as the information is written.

OPML is then shared by entering it into feedly.

From there, he selects (from getpocket.com) the content he wants to have a closer look at. A searchable list.

Social media: twitter, linkedin (Microsoft acquired it, so now they might go to expensive learning quite quick – 30 dollars a month), plus.google.com (baseball)

Newer, distributed social networks Stephen currently uses: joindiaspora.com , app.net and what works still mastodon.social/@downes  (inge: check out mastodon!)

Learning:

codecademy.com/learn (learned basic python on it)

Stackoverflow.com is great, you type a question into google on programming and you choose the stackoverflow page.

Learning through webinars: CIDER and elearninggguild.com

The harvest of these informations is saved on gRSShopper http://grsshopper.downes.ca

Open coded, creating library (now database of others), 280.000 posts in the last 20 years… WOW! These focused posts drive you to be consize and brief.

Reflection of the talk

What has come out of all of that: the concept of the personal learning environment

No one actuallyhas been able to build it … yet.

The PLE connects to all the stuff you need or at least think is important.

The big question is: how do you pull this off?

This is completely distributed, not within one single online entity

Internet is capricious at this point in time, as things started frequently get deleted as well (in terms of software built by corporates)

Decisions to be made: what information should it record, who owns the data, how private, what should it do, what would a person do with it, where exactly is a PLE located?

So all of us should have a PLE.

So where do we connect with to do stuff with people.

There are millions of ways to connect with each other, but the network is currently broken as a lot of software cannot communicate with each other.

Properties of the network: how do people find each other? Services? How do they communicate? Is it secure? What do they share? How does a single PLE work with services? Do we need centralized registries?

We need to work decentralized for these PLE, as this will prevent total shutdown.

Why a personal learning environment?

What is the value proposition for a PLE?

Note: value is not what you can do, it is how you benefit

This is usually stated in financial terms (earn more, cost less)

Can also be stated in terms of quality: faster, bigger, better

And can be non-financial goods: satisfaction, happiness, memories… that is what is going to matter more than the financial benefits… but also different for all the people.

Education is not a search problem

It is not about finding, curating the best resources. Quality really matters only if you really did not want that learning resource anyway. If you are really engaged, you will make due with marks on a rock, … if it solves your problem…

Education is to a large extend a making problem - making

Lightroom.adobe.com (pictures), affordable because it is now in the cloud

Audacityteam.org/download (for recording as well from radio or audio sources 😊

Docs.google.com sharing documents, commenting…

Rebus community or open textbook library…

Movies: for this live stream on YouTube Stephen used  xsplit.com  combining slides with video.

Sharing

www.downes.ca/edradio.htm (from selected podcasts)

slideshare.net/downes for slides, sometimes combined with audio (also from this talk).

New learning paradigms

See carrie Paechter, metaphors of space in educational theory and practice
http://www.tandofline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14681360400200202

The original MOOC was a map, where the collective learners explore and map

Personalisation are currently: rules-based events, user models, adaptive learning… Stephen sees two approaches to this. Personalised learning is serendipitous, you do it for yourself, it is creating your own learning experience. The outcomes are not certification, but present inner network, your own persona, which manifests your interactions, experiences… extended cognition, including the network.

2 Worthwhile courses: Personal Learning & Designing OER using practical instructional design

Two free courses that have started a while ago, but that are truly worth taking a look at.

1. Instructional Design Service Course: designing OER while using practical instructional design
2. Personal Learning (course built by Stephen Downes) using LPSS

Instructional Design Service Course
My colleague Johan Thys just sent me a link to a wonderful self-guided, instructor-driven online course on designing courses via a project-based approach. The course uses the CANVAS-platform and demands 2-3 hours of study time per week, and has a great course design template, uses practical frameworks (e.g. Merrill's first principles of instruction) and offers the participants a chance to make their projects (courses) available afterwards as OER.

"During this 12-week course, you will engage in a real-world authentic instructional design challenge that centers on the design and development of free open educational resources (OER) for adult basic education. This open service-learning course is facilitated by Designers for Learning (Links to an external site.), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the United States. We coordinate service-learning opportunities with those who seek to gain experience creating instruction and other types of performance improvement solutions to support important social causes. In this project-based course, you will gain instructional design experience while developing instructional materials that will be made available for free to adult educators and their learners in the Adult Learning Zone group on OER Commons """""(Links to an external site.). "

OpenEdX course by Stephen Downes on Personal Learning 

This course explores the topic of learning in three ways: first, through an examination of research and development issues related to the topic; second, through interaction with a personal learning environment (specifically: LPSS) to take the course; and third, through activities supporting the development of a personal learning environment at a conceptual level. A quick overview of the themes per week can be seen here.

Course objectives: participants will develop an appreciation of different models of online course delivery, ranging from the traditional LMS through connectivist MOOCs to potential future models of personal learning and performance support.

Course environment: NRC01 Personal Learning will be delivered using OpenEdX and will include text-based content, videos, discussion, and exercises. Participants will be also invited to explore additional learning environments, including the gRSShopper, LPSS.me and Arke prototypes developed by NRC. In addition, participants will be encouraged to explore and work in online environments related to the topics covered in the course and report their findings in the discussion area or their own website. Participants may also be subscribed to a daily newsletter for the duration of the course.

Course Tag: #NRC01PL

Course Registration: https://openedx.lpss.me

#DigiWriMo #Future from humans as micro-brains to Artificial Intelligence (part 2)

In my last post which paralleled neurons with humans, and which drew a parallel between curation and giving rise to new forms of being, I ended with the question what the next step into evolution from curation could be. It seems there are some nice new realisations which might possibly look into this. Enhancing learning into the next era.

While I was looking at another episode of Through the Wormhole (clip a bit further down), on quantifying consciousness (or the math of consciousness), an interesting similarity between the discourse on connected learning or networked learning, and consciousness arose. When I also added the hive mind, or swarm theory to it… all of a sudden I thought: this is a fun parallel if you look at the evolution of learning and plug it into an evolutionary, physics/math perspective.

Community of experts parallel specialized brain regions

I am part of online educators group, and I frequently reflect on what that means. In a way it means that my direct family does not always know what I am doing, I talk, but to them it is often gibberish as they do not have similar backgrounds and interests. On the other hand, because I am a firm believer in educational freedom (and Star Trek Society), I am also only part of that type of online learners. Although I can enter into conversation with people who are more of the powerful

This also means my endeavors and experiments are on the outskirts of the educational powerhouses. Yet, I do find that my research has been picked up by some of these powerhouses (I can see it the data stream, and sometimes in some of my reappearing content which is either attributed, or sometimes is not).

If you take the brain and zoom out, you can see areas of expertise. And within these areas you have very strong connected neurons (like the group of online educators I feel I belong too), and lesser connected neurons (eg. other areas of expertise). In between the brain regions, there are bridges and communication often moves from one region to the other, even on specialized tasks. The same happens if you look at interdisciplinary research, the field experts come together, build bridges, but at the end reinforce the new interdisciplinary knowledge that is assimilated into their own more specialized discipline.

So, looking from outer space, and visualizing the inter-connectivity of field experts, with an overlay of interdisciplinary researchers… what might you get? I would imagine a new type of consciousness will arise. The next evolutionary step. Admittedly, sometimes I feel this could be scary: if we humans are put in isolated spaces because of this (or become fertile fields that grow stem-cells for artificial beings who harvest us…. Mmm, should probably stop reading SciFi), or it feels comfortable, if we humans would be kept as ‘fun organic life’ and we humans were provided with endless leisure time in which we could learn whatever and from whoever (yes, my ideal world there).  

We learn at increasing speed

Each of us who loves learning has the potential to learn at bigger speed than ever before (Internet, MOOC, the shoulders of giants and peers). This results in stronger and more paths to more knowledge. Each one of us that has an interest and a cognitive capacity to use and add to the area of robotics can now do this (mentioned in a previous blogpost) which means the chances of someone in that group of practitioners being able to lift that field into a much higher level of expertise also becomes a reality. 

Then at what level does the next spark of consciousness appear? What level of information must be distributed across a network before it leaps out of the network to become the next level of consciousness?

Calculating Consciousness

When Integrated Information Theory came along (Integrated Information theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory), all of a sudden the mechanisms of consciousness were being quantified (article From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0

http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588

), Phi (consciousness) became a formula, and all life on earth could be calculated for its amount of consciousness. A thrilling bit of research. The University of Wisconsin has done some pioneering work in that area (to that extend that I had a look at their job applications). In the series of Through the Wormhole,Season 5 Episode 8, they look into making consciousness quantifiable

Moving beyond the human brain

The way each of us evolves throughout life feels natural to us. We know we start out as babies, we then learn the basic human actions throughout our childhood, and eventually – if all goes well – we become adult with a place in society. In a way we know the path of raised consciousness each one of us passes throughout life. But this feeling of knowing how consciousness evolves is of course – up to now – not been reproduced in an artificial setting. We do make impressive progress, but none of us humans knows when the next leap in consciousness, the next leap in cognition will happen with artificial intelligence. We just move forward, and once it does happen we will observe this birth of autonomous artificial intelligence.

Referring to A network of artificial neurons learns to use human language

An interesting step along this way towards autonomous artificial intelligence was recently described in research from the University of Sassari (Italy) and the University of Plymouth (UK) who have developed a cognitive model, made up of two million interconnected artificial neurons, able to learn to communicate using human language starting from a state of 'tabula rasa', only through communication with a human interlocutor. Taking some info from an article in the NeuroscientistNews: The ANNABELL (Artificial Neural Network with Adaptive Behaviour Exploited for Language Learning) and it is described in an article published in PLOS ONE and described in this article.
ANNABELL does not have pre-coded language knowledge; it learns only through communication with a human interlocutor, thanks to two fundamental mechanisms, which are also present in the biological brain: synaptic plasticity and neural gating. Synaptic plasticity is the ability of the connection between two neurons to increase its efficiency when the two neurons are often active simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously. This mechanism is essential for learning and for long-term memory. Neural gating mechanisms are based on the properties of certain neurons (called bistable neurons) to behave as switches that can be turned 'on' or 'off' by a control signal coming from other neurons. When turned on, the bistable neurons transmit the signal from a part of the brain to another, otherwise they block it. The model is able to learn, due to synaptic plasticity, to control the signals that open and close the neural gates, so as to control the flow of information among different areas

How many humans does it take to spark AI?

It could be the start of a future joke, but at present it is something which interests me. Because if the brain sends out electric currents between interconnected neurons, then what happens if humans – working on the same field – connect using the electric currents of the Internet? Something to look forward to. 

(Image credit Bruno Golosio)

#DigiWriMo Curation and Consciousness #Future AI, neurons and humans (part 1)

One afternoon while letting my mind flow freely, it came to me that it is easy to see a parallel between the way humans seem to group together, and the way synapses strengthen each other while creating specialized regions in the brain. A fun analogy. In this blogpost I explore how to move from stem-cells to curated humans, to artificial neurons becoming conscious. Using references to Information Integration Theory, a selection of Through the Wormhole (mathematics of consciousness), and free creative thinking. And always stepping from micro, meta to macro-levels. Warning: this post is longer than usual. And although this week is Working Out Loud week, I am WOL fairly throughout the year, so I thought it would be fun to share Think Out Loud for this DigiWriMo-post.

Stem-cells and learning individualsIt is still amazing to think that we – as humans – come from stem-cells. Cells that can become anything (within the human body). At the start these cells seem similar, at the end they are differentiated, embedded in a web of equals, with bridges and communications to other groups of neurons. This reminds me of how humans evolve within their lifetime evolve from being fairly similar at birth, to being highly specialized depending on their surroundings, context, capacities… and at the end to fade away ready to be replaced with the next best thing (slightly adapted).

From each of our conception we are stem-cells, from their our bodies are formed. Once we are becoming more conscious, we start to filter information and people: we learn from our environment, our parents and peers, and from the guidelines embedded in our culture and the food which we have access to strengthens our physical being. All the while our mind expands, it becomes part of a group of people which we tend to ‘like’ and move towards, or ‘dislike’ and move away from. There is an active movement of us, as individuals to become part of a group which (seems) to fit the idea of where we belong to.

Curation in micro, meta and macro towards consciousnessThis situating of the self within a society (whichever society) can be seen as a curation. I wrote about curation in a previous post on how all of society and learning seems to be the result of some curation. But after having written that post, I got some comments (Laura Gibbs, Geoff Stead) and those comments triggered further reflection. Curation happens on several levels, but it can be simplified to be happening on three levels: micro, meta, and macro-level.

Micro-level: individual selection of each person screening information they come across. E.g. Stephen Downes, with his self-developed (written software) and self-sustained OlDaily/OlWeekly. This newsletter provides insightful information on a variety of open learning related topics (including magazines, individual bloggers, institutional interviews…. Another wonderful individual curation initiative is the selection of books covered and described by Maria Popova in her brain pickings, again solely possible thanks to people supporting her in her writing/blogging endeavors.
Meta-level: social curation (a topic covered to great extent by Julian Stodd) where networks of people in their connected world select information from the group and for the group. A bit like conferences and journals (from formal options), and knowledge clouds created inside of organisations or fields of experts. There are people who manage to deliver a course build upon content that is chosen and organised by learners/participants. I feel that is also part of meta-level curation. Dave Cormier manages to do this with his Rhizo-MOOC, which I guess is one of the most influential MOOCs out there (possibly together with DS106 and one of the MOOC that started the concept: CKK). What Dave manages to achieve is to start from a blank canvas, the MOOC is nothing. The topic will be chosen by the participants, then get populated with information from theses participants, and suddenly the dialogues move towards creating more knowledge within each of the participants, including Dave himself. Why do I feel this is one of the most influencial MOOCs? Because, looking at the vast outputs of that MOOC, the high level of expertise of participants gathered in those yearly MOOCs (with multiple influencial bloggers), it is hard to underestimate the impact of that MOOC on online educators across the world.
Macro-level: this level is being impacted the most by the society in which it is created and institutional symbolic capital, together with its gatekeepers, and accepted cultural norms. Where the micro- and meta-level still have some autonomous freedom, on the macro-level that freedom is becoming increasingly pressured by those in power. In a way each one of us individually adds to this power bastion, due to money being part of the sustainability of the macro-level (eg. Leading research institutes, leading magazines…). Whereas on the micro- and meta-level some autonomy can be kept no matter which societal philosophy is guiding or allowing the Way Forward.

A bit like Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital. Eg. Where people mention an experts/artists name as a way to heighten their own importance (yes, mentioning Bourdieu would be part of that :D But on a macro-level this means that the symbolic capital is also pushed by the gatekeepers (those who are keeping in eye out for maintaining and reproducing power). This means at that level the government and recognized (or established) institutes make the selection of information that will be disseminated.

How does this translate from humans into neurons?As individual neurons, it does not seem to matter at first with whom we connect, but once a communication is set up, those neurons with multiple communications throughout time are being reinforced. A preference of communication is happening, and that repetition is creating stronger bridges between the neurons. On a meta-level, the groups of neurons are specializing, becoming more important for specific tasks (eye sight, feelings, deductions…). Impulses from contexts are influencing the strengths of these connections. (eg. Western society pushing linear thinking, Eastern society emphasizing horizontal thinking).
On a macro-level the full human is becoming apparent. It is no longer the connections of the neurons, but the result of these connections as drivers of the bigger neuron temple: the body and externalized mind of that particular human. The body and mind of us humans is the macro-level of neuron activity, just like our institutions seem to be the drivers of our society.

In search for the spark into consciousness
So I wonder, when does consciousness happen? In a way, I feel, that Rhizo-MOOC has created a higher consciousness in terms of what online education is like. All of its participants have become more than the sum of their parts (in terms of previous knowledge).
Could it be that by putting people together, you have the same effect as putting neurons together. Given a communication is actually happening. I think heightened communication does indeed result in higher consciousness. But if neurons linked together manifest life (or in the above-mentioned paragraph, result in manifesting the human), then what happens if humans are put together for a long period of time, and at such a momentum that they become more and more connected across the globe? Will this evolve into a superhuman or into an artificial intelligence which relies on humans, yet is more than all the humans put together? Maybe even to the extent that we as humans will become just another step into evolution. Redundant once a more accurate, speedy evolutionary step is reached.

In my next post I explore moving from Consciousness into Artificial Intelligence, while comparing communities of people to regions in the brain, "#DigiWriMo #Future from humans as micro-brains to Artificial Intelligence (part 2)"

(Image credit Bruno Golosio)

#MOOC: no disruption, no real assessment and adults aren't dropouts! #grumpyWoman

Okay, this is a mail written on the aeroplane after returning from EC-tel conference. A wonderful conference (I will share the positive vibes and connections soon). But first I have to get some of the reoccurring assumptions uttered by some (yet too many) off my chest.

Briefly: there is NO disruption happening as those building the disruption are those being part of classic education, we are ADULTs so please stop using drop-outs – we are adults CHOOSING what we learn, and please STOP thinking in terms of classic assignments as that is NOT the only way to assess knowledge – our personal learning network can do that! And OH YEAH, that means assessment can take place contextualized and outside MOOC platforms.

Real disruption: not there yet: attract people from outside of classic education to look at the future of education

“How can we ensure that future professors will be able to teach with new technology”: well, first of all, let us all learn to cope with change and new technologies. Digital literacy in terms of cultural awareness, critical analysis (quality, selection…), and attract people that were NOT educated through the existing classic system of primary, high school, university… Interdisciplinary might not be enough to really capture or draw up a roadmap for future education. Inevitably the best scoring/performing people within a system are those who can replicate the system. As such, I often wonder how much disruption can take place if we build the so-called disruptive systems with those that come out of those systems… there won’t be too much change happening. Only marginal differences that are called ‘disruptive changes’ because it sounds nice at this moment in history.

MOOCs are disruptive? Do not make me laugh!

While discussions are multiple on the disruptive effect of MOOCs, I keep wonder how little it takes for the ‘disruption’ label to appear. At the end of the day, I still see/hear the majority of academics/professors talk about teaching, not learning. The MOOCs are in many cases simply a digitized form of earlier, existing content. So not much disruption there.

And one of the – for me questionable – outcomes of the MOOCification, are the multiple mentions of how now less teachers will be needed, less professorships, as more less well paid people can pick up certain aspects of MOOCs. So, if I understand correctly education is again cut due to (false) arguments. This also does not feel disruptive at all, in fact it feels very familiar. In this case I think the word ‘disruptive’ is only used to do more of the same (cuts) but using the word ‘disruptive’ as a false argument that simply sounds good and that people take for granted.

Real disruption would happen if a new model of education would come up that makes people be citizens and rulers of their own life. A new societal model, that would (just imagine) lead to more satisfied lives where basic (= not surviving but living) needs can be secured for all and where learning is seen as a truly important, life enabling and satisfying activity. For me, gaining knowledge and sharing it so we can all benefit is the way to go. Technology as support, living life as sense-making, following personal goals that are based on personal strengths and connected improvement for all (which does not imply a linear move towards improved living necessarily).

Drop-outs? Adult, autonomous thinking and choices you mean!

On drop-outs in MOOCs: okay, I am willing to see how graduate students might be in need of following a full MOOC (especially for those MOOCs embedded in the degree curriculum of a university, but even then… *sigh*), but most MOOC’ers are ADULTS. And adults (at least a good portion of them) can really think by themselves! So, please, can we drop the drop-out! Do any MOOC-teachers/professors really still think that the way they provide content and assessment is the only way to grasp content? As an adult, I think we can all choose what is of importance to us, and we do not need to be assessed in classic ways, we can figure it out by ourselves (at least some of us, not all, and voluntary choice is good for everyone of course).

Assessment by feedback from personal learning network
If we cannot figure it out - as adults - what we need, and how to master it, it proofs that we did not learn to find it out by ourselves. Sometimes we need classic assessment, sometimes we need to explore the unknown, and sometimes we just roam the premises in order to learn serendipitously. If small children are able to master new content, we as adults surely can too. I am not pushing assessment aside, I just feel that some of us are able to assess what we need, and whether we learned it ourselves, not necessarily by externally designed tests. Another options would be to always include contextual assignments, that way adults can embed new information in their professional/personal context and think about it. Of course the question comes up: “yes, but how will it be graded?”. Simple enough. If we really belief in a networked world, where people have their own personal learning network, you can rest assured that when sharing our drafts of these personally written assignments with each of our own network community, they will give ample feedback. And much more contextualized feedback, coming from real life, authentic experience. It cannot be called a disruptive action, if we still restrict peer review feedback to the other people taking a course. That is too simple AND it assumes that those people are the only ones being able to provide the right feedback. For me, the best feedback I get is from those in my personal learning network, not necessarily from other MOOC participants.

And I refrain myself from the tiresome discussion on using the term ‘teaching’ much more then ‘learning’. How many times must we agree on the importance of learning and learner autonomy, and then simply stick with teaching as the core concept. We learn by doing, we learn by learning. 

Okay, should probably sleep. Grumpy woman here.

#OER on higher ed, corporate, personal & #development

Thanks to my new contact Vivienne Bozalek from UWC, I got redirected to ROER4D (Open Educational Resources for the Global South or for development). She shared an interesting talk with Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. And as I was listening to this 30 minute talk, another OER movie caught my attention: Using OER for workforce development which was presented by Una Daly from the Open CourseWare Consortium. Which led to the OER use in an open course, which is (among others) done and shared by the Tompkins Courtland Community College through the Kaleidoscope project. This in term reminded my of a talk given by Stephen Downes on the MOOC of one, which in a small (but to me relevant way) links OER to personal learning environments. And that made the circle full from my perspective: global, local / personal and institutional / higher ed and corporate ... you cannot deny that OER has taken up speed, and has grown in importance. This of course turns the internet into a global content that can be tailored by all of us, to result in learning paths (personally relevant learning paths).

Learning paths for sharing 
One of the learning paths is to provide customized, or better yet curated content, but there are easier/quicker options as well, and one that sticks to mind (I saw this while I visited Quallcom in Cambridge) was Pathgather, a nice piece of software that enables people to map where they found/find useful content for their purposes, and which they can rate. From there other colleagues/networking peers can check out those shared learning paths and rate them in turn, to indicate how useful the path is for their own professional or personal development. But ... Pathgather is not an open educational resource or OER, nor is it Open Source, so it cannot (yet) be used in the open. Would like to see something similar in the open though. If anyone knows of such a tool, feel free to share.

OER, the movies, with brief focus
Here are some of the movies I have been listening to, and brief ideas or interests from each (there is much more content of interest in every one of those movies of course!). And a brief wrap up at the end, on why I find this interesting.

ROER4D
ROER4D started (2012) as a project to see whether the claims being made by OER were actually true and could help the global south (increasing access to Higher Education, reducing costs, improving content quality in education, due to a shortage of teachers in the global south and lack of resources). And as most work is being done in the global North, there is a gap of proof and testing those claims. Another objective to look at ROER4D is to get a network going (next to testing the claims) in order to bridge the isolated spaces the current OER academics are in (for the global south, miles from conferences), and build a research capacity on OER in the global South. A wonderful thing about ROER4D is that they want to open ALL data, not only results, but the full process in order to provide this research capacity and insight (NICE!). Cheryll also mentioned some of the challenges and issues on ROER4D on global South: increasing amount of students, financial constraints and resulting pressure on educational institutions. Part of the challenge is about also keeping the research capacity inside of the global South (stop braindrain) and at the same time offer real insights into methodologies, analysis... and possibly allow the global South to develop contextualized methodologies from there.



Moving from ROER4D to corporate use of OER in training
Important focus on community colleges from which students need to enter the job world, and need to understand how to be able to keep up with workforce development. From the labour department (US) they did push the agenda to create more OER for US based workforce development. There are increasingly more entrepreneurial schools, and they develop OER. Una also covers IP and copyright licensing options, as well as cost reduction options by using OER. Una also shares some good OER coming from government resources in the Public domain : NASA, Department of Labor, department of energy (all US). But she does mention that not much is known in the public about these high quality OER provided by government. She also shares the Saylor.org resources site (how to present yourself, where to search for jobs...), they currently have 23 courses on workforce development.



And then moving to OER for personal learning environments
The interest of this talk by Stephen Downes (INTED2014) is about the selection each learner makes when following online education that offers a big amount of content (OER). And to look at organic learner dynamics as a space that can be used for OER. Stephen also focuses on the learner, but specifically the process that becomes ever more important to learners to understand what they need to do/have in order to become critical learners using OER (and non-OER). A nice concept launched is the semiotic approach: the learner trying to make sense of the world (meaning, context, representation), and in addition the critical/digital capacities being made by the learner for personal use (trying to make sense of our own experience, knowledge). And in sharing among all of us, concepts are constructed, OER take shape. Multiple viewpoints to create meaning, but looking at it from the personal perspective.



The open course
This short (5 min) video shows the process and adoption of an open course, as it was experienced by the Tompkins Courtland Community College through the Kaleidoscope project.



My thoughts on why this is interesting
Now why do I find all of this of interest? (aside from the obvious benefit of OER being there for all of us). I find it interesting because it is an evolution that affects or will affect all of us, in a strange - come together kind of way. If all of us develop OER, or curated content, then we are all recreating the internet by populating it with meaningful content built on the shoulders of giants (which means all of us with our expertise in our own contextualized environments). That is a sweet thing. For this also means that all that ever matters is no longer in us, but outside of us and each of our living space, it is in a layer build by shared meaning. Following an online course, is by definition open (as not all the material is sent to you, and as such a closed content package), and becomes part of a discussion by all interested parties (positive and negative). The interesting tension is between the individual and the joint-us, I have my own needs and contextualized expertise, but the built upon content is from the collective. No longer of the one singular institute, corporation... 

The #MOOC of One, massive is not important ONE is

To be one is to be YOU concludes Stephen Downes in his latest slideshare of a presentation given at the 8th conference of International Technology, Education and Development or INTED2014 in Valencia, Spain. When stating that concluding idea, Stephen once again proves that all things beautiful are simple and that enlightenment is often a case of reversing an idea that lived for some time. In this 28 slide presentation Stephen examine the transition from the idea of the Massive in MOOC to the idea of the personal learning environment.

I like this idea, as the more I delve into research on self-directed and self-regulated learning in MOOCs, the more I feel it is about the individual and how they manage (or are willing to manage) their learning that makes MOOCs important.

The MOOC of One from Stephen Downes

The proceedings of prior INTED conferences can be viewed or searched for free online here.