Stephen Downes

The argument here is that "There is more to democratizing knowledge, however, than just access. OER is an opportunity to redress marginalization and erasure, and open pedagogy has a responsibility to confront social justice issues." I don't agree. The form is basically, "you've done a good thing but you haven't done enough." The problem is, it's never enough, and it means that no good deed ever goes uncriticized. I'll take the open access, thank you; you can keep on with your math or physics or whatever. Sharing your biochemical research does not create an obligation to address social justice issues. Today: Total: Kisha G. Tracy, OEGlobal, 2026/07/17 [Direct Link]

I don't trust fMRI analyses of human cognitive functions at all, so I'm not citing this paper as evidence of anything. But the question it asks is worth asking: do we need language in order to reason logically? On the surface it would seem we do: logic just is a symbol manipulation system (with semantics doing the work of connecting it to trust and meaning). But as Hume more, babies and animals can think logically. This paper concludes that language is not necessary, but again, I'd want better evidence. Today: Total: Hope Kean, et al., 2026/07/16 [Direct Link]

Not being a verified K-12 educator in the U.S., I can't test Anthropic's brand new Claude for Teachers myself, but it looks clever. "Claude for Teachers connects to Learning Commons, giving Claude access to academic standards across all 50 states—and beneath each standard, the smaller learning competencies... Claude for Teachers also brings in trusted curricular resources like OpenSciEd and IM v.360 from Illustrative Mathematics." Via Marcus Green. See also Chalkbeat. Today: Total: Anthropic, 2026/07/15 [Direct Link]

The Digital Credential Consortium is moving from MIT to Strada, an education foundation, where it will be refocused and renamed the Digital Credential Commons (DCC). It "will build upon the infrastructure incubated at MIT Open Learning to scale an open-source and open standards-based ecosystem in which learners fully own, control, and can use verifiable digital records of their skills and achievements." Obviously this is something I want to support in my CList personal learning environment. via Doug Belshaw. Today: Total: Strada, 2026/07/15 [Direct Link]

The authors advance a new version of open science (aka 2.0) based on a transition from 'access' to 'understanding'. But what do we mean by understanding? We might answer in traditional cognitivist terms - ontologies, explanations, predictions, principles. This article references verifiability, expertise and impact. I'm not really sure these count as 'understanding' either, at least in the normal sense we understand me them. Today: Total: Ashutosh Ghildiyal, Maria Machado, Gareth Dyke, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2026/07/16 [Direct Link]

This article uses the example of resistance in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area to make its point, but the message is relevant even without the political overtime. It describes the way large centralized organizations get all the press, money and credit for organizing in contrast with the important roles played by networks of small decentralized community groups that operate without funding and in relative obscurity. "Centralized organizations are easier to identify, easier to contact, and easier to evaluate using conventional metrics." We see the same dynamic play out in education where the large organizations take the credit and get the funding but where the real work is being done in quiet local communities without fanfare, often by people with the most precarious employment. Today: Total: Neeraj Mehta, SSIR, 2026/07/16 [Direct Link]