Stephen Downes is a prominent speaker and writer in the field of educational technology and learning, known for his work on open educational resources, digital learning, and the development of the MOOC (massive open online course). He's currently a researcher at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Downes sees three current technologies as being critical for the development of online education; metaverse, blockchain and AI. But rather than making airy pronouncements in clickbait blog posts about this techno-troika, he has thought hard about how they operate together, creating a possible future for online education. But in this new distributed, learner-driven world, will we still need universities?

• 0:00 - Intro
• 3:53 - The MOOCs of today
• 8:04 - Physical state of the brain
• 13:28 - The Metaverse
• 32:32 - Blockchain
• 38:57 - Artificial Intelligence
• 56:02 - What the university looks like in the future?

YouTube talks by Stephen mentioned in the discussion.

• https://youtu.be/iGi4DDCuzRw
• https://youtu.be/zCojHtC1aCw

Follow Stephen

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stdownes
• Website (Personal): https://www.downes.ca/
• Blog: http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/
• Website (personal): http://leftish.media/
• Email: [email protected]

Contact John Helmer

• Twitter: @johnhelmer
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnhelmer/
• Website: https://learninghackpodcast.com/
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LearningHack

Download the white paper from Learning Pool written by John Helmer – The Spacing Effect: Harnessing the Power of Spaced Practice for Learning That Sticks https://learningpool.com/spacing-effect-harnessing-power-of-spaced-practice/