Sydney...
Photos from Sydney have been posted in my Australia04 image area, including this one. I am leaving Sydney in a few hours - I know a lot of people wanted a chance to talk, and I'm sorry my time here was so short that it simply became impossible. Next time. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, October 7, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

Nose-steered Mouse Could Save Aching Arms
I saw the prototypes at the National Research Council offices in Ottawa a couple of years ago, but this invention by NRC staff is finally getting some public play. More...

Incorporated Subversion
James Farmer has moved his Incorporated Subversion blog to a new location, giving it (finally) its own website. And he launches the new site with a flair, beginning with a longish article titled Communication dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments. More...

Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization
It's not everything I would like it to be, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), despite recent announcements, is still a very long way from any real recognition of open access or publisc domain, and still a very long way from anything like actual public input. More...

25% of Internet Sites Violate Copyrights of News Articles
I have serious doubts about the accuracy of this item, but let's suppose, for a moment, that it's true, that the survey was fairly and accurately conducted and that the results are reflective of the population as a whole. It says, then, that a quarter of all websites violate copyright. If this is true, then what we have here is far more than a mere policing problem. More...

Amateur Revolution
What's interesting is not the fact that this is the case - though it is of course startling to find that "committed, networked amateurs working to professional standards (called) Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades." No, the really interesting question is why this is the case. How can the amateurs outdo the professionals? "Some professionals will find that unsettling; they will seek to defend their monopolies. More...

Next Big Thing: The Web as Your Servant
I was interviewed on Hobart radio yesterday and one thing we talked about was the idea of students being tied to desks and computrs by online learning. This item gets at my response to that, the idea that the current situation is temporary, that very shortly now (if not already) the internet will become much more mobile, allowing us to free students from the classroom. More...

Don't Be Afraid to Drop the SOAP
Are web services the future? Maybe, but this author isn't convinced. "Unfortunately the results haven't lived up to my hopes. The end result is fragile and a real resource hog." Writing in Perl.com for a technical audience, the author lists problems with SOAP and outlines an alternative approach used in his software product, Bricolage. More...

Road Map for Educational Multimedia Design: A Content Developer’s Approach
The readers of ITForum are looking at their next paper for disussion, a fascinating look at the principles of interpretation as applied to online learning. Interpretation, you may recall, is what happens when you go to parks or museum exhibits - its the set of little nuggets of information that accomompanies your cultural or natural experience. More...

Re-usable Learning Content Objects or Re-usable Learning Experience Objects?
Where else would someone glibly cite Chomsky's Syntactic Structures except in our field? Glib or not, it is not surprising to see Chomsky used as the base of a response, because much of what I write is in direct response to Chomsky and his ilk (Zenon Pylyshyn, Jerry Fodor, etc). Feldstein is responding to my question, "where was it written that language must be composed of building blocks strung together?" He finds the source for this question in my paper Design Standards and Re-usability (though I must say Learning Objects in a Wider Context frames the idea more effectively). More...