By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. JRon Yanosky: Identity Management: The State of the Practice in Higher Education, ECAR / EDUCAUSE December 13, 2005

Useful presentation surveying the use of and plans for identity management at (mostly) U.S. universities. Some items of interest: the major reason universities are looking at identity management is for reasons of security and privacy (80 percent); enhanced services comes second (60 percent). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. JoAnn Hackos: Is DITA Going to Tip?, Center for Information Development Management December 13, 2005

This is new to me, so I thought I'd pass it along (it never ceases to amaze me how much is new to me). JoAnn Hackos writes, "Obviously, something else must influence XML authoring if it is to move past the tipping point. That 'something else' is arguably DITA.... it provides us with an informational architecture standard around topic-based authoring that is unique to technical information". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brian Lamb: OK, OK, I Finally Get It..., Abject learning December 13, 2005

Yahoo! announces a partnership with Moveable Type. Linking to the story and elsewhere, Brian Lamb comments, "It will be interesting to see how well these apps are integrated into the interface, and if being under the same roof means these toys will play better with each other as tent-poles under the Yahoo Hosting Big Top than they do out in the world wild web... Interesting that it's a hosting arrangement, not an acquisition". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. David L. Passmore: New Educational Methods for Organizational and Enterprise Learning Derived from Self- Organizing Systems Theory and Practice, Pennsylvania State University December 13, 2005

Jeremy Hiebert links to this article looking at informal learning as it develops in Slashdot. The author approaches the subject with what I think is the right perspective, observing, "Systems function, at times, in ways that cannot be attributed to any of the individual parts of the system separately. Such systems are termed emergent systems..." And more, he argues, such systems are self-organizing systems. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. roseg: Would You Like Freedom Fries With That?, randomselections December 13, 2005

The point of this item - with which I am in sympathy - is that not only is copyright expanding, but its increasingly pervasive nature is becoming a medium for social control. To think of where copyright has gone in the last decade or so, "Imagine buying a bed and being told that you were only licensed to use it for yourself". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alan Levine: Throwing Stones at the Wiki Glass House, Cogdogblog December 12, 2005

I've been contributing to the discussion of this item, a commentary on Will Thalheimer's Are Wiki's Inherently Flawed? (a good blog, and added to my aggregator). Thalheimer's proposition, essentially, is that knowledge producing systems need to be managed. "The more our communication channels have validators who correct inaccuracies, the more we tend to move toward the truth". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tom Hoffman: Nothing Feels Good, ESchool News December 12, 2005

The main point of this oddly titled article is that "A lot of the anxiety we're seeing about Myspace.com is exactly, exactly the same fear and loathing of groups of teenagers that for decades has shut down teen dance clubs and the like all over the country." As an unreformed underground publisher and rabble rouser, this article not only speaks to me, it speaks for me. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teemu Leinonen: Urinal as a Learning Object, FLOSSE Posse December 12, 2005

My own definition of a 'learning object' is very similar to this - actually, it is exactly this, with a slightly different emphasis: "Learning object is any entity, digital or non digital, that is used for learning, education or teaching". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Associated Press: Handhelds Go to School, Wired News December 12, 2005

Breathless story about the use of wireless mobile in schools. And (unlike the old Wired, which focused on content and community) this article misses the point: "I don't know if it's that they feel cool or they're just jazzed about the technology," Ross said. "But having some of those bells and whistles make the kind of information they really need to learn exciting." Sigh. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. James Farmer: Education & Blogs @ Les Blogs, Incorporated Subversion December 12, 2005

Ewan McIntosh, who launched edu.blogs.com last July, represented the edublogger community at the recent Les Blogs conference in Paris, his meanderings causing James Farmer to comment, "the total [and] blanket ignorance of what I might describe as the edublogosphere and of the broad and innovative uses of blogs in education over the last 5 years in these kind of forums does worry me." What has been happening is, of course, as Peter Ford describes it, "Educational blogging consultants seem to be springing up all over the place, some aiming for the guru-status of being paid for hot-air production about blogs and related technology that they never have used at the chalkface." Nothing against McIntosh, who was simply taking advantage of an opportunity (though his response to Farmer was, to my reading, unduly hostile). More...