By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sande Chen and David Michael: Proof of Learning: Assessment in Serious Games, Gamasutra October 24, 2005

I don't really like the author's distinction between 'serious' games where "serious games have education as a primary goal while video games focus on entertainment." That said, this is nonetheless an article worth reading on the task of evaluating educational achievement within games. Methodologies (which will be familiar to game players) include passage through tutorial sessions, game scoring, levels, completion evaluation and more. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Corey Murray: Schools Offered New Video Royalty Deal, ESchool News October 24, 2005

According to this story: "Acacia Research Corp., the California-based company that claims it owns a patent covering all streaming video and audio technology, says it has reached an agreement with university attorneys that opens the door for schools to begin paying royalties..." Personally, I think think this is ridiculous, and the idea that this company (that nobody has ever heard of) has 'invented' streaming media is laughable. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed: Virtual & Managed Learning Environments, Learning Link October 24, 2005

Stephen Powell writes in ITForum (which I can no longer link to, thanks to a new login barrier): "I have been working on an evaluative framework for Online Learning Environments... From this work we identified three broad categories that need considering when making choices about ILE. These are:
- Learning - Focuses on aspects related to the learning process and pedagogical design.
- Administration - Focuses on the organisational, management, and administrational issues with the institution
- Technical - Focuses on both the technical and infrastructure requirements and support required". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sean Gallagher: Sun Spins Off Education Project as a Nonprofit, EWeek October 24, 2005

Interesting. "Instead of 'No Child Left Behind,'" said (Sun CEO Scott) McNealy, "we [want] 'No Child Held Back.'" This is the thinking behind his announcement last Wednesday at EDUCAUSE "that it (Sun) is spinning off its effort to create an online, open-source educational resource library as a nonprofit organization". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Boris Mann: Distributed Social Networking, B. Mann's Consulting October 24, 2005

How to move things another step forward: "Whatever the pieces of the infrastructure are, we still need to be able to pass rich user profiles back and forth. We've got an RDF-based one in FOAF, we've got a microformat one in XFN, and we've got a desktop app-compatible one in vCard". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dave Cormier: E-Learning 2.0 - Why Bother?, Dave’s Educational Blog October 24, 2005

First-rate blog post reflecting on what e-learning 2.0 really means (and as far as I'm concerned, the name 'e-learning 2.0' is just convenient shorthand, not some branding exercise or anything like that, shorthand for what is already happening whether I'm around to give it a name or not). What Dave Cormier gets is that what is represented here is a new literacy, or as he says, that students have more literacies than their instructors. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ruby, Blackboard and the Challenge for Open Source  

October 24, 2005 Today's newsletter is coming from Toronto, where I'm at the Free Software and Open Source Symposium where I talked about why it is important for the open source software community to embrace open content. Slides are available online in S5 (opens in your browser). More...