By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Informal Learning - Here at Last?
OK, I need to set the record straight here. The author writes, "Learning just happens âx" sometimes particularly around the water cooler. So let there be more water coolers âx" and then add comfy chairs, sofas, and an espresso machine so that employees, who happen to be people, can chat and exchange ideas. That's how they will learn." No, this is exactly wrong, in my view. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Educational Resources - Anonymity vs. Specificity
Hylen writes, "To establish a credible academic reward system that includes the production and use of OER might be the single most important policy issue for a large scale deployment of OER in teaching and learning." This in turn raises the question of attribution in the production of open educational resources (OERs). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Social Influence for Perceived Usefulness and Ease-of-Use of Course Delivery Systems
The conclusion the authors draw - that "that instructors may influence students' perceived usefulness but not perceived ease-of-use on the technology they use in learning" - is simply not supported by the evidence. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Microsoft Seeks Patent Covering Web feed Readers
We have people in our organization who keep saying you can't patent things that have been previously invented, announced or publicized - and yet every day, it seems, we see evidence of the opposite. Microsoft gave us all a lump of coal over the holiday by filing patents on aspects of RSS-based content syndication. From CNet: "Microsoft has filed for two patents covering technology used to organize and read syndicated Web feeds, such as those delivered via the widely used Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, family of formats." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Re: Thunderbird
I hope this comment still reaches you... I am having trouble getting any of your feeds, for example: http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.xml to load in Thunderbird. I am using Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 on Ubuntu 6.06. Your site is the only blog I experience this problem in. Is it something for you to look into? Or is it a problem in Thunderbird (also very likely). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Re: Skrbl
Skrbl is an interesting whiteboard tool; however, it is extremely limited. There are two pretty good whiteboard tools now available for use with Skype. One is called SketchPad. The other is called TalkAndWrite. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Robert Sanderson, Jeffrey Young and Ralph LeVan: SRW/U with OAI: Expected and Unexpected Synergies, D-Lib Magazine October 7, 2005

The authors write, "SRW/U (the Search/Retrieve Webservice) and OAI (Open Archives Initiative) are both modern information retrieval protocols developed by distinct groups from different backgrounds at around the same time... SRW and OAI clearly complement each other. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dave Pollard: Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration 2015, How to Save the World October 7, 2005

"Bad news rarely travels upwards in organizations." Well, we knew that (I mean, how often do we write a critical email to the director?). But traditional knowledge management simply ignores this and many other truisms of information flow. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Graham Attwell: Recognising Learning: Educational and pedagogic issues in e-Portfolios, Graham Attwell :: Weblog October 7, 2005

The core of this paper is the "seven different functions for an ePortfolio, all of which can be mapped against different pedagogic processes": recognizing learning, recording learning, reflecting on learning, validating learning, presenting learning, planning learning, and assessing learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Albert Delgado: Locomotive: One Click Installation of RoR Bundle, Educational Weblogs October 7, 2005

I've looked at Ruby on Rails and thought it had a lot of promise, but didn't relish spending the days (weeks?) installing it. Maybe this is the answer? Nope, not for me - it's designed for Mac OS X 10.3. More...