By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Jeff LeBow and Dave Cormier[Edit][Delete]: George Siemens and Stephen Downes - On Knowledge, Ed Tech Talk [Edit][Delete] January 30, 2006

[link: Hits] So George Siemens and I had a chat on Ed Tech Talk Sunday about issues arising out of my Connective Knowledge paper and his comments about my scepticism about objective knowledge. Here's the MP3 Audio and the chat Transcript. As an added bonus, Dave Cormier and I chatted at length Sunday evening about the show and related issues. Now I rarely (well, never) post chat transcripts, but this particular transcript catches me at just the right time and allows me to share thoughts and feelings you can't really capture in a paper or forum such as took place earlier. So, with Dave's gracious permission (because the chat was never intended for publication), here's our discussion (click here). [Tags: Chat and Chat Rooms, Podcasting] [Comment] [Edit]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Robert Roy Britt[Edit][Delete]: Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams, LiveScience [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] A headline from fifty years ago? No, it's from last week. The Western Union telegraph has a long and storied history but it's odd to think of people still sending telegrams in 2006, illustrative of the time it takes one technology to replace another. Still, I never sent a telegram in my life. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Harold Jarche[Edit][Delete]: Failure of Online Communities, Jarche Consulting [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 8 Hits] Harold Jarche cites Jay Cross, who remarks en passant, "After the session, several people told me they really appreciated Bill telling it like it is. Early on, he said that while he thought he was pretty good at fostering online communities, 90% of the communities he sets up fail." Bill probably is good at setting up online communities. But I wonder whether a community that has been set up is doomed to fail. I wonder whether, instead, what we should be looking at as community is the interactions between people in a distributed environment - such as the network of blogs and readers and commenters that make up what might be called the edublogging community (actually several communities, but I digress). A seminar, a meeting space, an online discussion board - these are not communities. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ray Grieselhuber[Edit][Delete]: How to Make Wikipedia Better (and Why We Should), Online Journalism Review [Edit][Delete]Online Journalism review [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 6 Hits] Personally, I don't think the author gets the point. The suggestions he offers - forcing editors to register, demanding references and reasons for changes, clearing copyrights for all materials prior to posting - would only marginally reduce the number of errors (after all, Britannica has almost as many errors) and would create significant barriers to input. Had any of these been in place at the start, Wikipedia would not exist. The point of something like Wikipedia is that it is easy to contribute, and errors are cleared up after the fact by the community. This means that readers will need to be aware that Wikipedia is sometimes wrong. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Announcement[Edit][Delete]: EdNA Communities Closing Down, EdNA [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 1 Hits] Not as bad as it sounds, as communities are encoyraged to move to EdNA Groups, the service that was launched last year. "Each Group receives a space in which they can choose from a range of tools to facilitate communication and collaboration. For example, you can set up web forums and live chats; share web-links, files and images; create web pages and wikis; poll or survey members, and add RSS newsfeeds from EdNA Online". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Vicki A. Davis[Edit][Delete]: Why Blaze Lonely and Unpopular Trails That Will Become Highways of Tomorrow?, Cool Cat Teacher Blog [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 4 Hits] Nancy White recommended the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, which in turn impressed me with the first post I read. Excerpted in this post: "'Dr Brand...do you really think it is worth it?' No! The word sprang to Paul's lips. He almost spoke it. But something silenced it. Perhaps it was the memory of reawakening life in the eyes of Krishnamurthy. [His first patient.] Or an older memory of three figures turning hopelessly back down a steep mountain path. Or no memory at all, but that strange imperative which compels some men to blaze lonely and unpopular trails which will be the highways of tomorrow. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Terry Freedman[Edit][Delete]: Free Market, February 2, 2006

[link: 7 Hits] Terry Freedman comments at length on my remark about "doing something good, not greedy." He writes, "why is selling content deemed to be not ok, whilst selling or, more accurately, renting your expertise to an employer is ok?... Why use such patronising and disparaging language about people whose only 'crime' is to try and earn an honest living in a different way than you do? More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rob Reynolds[Edit][Delete]: The Relevance of Textbooks, XplanaZine [Edit][Delete]XPlanaZine [Edit][Delete]Xplanazine [Edit][Delete] February 2, 2006

[link: 4 Hits] So I'm just about to leave for a short stop in London and a longer one in Malmo, Sweden (if the weather allows me here in blizzard-ridden eastern Canada). Wish me luck! Hence, no issue of OLDaily tomorrow, and the weekly is a day early this week. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed[Edit][Delete]: DRM: Media Companies' Next Flop?, CNet News.Com [Edit][Delete]CNET News.com [Edit][Delete]CNet News.com [Edit][Delete]CNet news.Com [Edit][Delete] February 1, 2006

[link: Hits] Just another day in the online battles over digital rights management (DRM) and copyright. This article warns of the danger that customers will be lost because of DRM. "A few more incidents like Sony's 'rootkit' flap and consumers may revolt." Signs of that revolt are already evident. Newspapers have handled it so badly they are being called dead. And they are. But still, they continue to misunderstand the market, accusing Google of exploiting their content, and want to be de-indexed. Fine. Let them go, disappear from sight, and die. Movie studios, meanwhile, are busy ending the longstanding tradition of college screenings. We are reaching an end-point in this battle, and the tactics will intensify from here. While the industry is earning some wins in their attacks on consumers, they are losing more and more ground, which artists themselves beginning to understand what's going on. Commercial content is on the verge of being replaced. More...