By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Charles M. Vest[Edit][Delete]: Open Content and the Emerging Global Meta-University, EDUCAUSE Review [Edit][Delete]EDUCAUSE REVIEW [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006
Article based (loosely) on his talk at Snowmass last summer. In it, Charles M. Vest talks mostly about the thinking behind OpenCourseWare and a bit about open educational resources generally. It is important to understand, though, that this is a global movement, and is about more than the rest of the world being the passive recipient of MIT's largesse (sorry that sounds harsh, but that's how the article reads). In the last paragraph he gets to describing the meta-university, "a transcendent, accessible, empowering, dynamic, communally constructed framework of open materials and platforms on which much of higher education worldwide can be constructed or enhanced". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Will Richardson[Edit][Delete]: Headline: Congress Targets Social Network Sites, Weblogg-Ed [Edit][Delete]Weblogg-ed [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006
This has received a lot of press today, but keep in mind that it's only a proposal, and once American legislators realize that it effectively bans minors from using the internet it will be watered down or withdrawn. One would think. Will Richardson comments, "It's not safety. It's politics. It's a hot button issue. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Harrison[Edit][Delete]: The Future of E-Learning, Kineo [Edit][Delete] May 11, 2006

I liked this presentation, though its use of Breeze made it hard to just flip through (because of the slides with time-delayed content). And forget about cutting and pasting a pithy quote into the newsletter. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Yochai Benkler[Edit][Delete]: The Wealth of Networks, Yale University Press [Edit][Delete] May 10, 2006
This came out while I was gone and attracted a wide readership. It's a long read, but worth the while. This, for example, echoes my own thoughts: "The networked information economy improves the practical capacities of individuals along three dimensions: (1) it improves their capacity to do more for and by themselves; (2) it enhances their capacity to do more in loose commonality with others, without being constrained to organize their relationship through a price system or in traditional hierarchical models of social and economic organization; and (3) it improves the capacity of individuals to do more in formal organizations that operate outside the market sphere". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tom Hoffman: Filtr Chekr Ready for Beta Testing, Tuttle SVC May 10, 2006
Tom Hoffman is performing a useful service by setting up a 'grey list' of sites (including this one) that ought not be filtered by school filtering systems, but which are nonetheless filtered. You can check the filtering policies at your own institution by running the Python script he is beta testing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Robin Peek[Edit][Delete]: The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, Information Today [Edit][Delete] May 10, 2006
Although it is still a proposal, the American "Federal Research Public Access Act" is creating some discussion, including this article that enthuses, "One of the greatest events in the history of Open Access may have just happened." This is certainly an overstatement, though the act - which would require open access to academic papers funded by large U.S. granting agencies - would certainly have an impact. The act may still be in for a rough ride, though, as evidenced by this unfavorable review in the New York Times. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Steve Safran[Edit][Delete]: How the Business Has Changed in The Last Few Days Alone, Lost Remote [Edit][Delete] May 10, 2006
"This is one of the easiest years to make predictions in some time: 2006 will be the year of video," I said in eLearn Magazine in January. This week proves that. In addition to the smaller items mentioned in this article (such as, TiVo offering commercials on demand), we saw internet video being made available for television sets, Warner brothers selling movies in BitTorrent, MSN launching original video content, and CBS launching a free ad-supported broadband channel. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Doug Noon: Decolonizing Education, Borderland May 9, 2006
Interesting post challenging the status quo in education. I like the "resistance model to colonial thought," cited in part here: "Refuse to accept as common sense, discourses that present strong symbolic content that may contribute to stereotypes and erroneous beliefs... Re-question the aims of education... Redefine knowledge: To better understand how I come to know and value". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alan Levine: Blog Long Tail Much Longer, Wagging, Cogdogblog May 9, 2006
Short item making the cogent point that we are on the verge of being flooded with edublogs - and that that's a good thing. Which it is. You will want to follow the link to the Scotedublog wiki, a listing of Scottish edublogs in preparation for a coming meetup. As Alan Levine says, "This is but one little sampling of one wiki of one organization from one country... and it is bursting at the seams with people doing their own web publishing. It's not much to marvel at anymore, and then again it is. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dave Pollard Making Web 2.0 Work: Embracing Complexity, How to Save the World How To Save The World How To Save the World May 9, 2006
Readers may be familiar with this line of argument, but it bears repeating: what web 2.0 is capturing, and where its greatest strength lies, is the complexity of knowledge. "The problem-solving methods used in most large organizations, taught in most universities, and proffered by most experts and consultants are designed for complicated problems, those that, with enough information, energy and expenditure can be run to the ground and 'solved'. Complex problems are 'wicked', and complicated problem-solving techniques are largely ineffectual in dealing with them." (I really don't like the term wicked - oh well). More...