By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sherry Saavedra[Edit][Delete]: Schools Weigh Control Versus 1st Amendment, San Diego Union-Tribune [Edit][Delete] June 8, 2006
As you have probably guess, I was not lucky in Innsbruck, and so did not have internet access from my hotel yesterday. I am now at the Microlearning conference here, which I will address tomorrow morning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Johncn[Edit][Delete]: Connectivism: Danger or Opportunity, The Education Bazaar [Edit][Delete] June 6, 2006
Good discussion of George Siemens's recent Connectivism White Paper. "Where I'd like to see connectivism go is in the direction of personalized learning environments, or perhaps what Siemens calls 'learning ecologies'. However, I'd like to take that idea in the K-12 realm to be a PLE that would follow the student through school, and then beyond. I think we can take existing technologies that build social relationships and harness these for learning AND instruction". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sharon Begley[Edit][Delete]: Science Journals Artfully Try To Boost Their Rankings, Wall Street Journal [Edit][Delete] June 6, 2006
Interesting item looking at the use (and abuse) of impact factors in academic journals (impact factors measure the importance of a journal through metrics such as citations and are used when making purchasing decisions). As Marc Meola notes, some practices are underhanded, such as "blatantly asking authors to cite more studies the journal has already published to limiting citations to outside journals. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Harold Jarche[Edit][Delete]: The Relevance of the Learning Profession, jarche.com [Edit][Delete] June 6, 2006
Another way of saying pretty much what I'm saying. "As a learning professional, it's time to take a stance. Enabling learning is no longer about disseminating good content. Enabling learning is about being a learner yourself, sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm and then taking a back seat. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: London, England, June 5, 2006
I spent the day today at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, where I took part in a panel on 'the global university' and then presented myself on 'The Students Own Learning'. I will have media available soon. It's now late at night after a long day and I'm in Manchester for tomorrow's PLE meeting (see below). So it's a short newsletter today, beginning with this link to my London photos - though I have finished the descriptions, I'm sure you will enjoy this set. [Tags: Newsletters] [Comment]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Daniel Schuhmann[Edit][Delete]: 500 Hour Test of Tomorrow's Windows Vista, June 3, 2006
This is an exhaustively comprehensive article previewing the forthcoming Windows Vista system composed of dozens of pages and hundreds of screen shots. The key, I think, is "a complete blurring of the boundaries between online services and normal software". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Barbara Ganley[Edit][Delete]: Finding Our Way through the Edublogging Labyrinth: Losing Hope in Order to Effect Change, bgblogging [Edit][Delete] June 3, 2006
Barbara Ganley lived up to her keynote billing delivering this stellar talk at blog.ac.uk - a talk that I drew on freely for my own talk later in the day. And her message left some in the audience surprised: "Let's face it. It's hopeless for us to think we can change a behemoth like our educational system - it reflects, after all, the fine fix we find ourselves in, and because it very elegantly keeps those with power in power. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: How I became (blog) literate..., June 3, 2006

I had a lot on my mind as I presented at the blog.ack.uk conference Friday in London (slides and MP3 Audio), and my task was to summarize the proceedings of two sets of four concurrent sessions. This is what came out of that effort. I think that my major message is on the last slide, and most of all, that "what matters is that we are honest with ourselves, and that we share without reservation." Honesty is hard, and sometimes people choose the safer path. And sharing is hard, and sometimes people choose silence. But the cost, I find, is greater than the sacrifice, even if indifferently you can watch it be borne by others. You tell the world what you want with your own conduct, and ultimately, you reap what you sow. My message was heard, I could see, and as I leave London and blog.ac.uk behind me and say good-bye, I wave in silent salute, "Hail, well met, and may the road before you be straight and true." And I walk away and think about being a better person. [Tags: Web Logs, Podcasting, Flickr] [Comment]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ken Fisher[Edit][Delete]: The Question of Banning Laptops in Class: It's Academic, Silly, Ars Technica [Edit][Delete] June 1, 2006
The Chronicle of Higher Education has come out with yet another vaguely anti-technology article, this time about giving professors the capacity to shut down wireless access in a classroom. But more interesting is this essay in response by Ken Fisher pointing out that shutting down wireless will not only annoy students, it merely delays the inevitable. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jay Cross[Edit][Delete]: More Signal, Less Noise, Informal Learning [Edit][Delete] June 1, 2006
A nice write-up by Jay Cross of the current ADETA Newsletter (well worth a look) but with some nice irony. Cross writes about the A-List blogging set, "The A-list blogosphere is an immense echo chamber," and comments, "The training and development world sometimes suffers the same narrowmindedness." Well maybe. And I certainly agree with him when he says we should consult "non-traditional sources." But who is featured in the ADETA Newsletter. More...