By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Kathy Sierra[Edit][Delete]: Become the Thing That Replaces You, Creating Passionate Users [Edit][Delete] December 15, 2006
Some good advice, especially with respect to the design of games in learning (and note that I did not say 'learning games'). The 'meta level' that Kathy Sierra, of course, is the nuggin - the thing that people are actually buying when they buy something. People buy heat, not coal or oil. Transportation or status, not cars or trucks. What do they buy when they pay tuition? What do people looking for when they sign up for OLDaily? Good questions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Seb Schmoller[Edit][Delete]: Google's Patent Search, Fortnightly Mailing [Edit][Delete] December 15, 2006
Google has launched a new patent search tool and of course the first thing everybody in our field has done is to look up learning. Here's a patent for roles-based access control from 1997 - this is one of the things Blackboard claimed in its patent. And 'learning'? A search reveals 1147 patents - and a lot of work for someone, I guess. I think we need to get a handle on this, though I must confess, I preferred my earlier strategy - ignoring the U.S. Patent Office as irrelevant. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tom Haskins[Edit][Delete]: I Found it Inside My Blog Reader!, growing changing learning creating [Edit][Delete] December 15, 2006
Heh. "All these bloggers I subscribe to appear to be learning without formal instruction... All these bloggers are self directing their own learning proceses, motivating their own progress, synthesizing their own meaning and constructing idiosyncratic mental models. How did all these bloggers get so resourceful and practiced at learning informally from the blogging they are doing?". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: Nadia, [Edit][Delete] December 15, 2006
Today is a sad day in our household as our little cat Nadia passed away after a brief illness. She was only 3 years old. Video, Nadia in the box - she is the second cat to appear, the light white, orange and grey cat (the other cat is Polly). Video, the cats playing, Nadia is the first cat you see, at the beginning and near the end of the video; the black and white camera hog is Bart. Nadia was so named because she was the gymnast, pulling herself up on chairs, leaping not walking (she always lived in three dimensions), prancing down the hall. We would play with her with the butterflies, and she would soar through the air. She was upstairs with us last night, but at the breaking of the day, she heard the butterflies calling, and went downstairs to meet them. Nadia, sweet Nadia, lives on in our hearts. [Tags: Push versus Pull] [Comment]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Natasha Gilbert[Edit][Delete]: The Death of Peer Review, The Guardian [Edit][Delete] December 14, 2006
I have never been a big supporter of peer review, including that undertaken to evaluate approve publicly funded programs. I am not, though, particularly keen on the touted replacement, "statistical indicators, such as the number of postgraduate students in a department and the amount of money a department brings in through its research." I don't think human judgment should be replaced by statistics - but I do want to increase the number and broaden the range of the humans doing the judging. In fairness, I will note that Steven Harnad, who posted this item to the JISC list, criticizes the RAE process as "re-review" and argues in favour of metrics, as evidenced here and here.. More...