By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Networks, Connections and Community: Learning with Social Software
Researcher Val Evans (who has a lot of experience in this field) finds that "there was compelling evidence from the research that social software is valuable in enhancing and enriching knowledge sharing, capability development and the teaching and learning experience, and it should be seen as 'another tool' in the organisation's and VET practitioner's toolkit." There you go. I like the way the author credits the 'Storytellers' in the report, and also the way the research blog was used to support the report as it was written. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Science Commons News: Copyright and Fair Use in the Blogosphere
Documentation of a recent flap in which a publisher sued someone for using a figure copied from a published research paper. After the blogosphere made a fuss the publisher relented - but for that particular instance only. The author asks "in the world of blogging where cutting and pasting is common practice, how do copyright and fair use laws apply." But the better response is to observe that "this is exactly the kind of situation that the open access movement is trying to address". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reflections On Media in Transition 5
Blog post that will be used as a central location for coverage of the Media in Transition conference that took place this past weekend. Already the post has links to audio from the conference (which makes it worth linking to - but with files like this - "MIT 5: Folk Cultures and Digital Cultures - recorded Apr. 27, 2007 - (1hr51min / 102.4MB)" - it seems apparent that the organizers should reduce the bit rate to produce manageable file sizes - a two hour file shouldn't be much over 20 megabytes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. On Groups, Networks and Collectives
Blog post from Terry Anderson, and a companion blog post from Jon Dron, discussing the distinction between groups and networks. So far so good. But they include a third type of entity, 'the collective', with which I'm less comfortable. "Collectives are what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. Collectives are about aggregation. The logic of the collective is that of the set, not the network. A classic piece of collective software would be the recommender system or the tag cloud."
I can see the reasoning here, but the term 'collective' - with all its connotations to the epitome of group formation, communism, is a very bad choice. And to say 'collectives are about aggregation' and then to compare it to a recommender system is to (in my view) misunderstand how recommender systems work. That said - yes, I can see that there is this type of organization, too much like a group (being based on properties and aggregation) to be a network, too much like a network (having no internal cohesion or order) to be a group. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MiWiFi .V. Gatekeepers Inc.
So I wonder what's going to come first - community-wide WiMax implementations, that allow students to send and receive broadband in the classroom independently of the school's internet service, or jamming systems, that prevent WiMax signals (which can go through things like walls and buildings) from being accessible in schools. How ironic, that after schools spend millions of dollars to provide (filtered and blocked) internet access in the classroom, that they'll have to spend millions more to keep it out. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Welcome to COSL, Brian Lamb!
It's nice to see the people who have made important contributions being recognized. First it was Alan Levine, who got a nice job with the New Media Consortium. Then George Siemens, landing a position as an Associate Director with the Learning Technologies Centre at University of Manitoba. And now, Brian Lamb makes the list with a well deserved appointment as a research fellow with the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. ACHUB - Arts, Music and Edu in SecondLife
Sometimes when posting a link I'm filled with mixed emotions. On the one hand, setting up a wiki for arts, music and education in Second Life seems like a good idea. On the other hand, many of the pages aren't created. But on the other hand, they post the password to the wiki on the front page, which is cool. But on the other hand, they are advertising conference space on 2L 'for rent'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. RSS in Plain English
Another one of those hand and drawing videos, this one intended to introduce RSS to people who don't know about RSS. "if you know someone who would love RSS and hasn't yet tried it, point them here for 3.5 minutes of RSS in Plain English." Now that I've installed Flash 9 the blip.tv videos work. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. DrupalEd Is Ready For Download
I've had my headaches with Drupal, but it remains true that it is one of the easiest and most powerful applications out there. And as an open source software platform, you can't beat the price - nor can you beat the horde of developers. So there's good reason to celebrate with this week's launch of the DrupalEd distribution. "The goal of this site is to create a flexible framework that allows for users to set up a social learning environment or a more traditional learning environment depending on the needs of the learners within the site". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Make Internet TV
Though there are some small lapses (I really think there's a way for people to make Flash versions of their videos, rather than uploading .mov files or whatever to the internet) but these pale beside the fact that this is a really good guide, beautifully designed, well illustrated, complete and accurate. And they encourage people to submit additions and corrections. More...