By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blog Opens On the Learner of the Future
Interesting use of a blog. "This year's AoC NILTA national debate focuses on the learner of the future. A debate blog is available online, which discusses the evolving needs of our current and future learners." Can't say much good about the design, though - is the sidebar on the home page just broken. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Future Hope Against Today's Reality
George Siemens tries to find the 'balance' between the future vision and 'practical reality'. But there is no such balance. If you have some model, some vision, some end goal, then for every decision you make, the question becomes, "does this move me closer to my end goal, or not?" When people say something is "impractical" they're trying to say two things at once: that the thing is right, and the thing is wrong. Well, which is it? Me, I think education based on coercion is impractical, because it results in a generation that cannot think for itself. How often we have seen this in the past, with what miserable results. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Study: No Benefit Going High-Tech for Math and Science
As always, the story reveals more about the slant taken by the journalist than it does the actual study. One could equally say, "students teaching themselves using math and science software do just as well as those who are taught by a teacher." Same study, right. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mobile Technology in Medical Education Bibliography
This week's most popular file on ITForum: a bibliography (MS-Word Document) of papers describing the use of instructional technologies, and especially PDAs, in medical education. Very comprehensive, though readers of these pages will find nothing really new there (the typical paper: we tried PDAs in such-and-such a class or application, it looks like they have a lot of potential, can increase data input, etc.). The big weakness is that there are no URLs- either these papers are not online or the bibliographer didn't think their location was important. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cory Doctorow Profiled in The Chronicle of Higher Ed
I think it is with typical Chronicle irony that this article on Cory Doctorow's anti-copyright course, 'Pwned', is hidden behind a subscription wall, and entirely appropriate that it has been copied and posed in full on Siva Vaidhyanathan's NYU website. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Expressing Dublin Core Metadata Using the Resource Description Framework (RDF)
The RDF version of Dublin Core is open for comments. I still have a fondness for RDF, despite what I've said about the Semantic Web because, after all, RDF is about relations. Connections. But I sometimes wish I could keep the standards people away from it. Take, for example, the integer '43'. Here's how I express it: 43. RDF-DC? It takes seven lines. We have to stop trying to specify the exact interpretation in the document and let users apply their own interpretation in the context. In programming, this is called Duck Typing. "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck." We need to allow that, if it looks like an integer, it probably is an integer. At most, if we've specified the schemas in the header, we should need to do no more than "age = 43" in the body. Using the appropriate brackets for RDF or JSON or whatever we're working with. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. eLearning Watch
This newsletter comes out once a month, and though it has been running since 2005, has previously escaped my notice - perhaps because it only comes out once a month. For people involved in the field, most of the monthly links will be date, but the frequency is good for people who want to keep up but who don't want to spend a lot of time doing it. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Experts: Ed Tech Must Change Its Message
Supporters of educational technology need to change their message when talking with stakeholders, and they need to advocate more forcefully for change in higher education." This according to Past Board members of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). The change, according to the article, is that educators should "shift the focus in the national dialogue about educational technology from the technology itself to the changes it enables in teaching and learning". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning by Design: Good Video Games As Learning Machines
I don't know whether this was written for Education Gazette or whether it's just a link, but it's a good article. James Paul Gee writes, "the designers of many good games have hit on profoundly good methods of getting people to learn and to enjoy learning." Quite so. That's why I spent 12 hours this weekend playing Civ and only one hour reading philosophy. This article lists thirteen 'principles', though you draw your own theme from the list. Games engage students by having them co-create, by having them build and do things, by allowing them to customize, and by letting them invest in an identity over time. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Java Programmers Aren't Born
How do you become an excellent Java programmer? You start young, you program for free, you get your education, and you eat, sleep and live Java. "Let's say, for example, that your official work day starts at 8:30, and ends at 17:00. It is what happens after those hours, that will determine your future as a programmer. i.e. what are you doing between 6:00 and 8:00, before you set off for work? You could be programming in Java." Now of course, I would never recommend that you study Java if you love programming. But that's just me. What I will say is that the author is right. It takes that kind of dedication to learn to program well - to learn to do anything well. Me, I started to program too late in life, at about 18. But writing and philosophy, I've been doing those, well, forever. More...