By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Myth # 5: The Mind = Computer Myth
Norm Friesen wraps up his E-Learning Myth series with an article that looks at the idea that the mind is like a machine. Such a comparison depends a lot on what you think the mind looks like and what you think a machine looks like. In addition, as I point out in my comment, it presupposes that our theory of mind was based on our machines - when in reality, our machines were designed according to our theory of mind. Yes, the theories Friesen outlines - the information-transfer theory of learning and the physical symbol system hypothesis - are both wrong, in my mind. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Office 2.0 Database
Nice. database of roughly 250 Web 2.0 applications, including 29 bookmarking applications, 13 calendar applications, 5 contacts managers, 17 CRM systems, 11 database managers, 17 desktops, 14 development tools, 8 document managers, 11 feed readers, 16 file managers, 7 photo editors, and much much more. Worth noting, if you look to the far right, is that the dominant UI technology is AJAX. Not Java. Not Flash. AJAX. they is, or should be, an object lesson in that. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Canadian Geodata
Back when I was designing a website for the municipal sector in Alberta I had a number of meetings with people who were developing GIS applications. At the time, their competitive advantage was that they had privileged access to government data (it certainly wasn't their technology, which never did make any real impact). I tried to free up that data so we could use it in MuniMall. I begged. I cajoled. I whined. I complained. I went to conferences and harangued them at their booth. Nothing worked, and we never did get any decent GIS applications. Now, finally, "In response to demands from users for no fee access to framework geographic data and the increasing technological shift in the marketplace, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), is pleased to announce that starting April 1st 2007, the Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) ... will initiate a change from a cost recovery environment to an environment providing no fee access to its current DTD products." Finally. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Error Feedback: Theory
The whole post is a but fuzzy but manages to make its way to what I would consider to be the correct conclusion. "Although not innate, expertise takes time to develop." The author cites Anderson and Schunn: "For competences to be displayed over a lifetime, time on task is by far and away the most significant factor." And in particular, "for learning a language, 1. the crucial element is practice rather than some language module [and] 2. the process cannot be accelerated." The article does note that "all practice is not equal" (they mean, "not all practice is equal") and that "'effective time on task' is promoted through... feedback." But they don't mean 'feedback' per se. They mean correction. Which, computationally, is represented by (for example, something like) back propagation. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Neuroscience Blogs
This is much too much for me to read but the discussions in these blogs ought to inform educators, covering as they do everything from mirror neurons to autism to change blindness. Maybe someone will offer a daily compendium, a lot like my site? Ah. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Land Grabs, Business Models and Open Standards
I know, it's a busy day today, with a lot of links, but I do want to pass along this diagram of the 'ID stack layers' from Marc Canter. He writes, "OpenID is a way to authenticate users, and microformats is one form of a data format - but it's not enough. FOAF should probably also be included in the mix - but the technical facts are that this problem gets solved by an entire stack of solutions - all leading to the idealistic world we all want." Quite right. Because right now we're still in the 'land baron' era, where developers corral a bunch of users, lock them into place, and monetize them. We need to be able to allow people to move their attributes from site to site. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Canada's Biggest Economic Challenge: Improving Workplace Learning
This is a good paper on workplace learning. Though it doesn't cover a whole lot of new ground, it does state the case for workplace learning convincingly. "We know that investing in workplace learning pays off," says the report. "The link between overall education and literacy levels and economic performance is also well established." That said, government support for workplace learning - which the report recommends - should be in the form of infrastructure and support for individual learners, not direct payments to companies. And the objective should be to enable workers to manage their own learning, not to help managers tell people what to learn. Though the report reads as though the only purpose would be to benefit companies and increase productivity, the objective should be to benefit learners. Otherwise the program simply turns into a direct corporate subsidy, replacing, rather than augmenting, the company's investment in training. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video...
I used to lead large demonstrations when I was younger - my favourite was a March 5 demonstration against tuition fee increases in Edmonton. Though the temperature was -30, we convinced more than 5,000 people to march more than a kilometer through the cold, over the High Level Bridge, to the legislature. Someone once asked me, "Why do you do this? Demonstrations never hange the minds of government." I responded, "That's true. But it's not for them. It's for us. Remember how good we all felt after showing our strength and conviction like that? That's why we had a demonstration." Kathy Sierra makes the same point about conferences. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. CADE Media Festival
I don't usually enter contests, but CADE is having a multimedia content this year and I'm proud of a video I did this year - it has more than 7,000 views, and it's 30 minutes long - so there you have it. Oh sure, maybe I shouldn't be proud of it, but I am. It's the first real video that I've done, and I did it in order to show that you could train yourself and do quality multimedia with basic tools and self-learning. But... what I get instead is an object lesson in how not to run a multimedia contest. First of all, there's no entry category for individuals, which is what mine would be. Second, the application form is a PDF, that you download and... what, I guess print and mail? Third, there's an entry fee. This covers, what, the $10 plaque the winner gets? And fourth, "Video programs, although mastered on various formats, must be submitted on VHS Videotape." I'm not sure what this means - I have a video, must I convert it to videotape? So - no entry. Here's a better idea: allow people to submit multimedia the way they do academic papers (why oh why do conferences always accept only 'papers'). Review the proposed submissions. They can present their multimedia, then discuss it. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Some Real Data On Web 2.0 Use
Survey, British-based, of 1400 respondents, on the use of Web 2.0 technologies. The respondents are self-selected, so expect the numbers to skew high. Even so, we get some useful data about the patterns of use. That iCal, for example, attracts only a smal percentage of calendar users, while Google Calendar, yahoo Calendar and Outlook are running neck and neck. We also see that World of Warcraft is a lot more popular than Second Life. Everquest, Chess and HalfLife are also more popular. More...