By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Polytechs Migrate to Moodle
Short article describing the adoption of Moodle, an open source learning management system, by eight Polytechs in New Zealand. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Source Desktop Television Software
Think about the implications of this for just a moment. "The sourcecode for a ground-breaking project has just been released by the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF). The software, currently under development and due to be released in June, will enable anyone to broadcast full-screen video to thousands or millions of people at virtually no cost." There has been a lot of buzz about this in the coding and file sharing community; it looks to me like the community has reached the point where, instead of fighting commercial content producers, it has decided to make the irrelevant. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wired Campus Blog
I didn't realize this, but the Chronicle of Higher Education has quietly launched a blog. The first post dates from February but it is only in the last week or so that it has ramped up. Not all items link to Chronicle paid content (though some do, including an article about the random essay generator - a story so well covered one wonders why the Chronicle is charging for its version). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Knowing When to Log Off
Well, this bit (the last line in the story) is true: "You're not being disloyal to progress," he said, "by picking and choosing the kind of technology that best fits your needs." The premise is that campus computing is contributing to information overload, and that the solution is to turn off the computer once in a while. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Dog's Breakfast: Roles and Responsibilities for Managers in the Cyber Era
This is the wiki version of the transcript from my talk last September at Sunshine Coast, Australia. In this talk I take my Nine Rules for Good Technology and apply them to managers. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. BlogMatrix Sparks
I downloaded and installed this piece of podcasting technology, and while it's not yet everything it could be, it's definitely worth passing along. The idea of Sparks is that it allows users to subscribe to both blogs and podcasts - the application will list all new podcasts for easy listening. But it also allows users to create and upload their own podcasts - I created my own podcast (a review of this software) very easily this afternoon. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines
PDF. James Paul Gee asks, "How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex, and difficult games?" Here's how (quoted from the text):
- Learners feel like active agents (producers) not just passive recipients (consumers).
- Different styles of learning work better for different people.
- People take on a new identity they value and in which they become heavily invested.
- They can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of effectiveness.
- Early problems are designed to lead players to form good guesses about how to proceed when they face harder problems later on.
- Challenges feel hard, but doable. Learners feel - and get evidence - that their effort is paying off.
- Repeated cycles of learners practicing skills until they are nearly automatic, then having those skills fail in ways that cause the learners to have to think again and learn anew.
- Give verbal information just in time and on demand
- Create simplified systems, stressing a few key variables and their interactions.
- Risks and dangers greatly mitigated (one of the worst problems with school: it's too risky and punishing).
- See the skills first and foremost as a strategy for accomplishing a goal and only secondarily as a set of discrete skills.
- People learn skills, strategies, and ideas best when they see how they fit into an overall larger system to which they give meaning.
- Make the meanings of words and concepts clear through experiences the player has and activities the player carries out. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Can "Blended Learning" Be Redeemed?
After an extended discussion arguing that the term 'blended learning' is hollow, the authors argue that, rather than being abandoned, the term can be "redeemed" by interpreting it from the perspective of variation theory, "the idea that for learning to occur, variation must be experienced by the learner." Thus, "Blends of e-learning with other media may make it easier to help students experience the variation in the critical aspects of the topic being learnt." I am certainly in favour of diversity of experience. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. From Student Work to Exemplary Educational Resources
Following a link on the EdResources mailing list I find the contents of the current issue of E-Learning - access, I guess, is normally restricted but appears to be open for a time at least (they should consider opening it permanently - the content is good and it seems a shame to lock it away from potential readers). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. F For Assessment
Blunt criticism of the standardized tests currently applied in U.S. schools: "in most instances these evaluations are inaccurate. That's because the standardized tests employed are flat-out wrong." Some of the tests, argue the author, are designed to elicit responses based on social profile rather than learning. More...