By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bringing Theory Into Practice
This is a pretty good slide show looking at aspects of learner-centered learning and in particular some properties of learning (learning is engaged, learning is social, learning is locally owned) and the evolving roles of students and instructors. One quibble. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Canadian Council on Learning
The Canadian Council on Learning, "a national, independent, not-for-profit corporation that is committed to improving learning across the country and across all walks of life," has launched its website. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Connecting the Dots
Entry-level discussion of recommender systems with some sample sites (such as Musicplasma.com, Music-map.com - neither of which really worked on my computer). The author sense the appeal of the systems, though, and correctly observes that adjectives (ie., metadata) are not needed in order to enable the system to work. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Registry of Standard Biological Parts
I honestly don't know what to make of this (quite literally) but it is also the most amazing thing I've seen in a while. I don't completely understand it - the 'about' page is awful. The idea is to be able to define biological parts as sequences of DNA. There may be a software component - at one point it tried to send me what appeared to be a perl script. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blogging Beyond the Men's Club
A number of people sent me this link raising the question, "why is the blogosphere dominated by white males?" It isn't, of course, as any excursion beyond what we see reported in the media will reveal - roam through random LiveJournal blogs or random Blogger blogs for a few hours and you'll see. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Canadian MP Says Extended Licensing Proposal Delayed
Michael Geist reports that "the government has delayed plans to introduce a much-criticized copyright proposal to establish a extended license for educational institutions." Good news. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Five Lenses: Towards a Toolkit for Interaction Design
This is a very nice paper that cuts through some of the issues I have felt (but never really discussed) in learning theory. Two major things. The first is the recognition that interaction theory (and by extension, learning theory), can be viewed from five distinct points of view: the cognitive, the anthropological, the artifacts, the social and the ecological. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Issues in Federating Repositories: A Report on the First International CORDRA Workshop
Good summary that doesn't waver from the necessary questions facing the CORDRA initiative, "an open, standards-based model for how to design and implement software systems for the purposes of discovery, sharing and reuse of learning content through the establishment of interoperable federations of learning content repositories." Questions like: what will this infrastructure provide that Google doesn't. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. CURE: The NoRagging Group
In India it's called 'ragging' and it's a problem similar to bullying and hazing in North America. It is equally a problem in both regions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Can Papers End the Free Ride Online?
Newspapers are in a bind. By posting content online, they are basically giving their content away for free. But if they charge for an online subscription, few people will sign up and their content will for all practical purposes disappear from the internet. Similar issues face online learning, where the content is something we really want to have a wider influence but which in a market where it competes with video games and online music is not likely to capture a significant consumer dollar. More...