By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Electronic Portfolios and Dimensions of Learning
The article is pretty superficial, but it makes a point work repeating here: "Give students the academic freedom to help develop what makes a good portfolio." Now if you think about that, the concept of academic freedom for students, especially younger students, is a novel one. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OpenSearch
I had a quick look at this because George Siemens linked to it - A9 has been all the rage for the last few weeks in the blogosphere - and I want to take a deeper look because of what I saw. Forget the article for a second - check out this search first, and note especially the buttons to the right. Try some. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. To the High-Tech Employers: Sorry About Those Missing Skills
I am in agreement with the sentiments in this post and echo the author's request of the high-tech community looking for innovative and creative workers that it stop with the 'back to basics' and 'standardized' test regime that makes fulfilling that request impossible. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Looking at Improvement, Not Miracles
I just want to flag this item about a school in New York and its struggles to turn things around. Stories like this - not stories touting a new educational 'miracle' - are the ones that speak to me. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Price For 'Trusted PC Security'?
'Trusted computing' is the name given to a system that locks digital content on your computer so you can't use it without permission. It is 'trusted', of course, from the vendor's point of view. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Accessible Folksonomies
Good article that looks at the accessibility (or relative lack of it) of folksonomy lists. The author makes some good points and provides a good example of how to style lists like this generally. But the problem, of course, isn't simply the inaccessible nature of folksonomies displayed on, say, Technorati or Flickr. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Images Canada
Good collection of hundreds of images available (mostly) for non-commercial use including education. Sources include government archives, museums and libraries. Content revolves around Canadian themes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Xhtml Friends Network
This has been around for a while but I haven't linked to it yet. The idea is to include social networking information in the list of links that constitutes your blogroll (a blogroll is a list of personal websites that you regularly read). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Academici
Via elearnspace: "'Academici' is the first global networking platform linking academics, academic-related associations, societies, academic services, students and academic-related business." Basically, it combines social networking, discussion, and resources. More...