By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Executing Learning Objects, Resurrecting Sharing and Reuse
The value of this item is that it gives us a good outline of Scott Leslie's recent thinking on the use of learning objects (whatever they are). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Communities of Practice and Complexity : Conversation and Culture
Peter Bond illustrates some important underlying principles of communities of practice. Bond's graph mapping a community's degree of formalism with its 'emotional energy' looks almost exactly like a graph drawn by Francisco Varela at a session I attended in 1994 or so. Varela, though, mapped link density against information transmission. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. WebCT, ‘Powerlinks’, PHP Wiki & Open Source Robbery
James Farmer offers a hostile reaction to the news that WebCT is incorporating open source tools - such as PHPWiki - into its learning management system. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Workflow Learning Pattern Language
Don't miss this presentation from Jay Cross, who is getting it right (and compare Cross's work to Bond's work, below). Slide 54: "Learning as optimizing one's (neural) network." Yes. Slide 39: "network evolution" and slide 33: "hyper-organization." Yes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Creating e-Portfolios using Atom and FOAF
Some nice thinking by Scott Wilson which starts off on the right foot: "An e-Portfolio is, by definition, an aggregate or composite of many facets." What I have been calling a profile. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Development in Atlantic Canada - Culture versus Jobs
I am writing from Edmonton, where I will be speaking on Friday. Being here has allowed me to revisit old haunts and think about what it was like when I lived hear a few years ago. And about what I went to when I moved to New Brunswick. More...