avril 2019

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Businesses, and School Administrators, Don't Blog
"Companies over the past few centuries have gotten used to shaping their message. Now they're losing control of it." This not only explains why companies and administrators have been slow to adopt blogging but also while the format represents a permanent revolution in communications. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Creative Commons Crossing the Line?
I've mentioned BzzAgents in these pages before; it is a company that hires individuals to seed advertisements into everyday conversations. It has been represented in the press as a good example of grassroots network-based marketing, and so the managers of Creative Commons must have been surprised by the outrage expressed among their supporters when they announced a deal to have BzzAgents spread the Creative Commons message. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. REM Song Row Halts Film
It's not often you can strike a blow against both education and the environment at once, but with copyright laws being what they are, I guess, you can do anything. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Change or Die
This article has receioved widespread acclaim in the few days it has been published and I can easily see why. Indeed, I pass it along with a similar endorsement. The author's point is to question why people don't change - their habits, their beliefs, their work processes - when merely presented with sufficient information. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The New Gatekeepers, Part 5: The Problem of Crowds
Part Five of the New Gatekeepers series I mentioned last week or so. Not the final installment - there will be a part six. According to the author, "because of the nature of information cascades, we find ourselves trusting people and stories simply because other people appear to trust them at all. There are enough independent thinkers out there to offer a useful amount of doubt. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Using Bloglines (or How to Keep up With Dozens of Blogs Everyday)
Useful advice and even included a couple of tips new to me. The author describes (in lavish detail, complete with screenshots) how to use services like Bloglines and Feedster to scan and absorb content from a large number of websites. This is very similar to how I do it - and no, no miracles are required, just some good organization on the part of the reader. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Education as Commodity
According to California's Grade 11 and 12 Language Arts standard, "by grade twelve, students read two million words annually on their own." What is magic, asks the author, about two million words? And even more to the point, how does such a number take into account the individual needs of students. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blogtalk Downunder Presentation
James Farmer posts slides and audio to his Blogtalk Downunder [photos] presentation, 'Centred Communication' or 'your intranet is like Canberra'. The idea is that planned networks, organized hierarchically, are barren and sterile, while organic networks, organized as a semi-lattice, are not. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning Molecules Model
How do you communicate the concept of learning objects to subject matter experts (SMEs) who may be new to the field? The use of metaphors is recommended, argue the authors. And to this end, eCornell developed a model it calls Learning Molecules. This article describes the learning molecules model: "At the nucleus of the molecule is a Scenario (S)—the contextualizing problem or case study that is the lynchpin of eCornell’s application". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Give Your DVD Player the Finger
Let's just say that there is no way I would submit to a fingerprint exam merely to watch a DVD. That said, I have to wonder about the direction of invention being based on the needs of the vendor, rather than the consumer. More...