By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Copyright, Publishing, and Scholarship
This paper summarizes the work of the "Zwolle Group" initiative over thje last five years. This group was formed to develop and share "guidance for faculty authors, publishers, librarians, and other stakeholders who are seeking to improve their management of copyright issues." The members of the group took an approach that emphasizes the "balancing" of stakeholder interests. This suffered from two flaws. First, it was not clear that stakeholder interests were properly represented. In the chart of stakeholder interests, for example, the 'general public' is woefully understated - surely it would have some interest to balance the "maximize revenue" stated by publishers? But no, the public is depicted as having no view on this issue. The second flaw is inherent in the employment of a stakeholder approach at all. Should all of the players be at the table? In particular, do we need to continue to take into account publisher interests in further discussions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Montessori Goes Mainstream in U.S.
It's a bit lightweight, but it's a good introduction, and I didn't know this: "Katherine Graham, Jacqueline Kennedy, Julia Child, Anne Frank, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Amazon.com creator Jeffrey Bezos all received Montessori educations." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blogging Restructures Consciousness?
Following the links here will lead you on an interesting excursion, one that visits the MyDD direct democracy website, analysis of Snakes on a Plane, and which also visits the fascinating excerpts from Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. The point of departure is a political blogger's realization that, "After two and a half years of virtually non-stop blogging, my perception of myself as a distinct individual has dramatically waned... I do not exist in the same way I once existed." His identity, he writes, has become subsumed by his blog. I have been overtly blogging since 1998, and writing online even longer. I don't know what it's like to think in writing, to think symbolically; my cognition is very much based around sound, the spoken word, and my pattern recognition is sub-linguistic, not even pictorial, but an intuitive grasp of non-representational relationships. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fringe Journal
Haven't seen this before, but Susan Smith Nash (the E-Learning Queen) writes on assorted topics in this blog. The content resonates and sometimes haunts. I especially enjoyed her account of being (and not being) on the school pep squad. Also see her post on the meaning of 9-11 (aside: 9-11 has no particular meaning for me; the world did not change. We all expect Americans to get over it. I remember Pamela Wallen coming back from the U.S. in 2003 to tell us, "they're not going to get over it." I'm not sure people outside the U.S. can understand that - but this post helps). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Spin Tracker
Discussion of a deal by Technorati to include Technorati links in the press releases issued by P.R. Newswire. "It will apparently allow companies to very swiftly measure the impact of any release because any links to them in the blogosphere will be cataloged automatically." More to the point, it is essentially the treating of P.R. Newswire as though it were a blog. Which means an essential tripling of superfluous adjectives in the blogosphere. P.S. hard not to notice the United Business Media logo that accompanies the story - you can be sure that the press releases will be commented on by a flock of affiliated bloggers. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Title
"Half of all children are below average in intelligence." Strictly speaking, this is false. And like this misleading observation, the author's point will resonate: 'There is no reason to believe that raising intelligence significantly and permanently is a current policy option, no matter how much money we are willing to spend." The paean is, of course, for an elitist school system - money should not be spent helping children who simply cannot do better. The folly of this article (and the other two that follow: part two, part three, is the presupposition that intelligence is genetic. And that it is therefore the basis for discrimination. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. EV1 Servers Has Merged With the Planet
OK, the important bit first: every email sent to me after about noon today has been lost. I am still having horrible problems with my email on my new server (which is otherwise performing magnificently). I guess the problems with email on Ensim X are well known - but Ensim's help pages are broken., and I can't access them. And my hosting service has just been acquired by some other company, which means that the people there have more important things to worry about than my email woes. Oh yeah, and they wiped all the old discussion forums, so links to solutions to problems no longer exist. Today's newsletter might reach you (it certainly won't reach me). I'm so tired of this, I just want it to be over. I have some really neat things I want to do - but I just cannot escape this hell. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The New Assessment Market
Coverage of Blackboard's move into assessment software and the reactions by the companies that are already in the space: Nuventive, that offers and an assessment program called TracDat; and WEAVEonline, a spinoff from Virginia Commonwealth University. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Making of a New WordPress Powered Site
A good post, and don't mind the length. Alan Levine describes the steps involved in setting up a new WordPress blog from scratch. As with anything, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, and while the site is fairly straightforward, the development can get complex. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Quality Vs. Speed - We've Created a Monster!
The Learning Circuits blog posted a question that didn't really capture my interest: "What are the trade offs between quality learning programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?" This post summarizes some of the responses. My attitude is best characterized by Clark Quinn: "we need to be looking at a broader space of solutions than just elearning courses." The "fast versus good" debate treats e-learning as a product, as something static you build and then deliver - exactly what I've been saying it isn't (or at least, shouldn't be) all these years. More...