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21 octobre 2019

Digital Gifts: Participation and Gift Exchange in LiveJournal Communities

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Digital Gifts: Participation and Gift Exchange in LiveJournal Communities
This article looks at the giving of gifts in a social blogging network, LiveJournal. Ask a LiveJournal member why they give a gift and the answer, according to the author, is some variation on "I wanted to." But gift giving is arguably never so simple - and while the author avoids depicting th activity as ultimately self-serving, she does give it the function of "maintaining social bonds, constructing virtual identities, and ensuring continued presence of participants." This may be the result of gift giving, but not necessarily the cause. More...

21 octobre 2019

Russian Court Finds Village School Principal Guilty of Using Pirated Microsoft Software

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Russian Court Finds Village School Principal Guilty of Using Pirated Microsoft Software
A Russian principal is found guilty of using unofficial Microsoft software and is fined $195. He makes $360 a month. Microsoft says it had nothing to do with prosecuting impoverished Russian educators, but the Russian government would not be enforcing compliance were it not for the lobbying of companies like Microsoft. We know that if the company didn't want people like Alexander Ponosov to be prosecuted, they wouldn'y be. More...

21 octobre 2019

The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action
According to this ASCD report, the "one‐size‐fits‐all education has marginalized the uniqueness of our children and eroded their capacity to learn..." and that if educators focused on the whole child, not just the part that passes tests, "we would create learning conditions that enable all children to develop all of their gifts and realize their fullest potential". More...

21 octobre 2019

Ex.Plode.Us

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ex.Plode.Us
The new version of Explode is live. I don't know what that means yet; I just got a short note. But the features page mentions search, collections, and nudges. Also, 'find a similar user'. More...

21 octobre 2019

About the Open Publication License

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. About the Open Publication License
I am in London and jetlagged, so we'll keep this brief. This first item from David Wiley brings us up to date on the Open Publication Licnse - which is exactly where we were last time, when support for it was dropped and Creative Commons recommended instead. Why this link then? Well I think the post has historical value. We need to be reminded, I think, that the world of open content (or free content, depending on your politics) didn't begin with Creative Commons. Not that I'm criticizing Creative Commons; far from it. More...

21 octobre 2019

What'S Good About the May 4 NY Times Article About Laptops in Schools

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What'S Good About the May 4 NY Times Article About Laptops in Schools
So the New York Times make a flap last week with its article on why computers don't improve learning outcomes. What we learn is that if you don't change the way you teach - if you just leave the computers sitting there - you won't gain any benefit. And, as Dave Warlick points out here, while the students' test scores in traditional subjects do not change much, when they are given the opportunity to use the computer things that are not tested - like critical reasoning, information retrieval, collaboration and research - are greatly enhanced. More...

21 octobre 2019

Predicting Large Scale Adoption of Technology

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Predicting Large Scale Adoption of Technology
I do a lot of predicting in this newsletter and while I don't use this rubric (my definition of 'usefulness', for example, if very different) these are the sorts of things I do take into account. And I use something I saw somewhere once called the 'two advances' rule. Which is: any old technology can be an advance in one type of thing. But a new technology will take off only if it represents a major advance in two separate dimensions. More...

21 octobre 2019

Australia Hands Over Man to US Courts

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Australia Hands Over Man to US Courts
Got this in my email: an Australian citizen who has never been anywhere near the United States has been extradited to face trial there for copyright violations. "he served as the leader of a group named Drink Or Die, which 'cracked' copy-protected software and media products and distributed them free of cost." He is facing up to ten years in prison. It's hard to imagine a Canadian court coughing up a Canadian citizen to face U.S. justice. Then again, we gave them Maher Arar. One wonders how Hew Griffiths will be treated in an American slammer. More...

21 octobre 2019

Networked Proximity - Full PDF

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Networked Proximity - Full PDF
Ulises Ali Mejias has posted the final draft of his dissertation, a long PDF that will make good airplane reading. From unauspicious beginnings he makes a somewhat audacious claim - "the network imposes a nodocentric filter on the social, and only elements that can be mapped onto the network (the nodes) are rendered as real. This model is then used to institute a paradigm of progress and development in which those elements outside the network can acquire value only by becoming part of the network. The social becomes subordinate to the economics of the network, and the network becomes a model of subjectivation that prepares individuals for entrance into this form of sociality." Certainly this is something I would want to assess before accepting. More...

21 octobre 2019

Big Question - PowerPoint

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Big Question - PowerPoint
Having produced something more than a hundred PowerPoint presentations, I suppose I owe some accounting, given that the most common word on PowerPoint slides is that presentations using them are somewhere between torture and death. Would I, knowing this, now abandon them? Not a chance - I'm already hard at work on the next presentation for my talk in London. Speaking of which - they're calling my flight. More...

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