By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rethinking the iPhone
I think there is something to this line of reasoning: "Any sort of device consolidation, like what the iPhone possibly promises, is a pipe dream and runs counter to real and immutable trends. The problem is, nobody wants to admit that these trends exist-yet they do." And this strikes a responsive chord with me: I'm sick of being ripped off by the entire mobile-phone game." if you follow this link, read it quickly and get out - the relentless advertising on the page is really annoying and constantly blots out the text. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. From YouTube to YouNiversity
Henry Jenkins has been getting some media recently, probably a result of his recent books on culture, blogging and gaming. I saw most of his talk in Boston, and the text is the Web 2.0 line familiar to most readers. George Siemens picks up on this assertion: "To educate such students, we don't so much need a faculty as we need an intellectual network." And this is exactly right: "The modern university should work not by defining fields of study but by removing obstacles so that knowledge can circulate and be reconfigured in new ways. For media studies, that means taking down walls that separate the study of different media, that block off full collaboration between students, that make it difficult to combine theory and practice, and that isolate academic research from the larger public conversations about media change." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Software Patents: Why Should We Care?
"Imagine a world," writes Alfred Essa, "in which Socrates not only originated the dialogue form of inquiry but also filed a patent claiming "intellectual property" rights for his invention and then vigorously enforced his patent against the Sophists to ensure the 'purity' of his learning method." This situation gets at the heart of the problem with software patents - they allow people to claim the ridiculous as 'intellectual property'. But we also need a strategy for what to do in an environemnt (such as the U.S.) where software patents are legal, which Essa provides. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Better Networked Learning
Michael Feldstein writes, "VLE designs tend to be relatively lightly informed by praxis. Likewise, networked learning practitioners are limited in terms of envisioning how the VLE should work because they often do not know what is possible" (Aside: I dislike the word praxis - it's just the word practice with an attitude). He suggests that this communication might be accomplished by bridging two linguistic forms (neither of which I like, particularly), use cases and pattern languages (which in turn can inform an organized collection of best practices). "We can translate theoretical research into empirically validated best practices through design patterns," writes Feldstein. "Suppose further that we can then translate those best practices into software design through use cases. If so, then we will have a complete process for driving learning and cognition findings into the fabric of our networked learning programs, both in teaching methods and in software design." I'm uneasy with this - it's hard to articulate why, exactly - but I don't think software should be designed to 'do things' so much as it should be designed to 'create capacity'. I know that's not a very clear distinction. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Evolution of Learning Management Systems
Do learning management systems have a future? According to this article, "The trend is towards learners tracking their own learning results, using either personal learning environments or e-portfolios." So does that mean the end of the line for learning management systems? There remains room for innovation, argues the author, in personalization, "automatic generation of motivational messages", facilitating learner control, 2D and 3D environments, and service-oriented architectures. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. YackPack For Education
Jane Hart has been performing a real service listing new educational applications (or applications that could be used in education). Today she highlights Yack Pack for Education. A YackPack creates a group of people that can converse with each other in real time or leave voice messages for each other. More. According to the site, "YackPack can quickly improve educational communication. Motivate students, give quality feedback with ease and communicate clearly with students, parents and administrators." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Re-Framing Education for the 21st Century
Summary of a talk, with a lot of good links, on Web 2.0 in education. Just one thing (and this has been bothering me for some time now). He writes, "Colleagues and friends in East Lothian have been doing some stupendous work in this area." Quite so. But what about West Lothian? How come we never hear from them. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Competition Good for Changing the World
I'm in a period of busyness so I'm running a bit behind (getting involved in listserv disputes doesn't help) but I am thinking of new design ideas for newsletter posts (I like the overall design, but I want each post to be something more colourful, less linear, with more illustrations - something like the way I have been presenting each slide in my recent slide shows - let me know what you think) and I have a fabulous new name for Edu_RSS (which I really need to keep to myself for a bit). Meanwhile, the world continues furiously apace. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Trying (and Failing) to Buy WKRP in Cincinnati
WKRP was one of my favorite shows. "Oh my God they're turkeys!" Anyhow, this story reads like an Art Carlson fiasco as it turns out to be quite impossible to but the show on DVD. Why? Because music royalties would make it prohibitively expensive. As a result, the music industry gets nothing and if you want to see the show, well, the only way is to scour the file-sharing networks where there may be copies floating around that your kids have ripped from video. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Real: Getting Less Real Every Day
I spent some time pondering this diagram, which suggests it's worth passing along. The idea is that, through the division of environments into various blends of real and not-real, we can see how the same sort of role manifests itself differently. This is clearest when we see that the 'hero' in the gaming environment is the same as the 'student' in the learning environment and the 'individual' in the real environment. More...