By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Top 100 List Still Fishy
The edublogosphere is in a tizzy about a Top 100 list of educational blogs that was posted last week and marketed with individual 'congratulations' letters to each of the bloggers so listed. Imagine! An upstart with no history in the edublogosphere coming up with a list of the top blogs. What's next, a newsletter and a conference? Christian Long demands that his link be removed (what, now we have constraints on linking?), Darren Kuropatwa asks, Why would Jimmy do this?, John Pederson creates wiki out of the list and says, "fix it." Stephanie Sandifer raises the question of transparency and blogging ethics. Dean Shareski quotes some Seinfeld. Miguel Guhlin ponders the nature of publicity and thinks about truth, trust and transparency. Every person starts somewhere. So what, may I ask, is Jimmy Atkinson's misdeed? Nothing, really - no ads, no commercialism, no payment-based linking. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Students 2.0 Edublog Pre-Launch: Help Spread the Splash
One of these things I'd like to see succeed. Clay Burell writes, "I have watched this handful of impressive students young adults from around the world working tirelessly for the last three weeks on an endless Skype chat to prepare the launch of the new Students 2.0 edublog. And I've been amazed at how much more they know than any adult I know about many things technical and pedagogical." There's a list of things you can do to participate in the launch, which takes place in a couple of days. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Must-Read New Blog: Sean'S Slam Teaching
Clay Burell serves up this new blog. "The idea behind Slam Teaching is not unlike the idea behind slam poetry. Teaching, this blog posits, is an extemporaneous, aggressive, lyric, funny thing to do. It's a way of expressing oneself; it is art, and it is unpredictable. This blog will work (slowly, progressively) toward a better understanding of teaching as this dynamic force - an animated performance rather than a set of skills that react with criteria for learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Nancy White[Edit][Delete]: Blogs and Community - Launching a New Paradigm for Online Community?, The Knowledge Tree [Edit][Delete] November 27, 2006
Some overdue recognition for this article posted lasted September by Nancy White that explains how 'topic centric communities' formed by networks of bloggers are changing our understanding of online communities. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed[Edit][Delete]: Criticism of academicblogs.org, BlogScholar [Edit][Delete] November 22, 2006
The stewards of BlogScholar write, "Here at BlogScholar.com we always appreciate a nice tribute but surely its taking it a bit far to launch an 'Academic Blog Portal' without a single reference to our delightful little non-profit enterprise of the same name on the other side of the Atlantic." BlogScholar is a reviewed system ("for every blog that is accepted in the directory ten are declined") while the Academic Blog Portal, a spin-off from Crooked Timber, is a wiki with no apparent selection at all. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tony Karrer[Edit][Delete]: Stephen Downes is Wrong? Is It Really Cool?, eLearning Technology [Edit][Delete] November 6, 2006
I can't resist the opportunity to link to a post with this title. Tony Karrer writes, "I agree with Stephen that right now this stuff is early stage and it's a mess. I'm not planning on using that particular tool anytime soon. It's more of a toy than anything else. Oh, I am using something similar to create my personalized home page. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. We're Back, Sort Of
After a website move that was far more interesting than desired, I have enough of the site working again to send out newsletters. I hope - there's no way to really test the sending of thousands of emails without actually doing it. So I'm keeping today's newsletter short and sweet. (Update: I'm having horrible email problems, as the setup for Sendmail here on EV1 is broken - the reverse DNS lookup fails (!) and consequently it can only send (when it sends) one email a minute or so.) Many of the website links don't work yet, but you'll see everything coming back online over the next few days (the first thing I'll be working on is comments, so if they're not working yet, try again in a day or so). In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the sleek new design. Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web January 12, 2007 [Link]. More...