By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Community of Inquiry on Facebook in a Formal Learning Setting in Higher Education
Masood Nazir, Natasa Brouwer, Education Sciences, 2019/01/10
This article (23 page PDF) studies "an application of Facebook for higher education in science (STEM)," performing a content analysis on Facebook pots, and argues that the "results show that an integral Community of Inquiry (CoI) was formed on Facebook within the regular online course, encompassing all relevant CoI interactions leading to a powerful educational experience". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Business of 'Ed-Tech Trends'
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2019/01/07
There are some good observations in what I think is the last (?) of Audrey Watters's ed tech trends posts. First is that "The most well-funded types of education company this year were those who offered tutoring. Tutoring, to be clear, here mostly means test prep." A lot of money went into tutoring companies. Additionally, "The growing reliance on OPMs is part of a larger trend of outsourcing and privatization." Quite true. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeremy Price[Edit][Delete]: The Emergence of Meaning: Wikipedia As Object-Centered Sociality, Smelly Knowledge [Edit][Delete] December 26, 2005

[link: 0 Hits] Synthesis of a few viewpointgs on what it means for Wikipedia to be thought of as an encyclopedia. The thrust is that what Wikipedia is up to is different from, but just as valuable, as a traditional encyclopedia. This is accomplished by leaving asidce ideas of being authoritative. Maybe so - but I read the value of Wikipedia differently. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Robert X. Cringely: Google Goes Las Vegas, I, Cringely December 15, 2005

So anyhow, I went out for a beer last night and ran into someone who has a business in electronic display ads. Small world. So we got to talking about Google and adwords and customer demographics and all that, and it became clear that in his view the only thing preventing extensive profiling is legislation (and that this is already well under way elsewhere). He also streams news content into his service, which makes sense, as it gets people to view the ads, but what surprised me was that the news services pay big money for placement into this market. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeremy Price: Object-Centered Sociality, or the Act of Being Kicked, Smelly Knowledge December 9, 2005

Good point about online communities I think needs highlighting and clarifying. "The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They're not; social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object... it's like the idea of an attractor in a dynamic system." (If you want a fun read, look up 'strange attractors' in Google - that's the sort of thing he means here). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Kristine Peters: Learning on the Move, Mobile Technologies in Business and Education, Australian Flexible Learning Framework December 7, 2005

Pointing out that mobile technology is already embedded in our lives, this report argues that mobile learning is not merely traditional teaching on small devices. "The interactivity of mobile technologies creates new teaching and learning opportunities more suited to a constructivist approach where the device is a tool for information and direction, but the structure of the learning is created by the learner". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Luigi Canali De Rossi: Benefits Of Web-Based Applications And Microsoft Announcement Of The "Live" Era, Robin Good November 2, 2005

There's discussion all over the internet today about Microsoft's announcement that it will introduce web applications. Microsoft is once again playing catch-up as applications as diverse as Bloglines, Writely and GMail have captured a lot of user loyalty. But few companies can throw the resources at a problem that Microsoft can. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Graham Glass: Google Base, Graham Glass, etc. October 26, 2005

From the rumours department: is Google preparing to launch Google Base, "a way for people to share structured documents with each other." According to Graham Glass, the idea would be to "share contact information, resumes, matchmaking information, medical records, etc. and would include security permissions so that users could restrict information to, say, their current doctor or to their friends". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Corey Murray: Schools Offered New Video Royalty Deal, ESchool News October 24, 2005

According to this story: "Acacia Research Corp., the California-based company that claims it owns a patent covering all streaming video and audio technology, says it has reached an agreement with university attorneys that opens the door for schools to begin paying royalties..." Personally, I think think this is ridiculous, and the idea that this company (that nobody has ever heard of) has 'invented' streaming media is laughable. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release: Sakai Partners Launch Sakai Foundation for Open Source Software, Sakai October 17, 2005

Hot on the heels of Blackboard's acquisition of WebCT comes this announcement, issued by press release today, about the open source learning management system called Sakai. "As a non-profit, membership corporation the Sakai Foundation will provide Sakai developers, adopters, and users a place to coordinate their efforts." The creation addresses concerns expressed in some circles that base funding for Sakai was coming to a conclusion, leaving the software without support. More...