By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teemu Leinonen: The $100 Laptop: Manna-vaporware, FLOSSE Posse December 7, 2005

In an airport conversation in Calgary recently I commented - cynically - that MIT had gotten a lot of publicity over a product that does not exist. The topic was the $100 computer, which had been introduced at WSIS. Such scepticism, it seems, is not limited to my suspicious mind. Teemu Leinonen poses two questions that defy easy answers: "Why the only use case the MIT people talk about is delivering school books with the $100 Laptop?". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jon Hoem with Ture Schwebs: Personal Publishing and Media Literacy December 5, 2005

"The importance of mastering basic digital skills is often emphasized, but it does not seem clear what these skills should include," write the authors. Often, we seen an emphasis on the tools. But "the information society favors those who are able to develop strategies to process large amounts of information and its relevance in different contexts." In addition, "An important skill will be the ability to reformulate information in order to meet personal needs." Short report, in PDF, but well worth a read, especially for the discussion of the relation between common knowledge and individual knowledge. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release: New Digitisation Report Calls for Cross-sectoral E-content Strategy November 25, 2005

Press release announcing a new report issued jointly by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles (CURL). As the title suggests, the report calls for greater standardization and coordination of digitization efforts in britain, tied to research into user needs. The reasoning behind this call emerges about half way through the report: "the introduction of such a system would keep track of resources, aid discovery and prevent duplication... significant gaps in provision remain in many disciplines... (and) it will never be possible to digitise everything, so future developments must respond to researchers' needs." Well, maybe. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors: O3: The Open Source Enterprise Data Networking Magazine November 24, 2005

Thanks to Bill McIver for this link announcing the launch of this new open source magazine. The PDF downloads are a pain, but I guess they wouldn't be able to distribute the full page glossy advertisements otherwise. The content, however, makes up for the format, for example, the article An Introduction to Linux and Open Source for Business. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Leigh Blackall: Die LMS die! You too PLE!, Teach and Learn Online November 24, 2005

Some interesting reaction to the advocacy of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) that has been floating around recently. "The VLE, LMS and PLE are the same. A suggestion that the Internet, and informal networked learning are not enough"s. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Colin Milligan and Scott Wilson: PLE Reference Model, the personal learning environments blog November 23, 2005

One of the outcomes of the conference on personal learning environments last week in Edinburgh was this PLE Reference Model. I like the way they map various usage scenarios, and the entity diagram (slide 19) is a thing of beauty. Still. Does it map into the e-learning framework (or whatever it's called this week) as suggested? Doeds the flow diagram (slide 25) capture what the PLE is really supposed to be. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release: New York State to Roll Out MarcoPolo in Every Classroom, Marco Polo November 22, 2005

This is interesting. "MarcoPolo's resources, available online at no charge to teachers throughout the United States and around the world, are -- for the first time ever -- now aligned in New York not only at the state standards level, but also at the performance indicator level". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Gary Bustin: Overview of the ICT Industry With a Focus on Atlantic Canada, NRC / IRAP November 21, 2005

Good overview of the ICT industry with a focus especially on the challenges faced in Atlantic Canada. Outlines what venture capitalists are looking for (including: "where users can type in a postal/zip code, and the Web site will present headlines, photos and classified ads from all the local news sites" - I could produce that very easily, if any VCs want to give me a call...), barriers to entry, open source, and some interesting and telling comments on the nature of research in the field. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. George Roberts, et.al.: Reflective Learning, Future Thinking: Digital Repositories, E-portfolios, Informal Learning and Ubiquitous Computing November 21, 2005

After that title, I hardly need to write a summary. Seriously, there's some pretty good thinking in this document, including some points worth repeating as frequently as necessary: "Disaggregation of components and support for repository, e-portfolio and ubiquitous informal systems is necessary; central units supporting monolithic systems are unlikely to have the flexibility to respond to future needs.... The bottom-up approach was proving to be very successful and indeed called into question the need for a single institutional-wide (or national) repository, as opposed to community based systems". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Lunga Madlala: Sakai software cooks up e-learning storm, tectonic November 4, 2005

Article describing the deployment of Sakai, an open source learning management system, in the South African educational system. "The Sakai Project has attracted the attention of the University of South Africa (UNISA), the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of the North West (NWU) and the University of the Free State (UOVS)". More...