By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. GReader Help Through Trailfire
Scott Leslie has been experimenting with a program called Trailfire, which, as he explains, creates lists of web pages so other people can follow your trail through a series of web pages. He says, "It's the kind of thing I thought the connectivist and open education crowd would be quite excited about." I can't see the images he's linking to. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. PearsonEd Accepts the Edugator Challenge
Pearson Education, the largest U.S. textbook publisher, is publishing (and selling) videos of academic lectures through Google (Here's one). Yes, it's a bad idea - after all, it costs, what, ten cents to produce one? Yes, other people can (and will) produce equivalent quality videos. Link, say, at VideoLectures (link via George Siemens). But no doubt Pearson (and Google, if they're actually partnering) will do everything they can to make sure nobody can find them. What's next, music theory from Idol Critic, ten dollars for high rez? Interestingly, the same site has a post about the collapse of CD sales, drawing the analogy with a concordant drop in textbook sales. "Textbook publishers, the oligarchs sitting in their comfy thrones atop the multi-billion dollar industry, are in much the same position as the RIAA or MPAA. Unlike the major film studios and music labels, however, there is little sign that they have woken up and smelled their fate". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Banning MySpace--at Home
"St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic School students were informed recently that under a new school policy, Think First, Stay Safe, the use of MySpace.com will be prohibited at school and at home." Yeah, you read it right. Apparently, it's not enough to ban MySpace at school. Which moves the issue beyond education and into the realm of thought control. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How I Became A Music Pirate
A common message, well stated. "Does DRM drive even honest well-meaning people to piracy? Yes, of course it does." In particular, in this case, the author tries to purchase music with Windows DRM. This is designed to prevent it from ever playing on an iPod. It also prevents it from ever being played on his own computer, or even on a CD-ROM. "Call it piracy. Call it whatever you want. But at least I tried. I gave you several chances and you failed miserably at every level". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. EduSpaces
Elgg has become EduSpaces. This has been in the works for a few weeks, but the official emails have landed in my in-box (I have a couple Elgg accounts). The URL has changed (from elgg.net to eduspaces.net), but the old URL still works. Not everything has changed over yet, including the big message on the front page that says "You can join up, learn more about Elgg here or create your own social network instantly at Elgg Spaces." The designers should also implement RSS Autodiscovery - they are about the only personal publishing provider that doesn't. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 24 Hours to Secure Collaboration On Interoperability
The unedited plain-text version of the report on the meeting about LETSI - the body that will take over control of SCORM - that took place in London a couple of days ago. The final version will appear in the April ALT newsletter. "The first panel, with speakers from ISO/IEC, IMS Global, Microsoft UK and Ariadne, discussed global governance of interoperability. The common thread was the inter-connection of design and engineering. This meant a tension (although at times creative) between teachers (who 'don't need to know that they are using SCORM') and the design of learning, and technologists. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Category:Student-Generated Content
Links to a half dozen or so studies of practices at universities using student generated content. "The purpose of this collection is to showcase specific examples of how student-generated content can be used effectively in online education. In particular, this collection has focused on examples of student-generated content which represent a significant shift from students as content consumers to students as content producers." Wiki-based, so if you have your own example, you can add to the collection. More...