By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Upcoming
Bee recommended this site on the TALO list a few minutes ago and it certainly looks like it's worth more time. Upcoming is a social events calendar generated by the contributions of members. Sort of like social networking for calendars. It sent me to the Toronto page (it must have read my .ca address and, well, just assumed) and lists everything from mesh, BarCamp, PodCamp and Idea City. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. I Am the Canadian Poster Boy of High-Tech Attention Deficit
This would be pretty funny if it weren't such a sad commentary on out media, not merely for using a photo of Brian Lamb and his laptop out of context, but in pandering to a resurgent anti-computer and anti-networking sentiment. Lamb links to another story: "wireless network might be used by terrorists," the headline screams. Well, yeah. But "Terrorists might also use our bus service to move about the city undetected." What is with these scare stories? Are the authorities really losing control. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Applying the 80-20 Rule
Jane Hart asks, if "you have a £100,000 budget to spend this year, does that mean if you apply the 80-20 rule, you really only have as little as £20,000 to spend on formal learning? So what on earth do you do with the other £80,000?" It's a good question. And the answer is, of course, "access to 'learning' when they need it and just in time to do a task." But what does that look like? Because I access our organization's online resources basically never. How do you get people to look at them when they're needed, is ever? You have to look at the work flow. If you have a wiki, but staff have to stop what they're doing and open it up to use it, then they mostly likely won't. If you have a blog but staff have to access blogspot every day to use it, they won't. Because it's not part of their workflow. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The News From Second Life: An Interview with Peter Ludlow
Interesting set of interviews with Peter Ludlow (Part One, Part Two), who is both "muckraking journalist in Second Life [and] a professor in the department of Philosophy and Linquistics at the University of Michigan." The conversation is both fascinating and infuriating. I nod with agreement when Ludlow says, of the Avastar (a PDF-based Second Life newspaper), "They had an opportunity to come to this strange and fantastic new place where all the rules can be rewritten, and the only thing they could think of doing was coming up with a product that mimics meat space newspapers as much as possible." But I dislike the combative response to criticisms of Second Life. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Universities Register for Virtual Future
According to this article, "more than 70 universities have built island campuses in Second Life." I have been asking people what it is that appeals about Second Life, and the answer seems to be 'presence' (that should make Terry Anderson happy). OK, I see that, but how is presence in Second Life different than, say, presence in a chatroom? Or maybe it isn't - I've seen no real slowdown in chatrooms per se, it's just that nobody makes a big fuss about them any more. I think that what we are seeing is a return to the familiar. It's not just presence, it's environment. That's probably what bothers me about it, too. That kind of environment never did anything for me. All the capabilities and freedoms I got by moving online, I lose again when I'm in a 2L lecture. More...