By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brian Lamb: OK, OK, I Finally Get It..., Abject learning December 13, 2005

Yahoo! announces a partnership with Moveable Type. Linking to the story and elsewhere, Brian Lamb comments, "It will be interesting to see how well these apps are integrated into the interface, and if being under the same roof means these toys will play better with each other as tent-poles under the Yahoo Hosting Big Top than they do out in the world wild web... Interesting that it's a hosting arrangement, not an acquisition". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alan Levine: Throwing Stones at the Wiki Glass House, Cogdogblog December 12, 2005

I've been contributing to the discussion of this item, a commentary on Will Thalheimer's Are Wiki's Inherently Flawed? (a good blog, and added to my aggregator). Thalheimer's proposition, essentially, is that knowledge producing systems need to be managed. "The more our communication channels have validators who correct inaccuracies, the more we tend to move toward the truth". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tom Hoffman: Nothing Feels Good, ESchool News December 12, 2005

The main point of this oddly titled article is that "A lot of the anxiety we're seeing about Myspace.com is exactly, exactly the same fear and loathing of groups of teenagers that for decades has shut down teen dance clubs and the like all over the country." As an unreformed underground publisher and rabble rouser, this article not only speaks to me, it speaks for me. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teemu Leinonen: Urinal as a Learning Object, FLOSSE Posse December 12, 2005

My own definition of a 'learning object' is very similar to this - actually, it is exactly this, with a slightly different emphasis: "Learning object is any entity, digital or non digital, that is used for learning, education or teaching". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Vincent Tinto: Student Success and the Building of Involving Educational Communities, MCLI iForum December 9, 2005

"Successful education, not retention, is the secret of successful retention programs." Thus argues Vincent Tinto. "Institutions of higher education are like other human communities". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ira Fuchs: Needed: an 'Educore' to Aid Collaboration, Eduforge December 9, 2005

"The single biggest obstacle facing colleges and universities that want to use open source," argues Ira Fuchs, "appears to be the uncertainty about future support for and improvements in the software. Many administrators and trustees simply cannot accept the idea of relying for maintenance and support on people with whom they have no contractual relationship". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Anita Kumar: 'Revolution' in education learning a hard reality, St. Petersburg Times December 8, 2005

Good update on the running of schools by private companies, and especially on the shifting fortunes of Edison Schools, which now manages 61,000 students at about 136 public schools - down from almost 70,000 students at 157 schools a year ago. Interestingly, "the gains in student achievement recorded so far have been largely indistinguishable from improvements seen elsewhere". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mitchell Weisburgh: What do Kids do on Computers?, PILOTed December 6, 2005

Interview with Robert Kvavik, co-author of the ECAR of Students and Information Technology. Some interesting bits. For example, "We hear all this hype about digital natives and millennial students, and then find that they only had a moderate preference for technology in the classroom". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ann Hulbert: The Prodigy Puzzle, New York Times November 24, 2005

This is an interesting article, but I'm not sure quite what to make of it. Given that we can identify child geniuses (and it's not clear than we can), what then? Do we nurture and foster them? A look at actual geniuses shows that many have had to overcome barriers. Do we normalize their achievement so they feel less like outcasts? Again, it seems that geniuses have a high tolerance for solitary (and even anti-social?) environments. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Harold Jarche: Education's Three Conflicting Pillars, Jarche Consulting November 4, 2005

Reacting to yesterday's discussion, Harold Jarche draws out "three conflicting premises [of western education] which compete for dominance," specifically "education as socialization, education as a quest for truth (Plato) and education as the realization of individual potential (Rousseau)". More...