By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Education as Toaster
Well, it's an interesting analogy. "We put bread in, and toast comes out. Teachers are the toaster operators. The field of educational technology is responsible for the engineering and marketing of the toasters." Taken to a certain point, the analogy - intending to contrast the division of labour in other industries with the artisan nature of learning - works. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Botany Photo of the Day
Because it's a slow news day (a Friday in April - does it get any better?) and because I like things like this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. It's a Flat World, After All
This is a great article, one that addresses the newly level playing field worldwide created by the internet and open source, among other things. The sort of level playing field that allows me to read this article in my living room, free of charge, and to send it to people I know in India, Australia and South America, where "a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want." And while the author depicts it (accurately) as a challenge to America, I view it (also accurately) as an opportunity for the rest of the world. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. BlogPulse Conversation Tracker
Will Richardson reports on the BlogPulse Conversation Tracker, a system that combines discrete weblog posts into a coherent conversation. Here, for example, is a somewhat disjointed conversation arising out of BloggerCon. Or another one on the Kryptonite bike lock saga. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. DCMI and ODRL – A Discussion Paper
How should the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) and Dublin Core work together? This is the topic of meetings between the two groups and of this discussion paper. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wrong, Wrong and Wrong: Math Guides Are Recalled
It's OK... I have trouble iwth speling too... All I can say is: aren't officials glad the texts were emailed rather than printed and shipped. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Is the Semantic Web Hype?
Let's start here: "There are many cognitive costs associated with adding formalized information to a computer system. Foremost, users must learn a system s formal language," from Shipman and Marshall, Formality Considered Harmful. Scott Leslie writes, "dryly academic but still useful." Now let's get to the current item: "In the Semantic Web, someone has to provide a mapping to allow different vocabularies to interoperate." Worse, these mappings are highly formal and arcane; a recipe for disaster. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Registry of Standard Biological Parts
I honestly don't know what to make of this (quite literally) but it is also the most amazing thing I've seen in a while. I don't completely understand it - the 'about' page is awful. The idea is to be able to define biological parts as sequences of DNA. There may be a software component - at one point it tried to send me what appeared to be a perl script. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. DrupalED - Corrections
"Definitely not by 'Boris Mann and Will Pate'. Charlie Lowe (http://www.cyberdash.com) was the genesis of all this, and everyone is invited to participate. The site is an organising website to catalyze activity and interest from the education sector in one place. The outcome will be a Drupal "distribution" -- a selection of modules and configuration optimized for use in education. Anyone that is interested in participating...come on over and create an account." Thanks for the correction Boris, and apologies to Charlie Lowe. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Emerging Perceptions
"Those who wish to put serious content on their blogs," writes David Miller, "must trust that it will be recognized as such." And those who wish to see meaningful content in blogs can do little more than to subscribe to it. More...