Opinions

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. winning through worst practices
OK, I've never published a book, not one that you can find in the discard bin at least, and I don't know anything about Chinese subs in San Francisco, but it seems to me that Highbeam Research deserves props for actually getting blogging and I sort of wish I had a job like RageBoy's. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Looking at Improvement, Not Miracles
I just want to flag this item about a school in New York and its struggles to turn things around. Stories like this - not stories touting a new educational 'miracle' - are the ones that speak to me. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Accessible Folksonomies
Good article that looks at the accessibility (or relative lack of it) of folksonomy lists. The author makes some good points and provides a good example of how to style lists like this generally. But the problem, of course, isn't simply the inaccessible nature of folksonomies displayed on, say, Technorati or Flickr. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reapproaching Nearness: Online Communication and its Place in Praxis
I was asked today about my theory of conversation. It honestly hadn't occurred to me, but of course there are theories of conversation, there are theories of everything. But I admit, my eyes begin to roll when I read, as in thsi paper, sentences like "The subject recognizes an Other, something that is epistemologically far" where the word 'Other' is capitalized. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Structural Holes, Part One
I torn, at least on the surface. As I stated a couple of days ago, and see increasingly in my own work, no one person can master everything in a domain; innovation is therefore the product of a group and not an individual. So the answer is to form a team, right? But I'm not about subsuming my ideas under some sort of corporate or messianic 'vision' or 'programme' - I function best when I am pursuing my own agenda and my own ideas. I want autonomy. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Annotating the Planet
Where is this image from? You know it's probably Palermo, but where? The Botanical gardens. But what is it? I can't help you with that, except to observe that it is probably Roman. There was no annotation at the site - and annotating Palermo would be a major expense. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning Networks: Theory and Practice
So I arrived in Palermo Tuesday evening, still muttering about bureaucrats and travel agents after two days of travel. First thing Wednesday morning I was up to deliver my talk at the opening of the International Conference on Methods and Technologies for Learning at the Palazzo dei Normanni. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Do the social sciences need a shake-up?
Amanda Goodall, Andrew Oswald, Times Higher Education, 2014/10/10
This reminds me of the call not so long ago to reform the teaching of economics. Students in that discipline issued a manifesto calling for the teaching of less orthodox (and hopefully more accurate) theories. In this case, though, the call comes from an editorial in the New York Times from Nicholas Christakis, head of the Human Nature Lab at Yale University. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. View From Nowhere
Nathan Jurgenson, The New Inquiry, 2014/10/10
Interesting article commenting on Dataclysm, "a new book-length expansion of OkCupid president Christian Rudder's earlier blog-posted observations about the anomalies of his dating service’s data set." OkCupid is a matching site which posed questions to men and women and pairs them with their best matches. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Can Scientists Speak?
Karen Magnuson-Ford, Katie Gibbs, Evidence for Democracy, Simon Fraser University, 2014/10/10
I'm not sure what I can say about this report. :) Just kidding. I can say what I want about it (though I can't issue a press release about it, which I can't say surprises me). This report co-sponsored by an organization called 'Evidence for Democracy' and Simon Fraser University criticizes the Canadian government for imposing speech limitations on its scientists. More...