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23 octobre 2019

Ten Reasons The World Needs Patent Covenants

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ten Reasons The World Needs Patent Covenants
Good news - Sun has signed a patent covenant around OpenID (not that Sun invented OpenID, but what we like to see is that it would launch any patent silliness around it - we'd like to see the other major players do exactly the same, so OpenID can become ubiquitous). More...

23 octobre 2019

Holy Grail for Teaching Programming

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Holy Grail for Teaching Programming
Videos illustrating how Squeak's eToy and MIT's more recent Scratch work. Definitely worth a look - think about how using this sort of computer is so very different from using a computer loaded with, well, Microsoft Office or even traditional computer games. More...

22 octobre 2019

What If Every Child Had A Laptop?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What If Every Child Had A Laptop?
The most important bit in this article - which focuses mostly on the competition between the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and Intel's Classmate - is in the very last paragraph: "If you're wondering if the One Laptop will be available in the U.S., right now Negroponte's in talks with some states and school districts. He says it will be sold commercially in the future, but you'll have to buy two: one for your child and one for a child in a poor country". More...

22 octobre 2019

Quote of the Day

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Quote of the Day
Trying to track this down leads you through a merry-go-round (people should link to actual posts, not merely home pages) so the link isn't really worth following (I found a much better link, here, about five hours later). But the thought is definitely worth echoing. "You can't figure this stuff out from the outside." Quentin D'Souza adds, "Never listen to a presenter or keynote that has not been immersed in the environment that they are talking about. You will be misinformed." That's a bit extreme. But people who are not immersed are much more likely to make mistakes about the environment. More...

22 octobre 2019

Groups, Networks, Collectives

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Groups, Networks, Collectives
Scott Wilson joins the groups and networks discussion. He writes that he is not sure about the introduction of 'collectives' and that "there is a lack of clarity around the difference - very large, I'd say - between a network operating within a single managed service (such as an Elgg installation) and a network formed by people blogging and tagging things of mutual relevance." Of interest are his diagrams - "cybernetic modeling" of groups, distributed networks, and bounded networks. More...

22 octobre 2019

Do You Ubuntu?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Do You Ubuntu?
The answer is yes. But if you want to know how I spent a good part of my long week-end, well let me tell you, the result of typing the command (as root) "cp thunderbird2.tar.gz /usr/lib/*" is to have your computer erase both thunderbird2.tar.gz as well as the entire contents of /usr/lib - the directory where all your applications are located. No recovering from that error; I had to reinstall Ubuntu. It takes very little time to install Ubuntu, true, once you have the disc. Longer to put your computer back the way it was. More...

22 octobre 2019

Scores and Grades: Let'S All Pretend They'Re Rational and Helpful

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Scores and Grades: Let'S All Pretend They'Re Rational and Helpful
The author's point is that "We like to pretend that academic scores/grades are instructional and Pedagogical, but really they are motivational/game elements. The reason to work hard is to get a good score." Also, "We also like to pretend that scores are scientific, when instead they represent a staggering editorializing of what is important, and by how much." This is why quantifying my blog's success is ridiculous. It's not that you can't count anything about my blog. You can. But in so doing, you misrepresent the reason why I am creating the blog and misrepresenting what's important about it. The same for business blogs. If you are quantifying the blog's ROI, I content you have misunderstood the point of the blog and its value to your business - your desire to measure its effectiveness will ensure that you minimize it. More...

22 octobre 2019

How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community
Cory Doctorow discusses the defusing of discussion trolls. Probably the best advice is "Discussion groups are like uranium: a little pile gives off a nice, warm glow, but if the pile gets bigger, it hits critical mass and starts a deadly meltdown." I'm not sure the methods of the "troll whisperer" he describes are really the way to go. More...

22 octobre 2019

Speaking of Teaching

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Speaking of Teaching
This is kind of neat - PDF back-issues of this twice-annual newsletter published by the Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University. Sometimes you want to roll your eyes - such as at the recent newsletter on "Vol. 15, No. 2- Getting more 'Teaching' out of 'Testing' and 'Grading'" and others seem like a blast from the past, such as the 1993 newsletter 'The Meeting of Minds and Machines: Teaching and Multimedia.' And others, like the 2001 newsletter on problem based learning, are well worth reading by everyone. More...

22 octobre 2019

Another Life Unexpurgated

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Another Life Unexpurgated
Jay Cross offers quite a good overview of the use of virtual worlds in business (and especially business learning) applications. "The thoughtful application of VW technology," he writes, "will significantly enhance the experience and transfer of learning." How? Co-creation, social sandboxes, and enriched experience. He surveys a number of companies offering virtual world services, including Second Life, There, Multiverse, and Forterra, among others, and looks at some implementations, including IBM, Apple and the New Media Consortium. More...

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