By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Uses and Abuses of Personas
Yes. Yes. "People don't visit a website or fire up a program in order to perform a role; they want to complete a task." Catherine Howell captures my uneasiness with Sakai - and Learning Design - square on the nail. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Damaka - Experience the Joy of Communicating with a Twist
Review of what looks to be some pretty good software, a bit like Skype on steroids. I haven't tested it, though, so you're on your own. Anyhow, Luis Suarez summarizes the features of this Windows software, which include VoIP, peer-to-peer video, instant messaging, desktop sharing, whiteboard and more. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Giant Zero Journalism
Doc Searles captures the shifting sands of journalism in this post. "We don't just 'deliver information' like it's a Fedex package. We inform each other. That is, we literally form what other people know. If you tell me something I didn't know before, I'm changed by that. I am not merely in receipt of a box of facts. I am enlarged by knowing more than I did before. Enlarging each other is the deepest calling of journalism, whether it's done by bloggers, anchors or editors." Quite right. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Lies Beneath?
A link to a Web 2.0 report led Beth Kanter to post on the concept of 'collabuary' raised in the report, which prompted me to comment in reply, trying to distinguish between folksonomies and collabuaries (which I think isn't a useful term; it just means 'vocabulary' or 'taxonomy'). This in turn led Kanter to send an email in reply, the gist of which is captured in this post, describing a filtering network for non-profits that is partially collaboration, but partially individual action. So where does the line between group and network apply here? Good question - it contains elements of both. I guess I would say, as a rule of thumb, that you pass from 'network' (autonomous action, folksonomy) to 'group' (collaborative action, vocabulary or taxonomy) when somebody says, "You're doing that wrong". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Can the $100 Laptop Change the World?
The answer suggested by this article is "yes" and I am inclined to agree. As George Siemens notes, the first paragraph tells the story. "What if every child in the world could have a free personal laptop? Put some e-books on it, make it Web-capable, and add a palette of media tools so children could work on creative projects. Wouldn't that be incredible?" Yes it would. But there's a lot more to this story. Like, for example, how the development work proceeded. "These academicians have ideas and they aren't afraid to use them. One is that we learn by creating. Another is that education is a community-based effort and hierarchical institutions get in the way." Makes me realize that my own research organization has procedures in place to make sure something like this never happens. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teaching Kids About Their Own Brains
I've read Hawkins's 'On Intelligence'; I thought it was pretty good. But this post reminds us how much knowledge is a matter of perspective. Long writes, "He believes that 'prediction is the fundamental component of intelligence.' Prediction? Prediction? Prediction?" Well, OK. That's not too far out there. From my perspective, pattern matching is the fundamental component of intelligence, reasoning that proceeds by means of similarity. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reject the Finish in 4 Fad
I took five years to finish my undergrad. That's because I switched majors in my second year (from Physics to Philosophy) and spent most of my first four years in the student newspaper office (where I got my real education). Yes, going straight through and finishing in four may be "efficient". More...