By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alan Levine[Edit][Delete]: Rendering RSS inside Media Wiki, Cogdogblog [Edit][Delete]CogDogBlog [Edit][Delete] July 17, 2006

This idea has been around for a while, but has often been difficult to implement. Don't know why, it just has. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alfred Thompson[Edit][Delete]: More on Educational Robotics, Computer Science Teacher [Edit][Delete] July 13, 2006
According to Alfred Thompson, "Microsoft announced that they are partnering with Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr to create a new Institute for Personal Robots in Education. This program is going to deliver robotics technology and curriculum materials for the computer science curriculum." Neat. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Oehlert[Edit][Delete]: The Politics of RSS, E-Clippings [Edit][Delete] July 13, 2006
I don't want to minimize the problems in RSS outlined here by Mark Oehlert (though I will point out that that the problems he describes, framing and spamming, are as old as the internet) but from where I sit they stem more from a misunderstanding of RSS than of any fundamental issue that needs to be fixed. They do not effect me at all, because I have never thought of the feed as some sort of 'broadcast' intended to capture 'market share' which would eventually be 'monetized'. The only thing reading these machine-generated feeds is other machines, and if the owner of one machine is silly enough to pay the owner of another machine for the privilege, that does not change my life, nor am I foolish enough to thing this is any sense revenue lost. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors[Edit][Delete]: Reboot, Bbc [Edit][Delete]BBC [Edit][Delete] July 12, 2006
This is a really interesting look at what readers thought the BBC's web 2.0 web page should look like. There are some really good ideas here with some others that are, well, less good. I liked the personalization in the winning entry but I actually preferred the Schumachers' version, which was much cleaner, incorporated personalization, and had built-in radio. I also like the idea expressed in I don't want a portal, but not so much the execution. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed[Edit][Delete]: Video Sharing Creates Challenges For Schools, ESchool News [Edit][Delete] July 12, 2006
It really is a case of the chickens coming home to roost, isn't it. Now that children and young adults can create and share video, their offerings look surprisingly like Fox or MTV. And, of course, parents are outraged. "But alongside the cute animal tricks, comic sports bloopers, and corny lip-synching sessions are extremely weird antics and clips of the crudest kind. There's a plethora of videos of people vying for some attention and young women flaunting their bodies." Block the sites, you say. Fine. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed[Edit][Delete]: Brazilians With Tiny Orange Laptops, L.A. Times [Edit][Delete] July 10, 2006
See, this is just false: "Serious learning will always be boring compared to the entertainment bombarding young people 24/7 these days." But explaining why it's false takes a bit more doing. It's not simply that what Mill called the "higher pleasures" appeal to more mature minds. But more mature minds are more free and more able to engage in a topic of enquiry of their own choosing and for its own reward. Not that this article, purporting to cover NECC 2006, manages anything close to insight on this. The author tries to make the point by talking about riots. More...