By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Problem of Talking About the New Web: You Have to Do It, Too
I'm not likely to change my approach to presentations a whole lot (save messing around with recording and backchannels and other interactive play like that) even though I recognize the importance of conversation and local knowledge. Here's why. I do not regard my talk at a conference to be the totality of a person's learning experience. It is partial in two respects. Partial, first, in that it is supported through the very interactive mechanisms of my website and associated resources. And partial, second, in that participants have the entire conference to generate local knowledge, and don't need to do it during my talk. I see myself as playing a role, not delivering the whole package - and that role is to offer a 40 to 50 minute communication of outside ideas to a particular audience. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reader: Web 2.0 and Education
Useful list of references that might be considered the 'basic readings' on web 2.0 and learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books On Web
Google and Microsoft have rece ntly launched some high-profile content scanning services. But a number of research libraries have been put off by the restrictions in those services. They are instead joining the open content alliance, which will scan materials for the public good, and not just the good of Google and Mircosoft. "There are two opposed pathways being mapped out," said Paul Duguid, an adjunct professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Educational Uses of Second Life
This is a remarkable list of educational applicatiosn in Second Life - easily the most comprehensive I've seen anywhere - with descriptiopns, links and screen shots. You could easily spend the entire day with Second Life and this web page going from place to place (I've gone to a bunch of them). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Web 2.0
OK, I like the idea of presenting a long (111 slide) presentation on Web 2.0 in Web 2.0 tools. But it shows me that Google Presentation isn't prime time yet, with awkward page loads (including a 404 sidebar) and sizing (Google's software has been surprisingly unreliable for the last year or so, as though they are stretching their programming resources way too thin - maybe he should have used Zoho). That said, you should keep this resources (which is licensed as open source) on file, as it contains hundreds of useful (and usefully sorted and filtered) resources. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Web Offerings Spread in 'Battle for Desktop'
Coverage of the spread of Web 2.0 aplications - in this article described as "software as a service" - in the education sector. The focus is on a new report released by Gartner saying that software as a service (SaaS) will grow "seven times faster than on-premise software deployments during the next three years." E-School news only shows the first page of the story; the rest is behind a subscription wall. But you can listen to a Gartner podcast on software as a service from last June. And here's the actual press release from Gartner about the report, dated from August (you'll still have to pay for the report itself though). And here's some advice about SaaS from Information Week. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site
Um, this is the place where I say, "We told you so," to the New York Times. According to the article, the subscription met all expectations, and the new policy of openness is the result of projected advertising revenue. But I have to figure that having their 'opinion leaders' locked behind a subscription wall hurt. You can't be "the paper of record" if people are reading or linking to your content. More...