By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The 133rd Carnival of Education
The other day I wrote about the edublogosphere clustering (The Blogosphere is a Mesh). This is a good example. The writers at the Carnival of Education focus mostly on teaching and education policy. Obviously they have a viable community and the carnival structure ensures that even though there are some slightly more popular reads - like Education Wonk and Joanne Jacobs - mostly they all read each others' blogs. Read to the end of this post for some interesting stats on the nature of this community and for this list of education bloggers. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blogs: All the Noise That Fits
Another one of those reports carried by the traditional media to the effect that bloggers are lazy and derivative jorunalists who do no original work of their own. This would be unremarkable (if inaccurate) were it not for the follow-up work done by a few of the readers. Josh Marshall, one of the bloggers cited in the piece, writes, "Skube's piece reads with a vagueness that suggests he has less than a passing familiarity with the topic at issue." So he should - because his Talking Points Memo is well known as a serious and well-researched blog. And when he wrote Skube to enquire, Skube replied, "I didn't put your name into the piece and haven't spent any time on your site. So to that extent I'm happy to give you benefit of the doubt ...". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Best Education Blog
The 2007 Weblog awards nominees have been announced. So far as I can judge, none of the finalists in the education category are actually about education; they are political blogs, mostly focused on U.S. K-12 educational policy, or they are blogs by educators, or by students. You have to wonder about the nomination process. Needless to say, neither this blog, nor any of the educationl blogs regularly reported here, made the cut. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Statistics Canada: 26 Percent of Canadians Use Internet for Learning
If you're wondering, that works out to about 8 million Canadians, an impressive number by anyone's tally. And I would say that this figure is under-reported, missing informal learning in its definition of "education, training or school work." Still, I would make the point so strongly as th obvious advertorial content proclaiming that 80% Of Young Adults Say They Would Choose to Go Back to School Online related by the Online Universities weblog. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Skeptic'S Take On Academic Blogs
The sceptic's take is not so sceptical, the author having actually blogged, and not merely a critic of them. The main point - with which I am sympathetic - is that it is very difficult to conduct a rich academic discussion in the blogosphere. I think it is easier to consolidate discussions into groups (as the author describes) but this carries with it the weaknesses of groups: the sway of group loyalty, the 'circling of the wagons' mentality. Working in the large, diverse, messy, blogosphere is harder, but it is ultimately richer and deeper. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Today's Learning Terrain
Nifty illustration found in the badly titled but quite interesting Rather Graphic weblog, a site that focuses on the use of visual language to communicate. I dislike the term 'e-learning 1.3' as well (it sounds way too much like Java nomenclature). What Tony Karrer described as e-learning 1.3 last year is properly a part of e-learning 2.0. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New Establishment Rising? The End Of the Flat Blogosphere
I personally don't think we've ever had a 'flat blogosphere' - from the beginning, there were A-list bloggers, and though they may have more readers - and make more money - today, the nature and the number of them hasn't really changed. Still, this article tries to make the opposite case, that "the 'short head' of the progressive, political blogosphere has undergone a transformation from a loose collection of small, independent, solo projects into a sophisticated media and activist structure driving the national political scene," a trend that, presumably, generalizes. A pretty good case, documenting things like group blogs, institutional blogging, professional blogging, and blogging communities. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bloggers Keep Teachers, Students Informed On Education Topics
Article introducing people who are bcoming known as experts via their blogs, for example, Joanne Jacobs, "Considered in cyberspace as the 'education blogmother.'" Jacobs is a good read; see this post on teaching to the test: "Students have little time to write anything but BCRs: They may write about plays but they don't act them out, much less try to write their own. They don't read chapter books and rarely go beyond the literal interpretation of what they've read." Also listed are Sean of EFL Geek and Matthew K. Tabor. I am long past being surprised to find clusters of bloggers like this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Edublogosphere Is Being Criticized for Twittering
I thought about writing a reply to the Gary Stager post on the Pulse, but the site wanted me to register for an account. Who has time for that? Anyhow, the criticism is that educators are spending valuable time on foolish things, like Twitter, instead of important things, like the war zone in Chicago, graduation rates in Detroit, the curriculum in Britain, and literacy rates. Vicki Davis responds, essentially, "I care about these issues that you talk about, however, they are not in my typical sphere of operation," which is a perfectly acceptable response. We can't all solve all of the world's problems. We could equally turn around and ask Gary Stager, why doesn't he solve the problem of warfare in Iraq, genocide in Darfur, poverty in Malawi? Why does he focus only on the U.S. and Britain, two of the richest nations in the world. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Four Convergences, Two Views of Education, and One Future to Choose
This post brings together the Voices form the New American Schoolhouse video, a nice dramatization of a short talk by Alan Watt (someone I read a fair amount), and some extensive quoting from Ivan Illich, leading to the proposition, as I write, that "The task we should be undertaking is not one of trying to stuff more and more knowledge into students' heads, but rather, finding more and more ways they can make meaningful contributions to society". More...