By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. bFree - Blackboard Course Content Extractor
A new version of the bFree Blackboard course extractor is available. David Moffat writes, "The program now extracts Announcements; Discussion Board entries, archives, and attachments; and Digital Drop Box and group File Exchange uploads. It continues to extract wiki entries and attachments, Staff Information and attachments, and Content Area pages, including folders, descriptions, links, and attached files of all kinds. Tests, Gradebook, Surveys, Assignments, and Pools are among the content items not yet supported. bFree will quickly create an independent web site for a course. The site can be placed on a web server or CD, or even loaded into Sakai". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reality EduTV and Open Second Life
I had a fabulous time at the New Media Literacies in Learning Landscapes Conference in Charlottetown last Saturday. I have been very loosly associated with the online archiving project behind the conference (translation: Dave Cormier and I have chatted about it a few times and at one point filled a whiteboard full of notes). I think it's a great project, well worth doing. I have some really nice video from the conference - including Dave's presentation of OpenSim - that I need to process, but which I'll make available soon. Meanwhile we have Will Richardson's reflections. It's not really a post, but here are my notes about the tech used to produce this stuff, thanks to Jeff Lebow's presentation. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Debray On the Mediasphere
Interesting diagram describing three types of mediasphere: the logosphere (writing), the graphosphere (printing), and the videosphere (audio-visual). I, of course, have my own column, which I reproduce here (attach to the right of the other three columns:

Netosphere
Group ideal: pattern (network, community)
Figure of time: flow (the river)
Canonical generation: the next generation (signifying change)
Spiritual class: hackers (creators, programmers, writers, rebels)
Legitimating reference: The connected (because it's worth sharing)
Driving force: recognition (connectivism). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Thiagi Gameletter: October 2007
I don't link to Thiagi's newsletter because it comes out all in one big lump, so I can't link to individual items. But if you're not familiar with it, you may want to take a look. Thiagi specializes in low-tech learning games, and this newsletter is no exception, with everything from logic puzzles to team games to the single item survey. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A First-Hand Look at a Chinese Second Life, HiPiHi
Excellent article describing another 3D immersive environment similar to Second Life, a Chinese creation called HiPiHi (pronounced 'high-pee-high'). What's interesting is that this account brings with it a lot of cross-cultural currents - from the discussion of the Creative Commons licensing encouraged by HiPiHi to the hope for interoperability between HiPiHi and Second Life to the "Communist Party-style propaganda" urging newbies to "Build a harmonious world," and so on. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Organisational Learning Today - Concept Map
Interesting diagram summarizing 'organizational learning'. The term, of course, is a misnomer - it is the people who are in the organizations that are learning. So what's the 'organizational' doing in there? Sections like culture' and 'performance standards' give us an idea. Perhaps we should call it 'managed learning'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
I spent time this morning listening to this lecture (when I should have been preparing for my own talk - well, OK, I was preparing for my own talk, but I kept getting distracted by this lecture). You can view it on YouTube starting here. You can read these reflections after. And maybe this post from Curtis Bonk. Via several sources, including this post from Leonard Low. More...