By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Our Crooked Broker Society
Harold Jarche puts together a chart offered by Dave Pollard and a list offered by Roger Schank and in so doing creates a pretty good explanation for some of the ills of the educational system. "Are teachers the desperate suppliers," he asks, "exploited by the school system which has a virtual monopoly on education jobs? Are publishers, testing companies and universities the procurers who gouge the addicted parents, looking for any advantage in a shrinking middle class?" He suggests that local control would fragment this system - "'Small pieces, loosely joined' may be the right strategy for educational reform." But I'm less sure - in certain hands, the decentralization movement (I'm reminded of the Charlottetown Accord) seems more like a strategy of "divide and conquer". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. And And And And (PLE)
Still very much under the weather and on sick time. To people who are waiting for emails and stuff: as soon as I can. Anyhow. This item reminds me of the old riddle, "How do you string the word 'and' together five times in a sentence - not as a title or someone merely repeating the word, but a proper sentence?" Anyhow. This item consists of links and thoughts about PLEs - personal learning environments. I like Alan Levine's cynical comment: "A PLE seems to be a diagram." OK, the answer to the riddle? Fred was having his "Sanford and Sons" sign repainted, but he wasn't happy with the spacing, so he told the painter, "Put more space between Sanford and and and and and Sons". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What I Learned at Dinner
Right. Very important: "it is attractive to imagine that there are 'baby steps' we can take 'inside' the institutional silos to get them used to the ideas... [but] we miss out on the power of the 'network effects' that are in fact integral to the positive feedback loops of succesful social software". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. IDRC Launches Intellectual Platform for Developing Countries
Well now they can't say that it can't be done of that federal law prohibits it. Canada's IDRC - the International Development Research Centre - has launched an open access digital repository of the research it funds. "In addition to making information more freely available, this initiative will enable IDRC-funded researchers to publish and showcase their successes, insights, and expertise. Through the IDRC Digital Library their work will be available, not just to a select few subscribers of journals, but to the entire global research community." Related: this presentation (PDF) summarizes open access policy development in Canada. "Open access policy initiatives are happening around the world. Sherpa Juliet lists more than 20 funding agency policies, from at least 10 countries. More than half the policies are by medical research funders. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Enhancing Learning Seminar
Summary of a Becta session on simulations and game based learning (hence this survey of teaching practices in Second Life). While noting that we still need more evidence about what students learn from games and simulations, the author mostly focused on examples including Schome (which is focusing mostly on Second Life, it seems), the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset, where students build their own games, and the Brain Training Game, which I'd love to try one day. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Zude, Engyte
Some new applications to learn from. Zude hasn't launched yet, but from the demo seems to hit the mix and mash note nicely. See also this article from ZD net. Also, see Engyte, "a Web 2.0 content sharing solution that combines sharing, automatic organization and a... search capability." Explode, meanwhile, has suddenly disappeared. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. World's Best Presentation Contest
Is the World's best presentation found on Slideshares? I don't know,. but that's where they will find the winner of the World's best Presentation Contest. Yeah, another 'best of'. I have a presentation submitted - good luck finding it to vote for it among the hundreds of nominees. Meanwhile Andy Powell notes that you can download the actual presentations through the Slideshares interface, in addition to viewing the Flash presentation. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Critical Thinking
I've written quite a bit on critical thinking over the years, including the wayward Guide to the Logical Fallacies. Mostly, I've let that writing drift, but recent events have led me to think I should pull it together. So I've been working on the fallacies website. I was wanting to wait, and present this all as a package, but as usual, events precede intention, and so this article pushes me into this post. Here's the thing: after the cyberbullying episodes recently, and the poor attempt at a code of conduct posted by Tim O'Reilly, I asked myself, what does 'good conduct' actually amount to. And I realized: good conduct is reasonable conduct. OK - so what's that? Well, that is what I've written quite a bit on over the years. If you were to draft 'rules of conduct', it would be the same thing as the 'rules of reason'. Conversely, the list of things you should not do is essentially the same as the list of logical fallacies. So, maybe it's time I rebuilt the fallacies site. Not as a 'code'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Educationau Jimmy Wales Seminar
Today's lesson is that the best laid plans and all the ambition in the world are no match for a nasty cold picked up while travelling. Sniffle. Anyhow. Sniffle. This post is a summary of Jummy (Wikipedia) Wales's recent presentation in Australia. Sniffle. See also (from the same author) the and the reflections on barriers to knowledge sharing. Sniffle. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mojiti: Collaborative Annotation of Video Content
Catherine Howell picks up on this via the discussion of a TED talk (I feel less and less excited about linking to talks from a conference deliberately designed to be too expensive to attend). Mojiti allows you to access online videos from any number of sources, annotate them with scribbling or cartoon voice bubbles, and then post the resulting mash-up to a video site. More...