By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Phil Becker[Edit][Delete]: The Case for OpenID, ZD Net [Edit][Delete]ZD Net [Edit][Delete] December 5, 2006
I have made the same argument on numerous occasions and still companies and organizations have charged ahead with top-heavy and encumbered identity schemes. But now the winds are beginning to shift. "Some have told us they consider the OpenID community to lack a clear process or structure, to not solve the 'real' problems in identity (yet?), or to be only applicable for low-end problems. They are probably right; however, we think of it as the early days of Internet-scale innovation in action, where these characteristics are desirable, not detrimental... Full decentralization and a very light-weight cost structure directly attract and catalyze innovation unlike any other approach. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ryan Paul[Edit][Delete]: Open Source Projects Threatened by e-learning Patent, Ars Technica [Edit][Delete] December 4, 2006
There has been much more discussion about the Blackboard patent case following the filing of two separate appeals to the U.S. patent board last week - in addition to the one filed by the open source LMS organizations, as Seb Schmoller reports in detail, Desire2Learn files it's own appeal with the U.S. Patent Bureau. Ars Technica focuses on the open source application. Coverage from Inside Higher Education. The Chronicle, meanwhile, remains the one source of coverage you can't read (don't know why they even bother, really). Sakai's statement and FAQ. . Michael Feldstein argues that the challenges have less to dfo with open source than with the fact that it's Blackboard's customers that are taking this action. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tony Hirst[Edit][Delete]: OpenLearn Daily Learning Chunks via RSS, OUseful Info [Edit][Delete] November 28, 2006
It was only a matter of time before someone developed this (I have been calling them 'RSS Scripts') - RSS feeds for serialized episodes that start at the beginning no matter when you subscribe. Tony Hirst is experimenting with them. "Just like 'tip of the day', materials can be delivered one small chunk at a time once per day to the informal learner's feed reader. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Scott Leslie[Edit][Delete]: dLCMS - Open Source LCMS built on Silva/Zope, EdTechPost [Edit][Delete] November 22, 2006
Scott Leslie reports on the dynamic Learning Content Management System. "It stores resources in XML format and has created packages which have been successfully imported into OLAT, ILIAS, Moodle and WebCT. It looks to have been produced by ETH Zurich (and possibly on soft money that's now run out) but possibly worth a look." The software is written in Python (which is a script-like computer language) which means you don't need a huge enterprise system to run it. Worth looking into further. Related: leslie offers a less than positive review of XERTE, a free visual editor for SCORM compliant Flash learning objects. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Education in Chile: small steps in an adverse context
Werner Westermann, Carlos Ruz, Open Education Working Group, 2019/02/04
Several things are happening at once in this article as the new Open University of Recoleta is at once embarking on an institutional policy based on Open Educational Resources, and at the same time, as an "informal institution", pioneering the concept of the  “Pluriversity”, which they say "is similar to the concept of Volkshochschule in Germany, where the idea of popular universities is widely adopted and well regarded." The bulk of the article highlights the barriers against adopting open education in Chile. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Editorial[Edit][Delete]: Open UniversityAdd to Clippings, Times of India [Edit][Delete] November 6, 2006
It is pretty ridiculous to require a background check of an online information provider, and that's why this article suggests that the New York City education department's ban on e-tutors from India for failure to provide such background checks will fail in the face of market forces. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Second Life Goes Open Source ...Sort Of
There's more on this, but I want to get it in: Linden Labs, the company that owns Second Life, is (in a sense) open sourcing its viewer. As Alfred Essa points out, that's a long way from open sourcing the platform itself, which is what we really need. I have long wondered why we can have a network of open source 3D realms, where we can jump from one realm to the next at will. That's what the old intermud protocol was supposed to be all about. It's almost tempting to try to resurrect some old MUD code to see whether a 3D layer could be added. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Peter Suber[Edit][Delete]: CIHR Drafts an OA Mandate, Open Access News [Edit][Delete] October 12, 2006
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in their draft policy on open access "requires grant and award holders to make every effort to ensure that their peer-reviewed journal publications are freely available" and (even better) "will consider a researcher's track record of providing access to research outputs when considering applications for funding. More...