By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Where Belief is Born
Good, though short, article summarizing work on the foundations of belief and memory. People, it seems to me, have this folk-psychological view of beliefs and memories as static, sentence-like, off-or-on. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wheaties? Not so Much…
Talk about missing the point. Someone in this group blog notes the recent report noting the strong correlation between eating breakfast and doing well academically. But Slate's Amanda Schaffer responds by saying you shouldn't wake children up to eat breakfast because they suffer from shortages of sleep. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Should You Finish?
An item that hits close to home for me, questioning whether it is in the best interests of some students to finish their PhD. "To consider leaving graduate school without your Ph.D. in hand does not inherently make you a failure. In fact, it could be the best decision you've made in a long while." For me that was pretty much the case. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. GLS02: James Paul Gee on New Paradigms for Learning
Summary of a talk by James Paul Gee in which he points to some failures of the U.S. educational system and asserts that "the solution to these crises is in our face: it’s popular culture and games; this is where it’s getting solved, not in our schools." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning Object Discussion
So anyhow, George Siemens has been planning this for a while, so I'll let him describe it: "This afternoon, I facilitated and enjoyable learning object discussion (with Brian Lamb, Scott Leslie, Jody Baty, Alan Levine, Scott Wilson, and David Wiley). The presentations are available here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three" Now I had intended also to be there but I missed my bus today to hear the end of Romeo Dallaire's talk. Which made me wonder how George got out the links so quickly. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Where Now for Collaborative Journalism?
I'll give them credit for trying. The Los Angeles Times attempted to include readers in their online content by setting up a wiki where readers could rewrite the day's editorial. The experiment lasted one day, and then was pulled, as they said, "due to defacement." This analysis summarizes pretty well what happened. More...