The Platform for Online Deliberation
This is an interesting effort. The Platform for Online Deliberation (POD) "is a freely available, open-source web tool for conducting asynchronous meetings that include discussions, document collaboration, polls and voting among small to medium sized groups of people." So the project is worth doing, but I think that the authors would have done well to look at some of the more popular open source community applications such as Drupal or PostNuke. More...

Assessing Discursive Writing
What I have tried to do in this paper is mostly to describe the way I mark papers (and these days, criticize blog posts - and of course I wonder what sort of mark I would give my own paper...). But as in everything, I do it this way because I think it ought to be done this way. More...

Springer Open Choice
Peter West sent me this link last night and so I've had all day to think opf it. Essentially, the deal is this: when your paper is accepted by a journal published by Springer, you as an author have the option to make it open access by paying $3,000. This link fills in the details of the program. More coverage is available at Information World Review, including some naysaying from Oxford University Press. More...

Q & A with Stephen Downes
Short interview talking about the impact of diploma mills, disintermediation, and how to learn how to use the web for learning. By GA.Buchholz, Contentology, July 7, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

The Common Sense Assault on a Liberal Education
Speaking before a group of engineers, former Ontario Premier Mike Harris asked, "where would you be if you had studied philosophy and Latin?" Not unemployed, probably; my own formal education in philosophy turns out to be uniquely useful for an internet career. More...