By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Emerging Technologies Presentation
Interesting comment from Alec Couros: "my first instinct was to use a presentation tool (Apple Keynote). I got about 3 slides in when I realized that my brain no longer operates that way." Funny. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tips for Gaining Adoption of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies
Short post but contains sensible advice. In a nutshell: if you are advocating the use of new technologies, use the tools. Demonstrating and working with the tools provides the best evidence that the tools are worth while. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Building a Simple AOL Video Search API Application Using Ajax
This is a nice article. It's pretty techie, so if you're not comfortable writing Javascript code, or at least reading about it, pass this one by. But if you make web sites, you'll appreciate the clear example of a pretty avant-garde application, and especially the diagrams that show exactly how Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) mediate between web pages and application program interfaces, such as AOL's video search, to create Web 2.0 services. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Walled Gardens and Mobile Learning
The other shoe drops. Leonard Low, a longtime advocate of mobile learning (see his Ten Reasons Why Mobile Learning Matters), learns of this: "We define everything that is on the phone," he [Steve Jobs] said. "You don't want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn't work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.' " Low's reaction? "This definitely dampens my enthusiasm for the iPhone." Thing is, people should expect this sort of attitude to be limited to Apple. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Top 5 Firefox2 Extensions for Educators
Firefox extensions are both a blessing and a curse. Mostly a blessing (the curse comes from the increased complexity that results). They're pretty simple to install and extend the browser's functionality well beyond what you might otherwise expect. This item lists five major extensions for educators using Firefox. My won list is a bit different. At home I use the Download Statusbar and Adblock Plus. At work the Web Developer extension is indispensable. I used to use Performancing to add content to my blog, but I never installed the Firefox 2.0 version. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Towards a Personal Learning Environment Framework
Some good thinking on the concept. First, we agree that "we don't need a top-down integration of different services into a centralized platform like PLEX and Elgg do." And second, the author compares a potential PLE to an integrated development environment (IDE) called Eclipse, which has "plugins for different programming languages such as C\C++, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, design tools and many more." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Vicki A. Davis[Edit][Delete]: Using and Citing Video from Google Video in your Student Movies, Cool Cat Teacher Blog [Edit][Delete] December 11, 2006
I know this topic will appeal to some people, but I also link it here to raise a point. Vicki Davis writes, "MLA has yet to determine how exactly to cite the wealth of electronic resources out there. If you know how to cite video, please help me..." Why wait for MLA to decide this? If you are citing video, you are ahead of the curve - you shoulds be setting the standard, and let MLA follow. By all means, ask for help. But don't ask to be told what to do. More...