Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: Edu_RSS 2.0, January 2, 2006
[link: 2 Hits] Tomorrow I go back to work, and since my productivity will therefore nosedive (more on that below) this seems like a good time to release the current version of Edu_RSS 0.2. In the last few weeks I've gotten a lot done, and the system is now a complete whole, rather than scattered bits of hopes and ambition. This link is to a description; I also provide links to screenshots and downloadable code. People subscribed to Edu_RSS by RSS will notice a change in their feed as well, probably later today - the new aggregator is purring smooth as silk, the output validates, and so it is time to retire the cpu-munching older version. The list of feeds is changing too; I've tried to be inclusive, but have a look, and if you notice anyone missing that should be included, please send me a note.
Edu_RSS is important to me, because it's a concrete manifestation of the things I have been talking about over the last year as theories. You won't find classes or courses or any of that technocratical overhead in Edu_RSS. It's not an institution-based (and controlled) system, nor is it a learning management system, nor even (strictly) a personal learning environment. It's just you, your community, and the web, an environment where you are the centre and where your teachers - if there are any - are your peers. It is, I believe, the future - and where, one day, the next generation of Blackboards and WebCTs and Moodles and Sakais will make their mark. It's totally not what my employers wanted me to create - it's not proprietary technology, it doesn't lock down content behind a subscription wall, it doesn't embed eight levels of access and authorization. But I created it anyways, because I believe in it. [Tags: Subscription Services, Blackboard] [Comment] [Edit] [Delete] [Spam]. More...

Standards for Good Intranet and Extranet Design
Reasonable set of principles for good intranet design (or, for that matter, good design generally). More...

College Recruitment: Ripping a Page from MySpace?
Funny how the logic works. Something like this: "Students like X, we want students to come, thus, if we build X, students will come." These days it's MySpace. More...

What Are Those Sheep-bots Doing?
Interesting and potentially useful in the long term. The article describes a research project to reverse-engineer Second Life in order to "make it open and readable like say, HTTP." It would be interesting to see whether the effort could derive some architectural features that would become like a vocabulary or protocol. More...

More OpenLearn RSS Feeds...
Soon it will be seen as odd that a course would be presented simply as a set of static web pages. Of course a course is delivered as a stream, over time. That's what a course is, as opposed to, say, a manual. More...

Firefox 3: From HTML Renderer To Information Broker
Good article describing the (coming) intersection of the web browser and microformats. I've covered microformats before: these are little snippets of XHTML that define information structures in web pages. More...

Learning with Handheld Technologies
As Leonard Low summarizes, "Futurelab, a non-profit U.K. based organisation, who previously published one of the best literature reviews of mobile learning, have now published a handbook of recommendations for mobile learning approaches - including implementation ideas and case studies." It's a bit funny reading the summary by Tony Vincent... "the device" this and "the device" that. More...

The Dumbness of Crowds
Kathy Sierra makes the distinction I have been trying to get at with the recent discussion on groups and networks. "Art isn't made by committee. Great design isn't made by consensus. True wisdom isn't captured from a crowd. More...

Open Thinking is Open
A new online community, Open Thinking, has been launched. What I don't know is why. Is there some reason we cannot use our own spaces to talk about "open technologies or formats in regards to software, publishing, content and practice?" What's the benefit of going over to your place. More...

Website Down
The downes.ca website is currently unavailable as my new host withered and died under the traffic (they are currently incommunicado, adding to the frustration). I am working behind the scenes to get things going again. In the meantime, I can still send an email newsletter from the desktop (the RSS readers will just have to wait, though I'll post a copy to Half an Hour just to tide them over). Links are direct links; no website redirection (this will make my readers in Iran happy, as downes.ca has been blocked there for ages... I don't know why, though) so you can just click and read. Comments, of course, are not working. I have some good items still in the queue, but I've been slowed down a bit by all this so some good reads will be saved until next week. Thanks for your patience; just another day on the internet. p.s. if you are desperate for a downes.ca link you can access the pages by replacing 'www.downes.ca' with '198.164.40.147' - this is temporary and the pages will not be fully styled. Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web January 5, 2007 [Link] [Comment]. More...