By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How a 20 Year Old Patent Application Could Up-End Canada’s Biggest Trade Deal
Michael Geist, Aug 05, 2014
Opponents of free trade legislation have long argued that these mechanisms subvert the rule of law in the contracted countries. This has now apparently been proven to be the case in - where else? - patent law. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web.Mobile Internet Explorer's New User Agent
Alex Chitu, Google Operating System, Aug 05, 2014
It's ironic. It's sad. And once again, it's an example of corporations that just don't play well together, no matter what it costs their customers. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Rise of New Institutional Models and Architectures
Amie Colquhoun, Don Tapscott, Aug 05, 2014
Don Tapscott (or his writer Amie Colquhoun) argues that companies are now encouraging cooperative organization both inside their structures and among competitors. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dialogue and discussion: critical for 21st century skills development
Tony Bates, online learning and distance education resources, Aug 05, 2014

According to Tony Bates, conversation is essential in learning as students (and people generally) struggle consciously to find meaning in the phenomena they experience, and this will change the structure on online learning in the future. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Shots in the heather
Dave Ferguson, Dave's Whiteboard, Aug 06, 2014

Following up from Danieel Lemire's characterization of research (which i endorse) from yesterday: "

Is iomadh urchair tha dol san fhraoch.
(Many a shot goes into the heather.)

That is to say, research (and learning) is about missing the mark as much as it is about success. Without failure, learning doesn't happen. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tips & Tricks for Recording Audio Narration
Tom Kuhlmann, The Rapid eLearning Blog, Aug 06, 2014

I can't count how much bad audio I've listened to over the years (sadly, I've been the perpetrator of a lot of it). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. This poster explains Creative Commons for the rest of us
Sean Connor, Saylor Blog, Aug 06, 2014
This is interesting, not simply because it explains Creative Commons for non-technical people, but because it changes the thrust of the message from what you can't do to what you can do. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Drawing a line from @elgg to @withknown: an adventure in #edtech and #indieweb
Ben Werdmuller, Aug 06, 2014
I personally think that the line from Elgg to Known runs through Explode!, but that's not the way Ben Werdmuller tells it. "From the beginning, it was important to us that users got to control their own space," he writes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Student Privacy: Harm and Context
Mark MacCarthy, International Review of Information Ethics, Jul 31, 2014
As the author notes, "Education is on the verge of dramatic changes in the collection, flow and use of student information." One approach, the "harm approach," seeks to advocate the use of these technologies that cause the least harm to students. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wrong Answer: In an era of high-stakes testing, a struggling school made a shocking choice
Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker, Jul 31, 2014
It makes me wonder how many of the 'success stories' in the literatire are based on cheating, just as this one from a school in Atlanta did, complete with published papers and a 'Dispelling the Myth' award. More...