By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Marcela Valente: Computers Alone Can't Bridge Digital Gap, Inter Press Service News Agency October 27, 2005

Interesting look at the program to place computers and internet access into Argentine schools and at what happens next. And there needs to be a 'next' because of things like this: while everyone at the school uses the equipment "to read the news and search for information," e-mail is used only by the staff, not the students, because "they don't have any relatives to write to". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors: Teaching Online, Deakin University October 26, 2005

Nice. A project consisting of more than 70 "interviews, flash movies and resources from teachers doing good stuff in online teaching and learning at the Uni... you can look through them by faculty, discipline, graduate attribute, study level, approaches to learning and a fair few more approaches". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors: The Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems October 26, 2005

If you have been following the discussion with David Merrill on ITForum, a discussion which has touched on the distinction between simple and complex systems, you will find this site to be worth a read. "Complex systems can be identified by what they do - display organization without a central organizing principle (emergence) and also by how they may or may not be analyzed - decomposing the system and analyzing subparts does not necessarily give a clue as to the behavior of the whole". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Graham Glass: Google Base, Graham Glass, etc. October 26, 2005

From the rumours department: is Google preparing to launch Google Base, "a way for people to share structured documents with each other." According to Graham Glass, the idea would be to "share contact information, resumes, matchmaking information, medical records, etc. and would include security permissions so that users could restrict information to, say, their current doctor or to their friends". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Richard Schwier: Wiley and Martindale on Social Software - AECT 2005, Rick's Caf'Canadien October 26, 2005

Today's newsletter is coming to you from Gander, Newfoundland, where I am in town for the TESIC conference. I cannot say what internet access I will have (this newsletter was actually prepared early this morning) so there may be some service interruptions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ludovic Nachury: Skype banni des facs par la sécurité nationale, 01net October 25, 2005

I've mentioned some of the questions being raised about Skype before and now the other shoe has dropped as the French government has told all universities they must stop installing Skype. The order cites security concerns, magnified by Skype's proprietary protocol, but some are suggesting that the order has more to do with lost telecom revenues than with fears about security (after all, we haven't seen a similar order regarding Windows). In French. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Josie Fraser: Edublog City, Ed Tech UK October 25, 2005

The 20 millionth blog indexed by Technorati turns out to be a school blog from an elementary school in Reims, France. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. CJ: Lemmings and Similar Phenomena, CJs October 25, 2005

I am in b road sympathy with this post, though I would probably have worded it very differently. The language is inflammatory, the points telling. For example: "With Secondary schooling we have a system which, in my view, is increasingly difficult to justify. It is a form of what might be called organised child abuse which repeats itself over and over again, year in, year out". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Albert Ip: Parkin Space: Who Says Learning Should be Fun?, Random Walk in E-Learning October 25, 2005

Godfrey Parkin seeks to poke some holes in recent educational theory: "Engagement is intense mental absorption; interactivity is often just busyness or sugar-coating." Well, sure, intently reading a book or a technical manual is of more pedagogical value than idle chit-chat or time-filling ice-breaking activities. But that merely makes the observation that not all interaction is equal. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Phil Jones: Alternatives to the Semantic Web?, Platform Wars October 24, 2005

What is the alternative to the semantic web? How about this: "I'll suggest the alternative to the SemWeb is the SynWeb, a web which doesn't need 'key identifiers'. A world with lots of online data, marked up with syntactic cues which make it easy to parse (eg. good old fashioned XML, or Markdown or YAML); more powerful tools and libraries for parsing and querying data with these formats; plus lots of programs which scoop up the data and combine them in interesting ways". More...