By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Arthur Carty: A Global Information System Needs a Culture of Sharing, University Affairs October 17, 2005

A remarkable opinion column is published in University Affairs as Arthur Carty, former NRC president and current science advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, calls for "a culture of sharing" in Canadian science and research. It doesn't get better than this: "Above all, our goal must be to maximize the impact of research for societies everywhere, not just the developed world. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Nino Marchetti: Online Education Research Grows, Designtechnica October 17, 2005

People in increasing numbers are turning to the web for education-related research. Where do they turn first? According to Nielsen NetRatings, to Wikipedia. The survey shows a 22 percent growth from September of last year and a total audience in the sector of 46.4 million users last month. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Joris Evers: Critical Windows Patch May Wreak PC Havoc, CNet News.Com October 17, 2005

Are you kidding me? "The patch could lock users out of their PC, prevent the Windows Firewall from starting, block certain applications from running or installing, and empty the network connections folder, among other things." Unbelievable. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Eamonn Sullivan: Everyday Sites (and Some Unsolved Problems), Eamonn's Home October 17, 2005

Dean Shareski sent this useful link after listening to one of my Ottawa podcasts. The author writes, "my circumstances have changed so much in the last few years, and the Web has improved so much, that I'm finding myself spending most of my time on the Web. This is significant because, unlike several years ago, I'm a regular user now. My job isn't in technology. This should worry Microsoft." My use of the web isn't exactly the same, mostly because I write my own web software. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release: Sakai Partners Launch Sakai Foundation for Open Source Software, Sakai October 17, 2005

Hot on the heels of Blackboard's acquisition of WebCT comes this announcement, issued by press release today, about the open source learning management system called Sakai. "As a non-profit, membership corporation the Sakai Foundation will provide Sakai developers, adopters, and users a place to coordinate their efforts." The creation addresses concerns expressed in some circles that base funding for Sakai was coming to a conclusion, leaving the software without support. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Teemu Arina: State of Finnish eLearning, FLOSSE Posse October 17, 2005

Links, commentary and more concerning the chaotic session George Siemens and I were a part of last week at a Finnish e-learning conference. The two of us - communicating by Skype and presenting using S5, presented our version of E-Learning 2.0 / Connectivism to them. Among the more interesting aspects of our presentation was not even part of the presentation, a conversation we had in the conference discussion area prior to our talk (this link is to Juha-Matti Arola’s blog, which also summarizes the talk and contains the full chat transcript). More...