By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Seminars on Academic Computing
Alan Levine and Cyprian Lomas have a conference blogging thing going using SubEthaEdit here at the SAC conference in Snowmass; I've linked to his main site and you can follow the headlines from there. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Principles of Distributed Representation
PowerPoint slides (938K) and MP3 Audio (13m) of my talk today at SAC. (I talk about the changing conception of knowledge, the idea of knowing (and learning) as a network phenomenon, and how that changes how we should approach metadata and in particular learning object metadata. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, August 9, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. University as Author?
Coverage of a case in Kansas in which the state's supreme court is to decide whether public universities can simply assert that it owns all intellectual property produced by professors, in effect treating their books, inventions and other work as 'work for hire'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Rich Media >> Get Rich Quick
Though the term 'rich media' has been around for a while it is only recently that the push toward rich media has begun to acquire meme status. Of course 'rich media' could mean anything from a lecture streamed using Breeze to a podcast to an immersive simulation. This article covers the push to introduce rich media and outlines some of the 'stumbling points' - bandwidth, of course, but also pedagogical issues. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Education Can Learn From Open Source
Short article summarizing a slightly longer article that outlines three major lessons education can learn from open source: the use of OS technology, the value of 'amateur' work, and the nature of 'bottom-up' knowledge and development. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. More About Designing for the Long Tail
Michael Feldstein offers a couple of posts that reflect exactly the issue I am working with as I try to compose my talk at SAC tomorrow. "We need a system that is optimized toward slotting in new pieces as they become available, not as an after-thought or an add-on, but as a fundamental characteristic of the system." Yes, yes, but what does that mean. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Break Down the (Fire) Wall!!
I was at a government office not too long ago (the nature of which shall remain hidden) and during some of the discussions the subject of Flickr came up. Imagine my surprise to find access to the site blocked by network administrators. Leigh Blackall comments on this increasingly pervasive trend, a trend that is characterized as much by its ridiculous application as by its fundamentally undemocratic nature. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Of Course the Curriculum Will Be Free -- It Always Has Been
Discussion of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's contention that the curriculum must be free. Most of the article examines "the real gap that exists between what Jimmy Wales predicts and where we are currently," pointing especially to the entrenched role played by publishers. The "gap" involves the participation of instructors, better repositories, and some way to make money. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Aspen, Colorado
I am at the mountain resort of Snowmass, Colorado, today, attending the EDUCAUSE Seminars in Academic Computing, where I'll be talking on 'Principles of Distributed Representation' tomorrow. Yesterday I had the opportunity to take the bus to Aspen, where I spent a nice Sunday afternoon wandering around the town (leaving me a bit worn out today, I might add). Anyhow, this link is to my collection of photos, and for those of you with really good broadband, I made a (32 megabyte WMV format) video of my day (Windows Media might stream it for you; my results have been variable). By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, August 8, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Merger To Create Major E-Learning Player
More on the SumTotal - Pathlore merger. "Combined, Pathlore and SumTotal--which itself was created by the merger of E-learning vendors Docent and Click2Learn in 2004--have combined revenue of about $100 million and 1,500 customers, including several large health-care companies, financial-services firms, manufacturers, and government agencies". More...