By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How Great Is Free?
Scott Belford writes, "It's gotten so that I just can't tell enough people about all the great edutainment applications included with each revision of the K12LTSP. Furthermore, until someone sees the delicious GUI that is the gnu/linux Desktop, they think of it as something DOS-like and unfriendly". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Prensky Takes a Beating!
As a 46 year old who is not a baby boomer it's hard not to agree with Tom Hoffman. I was too young (ie., 8) for the Summer of Love and Woodstock; I grew up with wiring diagrams, techno-pop, Pong (and Galaga- heh) and punch cards. I saw Tangerine Dream in concert. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. My Podcast on Why Podcasting isn't Interesting
To me, this is the big one: "It takes 30 minutes to listen to a thirty minute podcast, but if you give me 10 pages of material to read, I can scan through it in 15-30 seconds". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Edubuntu Summit: Eat Your Heart Out!
Ubuntu is a new semi-commercial Linux distribution. Edubuntu is an organization exploring the use of this version of Linux in education. This link is to the wikified version of the Edubuntu Summit conference notes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Microsoft Frowned at For Smiley Patent
With people already raising their eyebrows at the renaming of Longhorn to Microsoft Vista (people especially including those with companies named Vista or products named Vista) the Redmond software company poured oil onto the fire with the news that it is patenting the creation of custom emoticons (aka smileys). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Early Film, Early Internet, Early Days, Network Learning
Leigh Blackall begins by talking about finding old movies on the Internet Archive (which alone makes his post worth reading) but makes his main point here: "This post is not so much an outcome of any particular study (such as a paper or essay might be) but is more a piece in the process of learning. Its an ongoing conversation of learning, with the recorded voices in the conversation contributing to the content used in someone else's learning". More...