By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Dave Snowden[Edit][Delete]: Communities of Practice, Cognitive Edge [Edit][Delete] November 3, 2006
I am very much in agreement with this post. Dave Snowden writes, "communities can evolve, but cannot be designed top down... you can not replicate the end point of an evolutionary process." He points to two disastrous approaches: "Creating an organisational template for communities of practice, with a full roll out plan, dedicated staff etc. etc. [and] Taking a paternalistic (or maternalistic approach) in which people are held to be children or kids needing help or assistance. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Kathy Sierra[Edit][Delete]: Why Does Engineering/Math/Science Education in the US Suck?, Creating Passionate Users [Edit][Delete] November 3, 2006
Kathy Sierra pretty much sums it up with this diagram:

Don't miss the dozens and dozens of comments. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: Understanding Learning Networks, Reprise, November 3, 2006
This is my last talk for a while, I think - I have no travel and no talks planned at all right now. This is a good thing - it will let me rest and reflect and even get some coding done. There are some changes coming to my work and my website which I need to prepare for as well. In the meantime, it was nice to have the time to explore the topic in some detail, and the very willing audience here at the Universite de Moncton was more than gracious. So here we have almost three hours of learning networks and where learning is going from here. PowerPoint Slides (almost the same as the ones from Spain) and MP3 Audio (28 megabytes, 2 hours, 45 minutes) (which hardly even resembles the other talk). [Tags: Online Learning, Networks, Podcasting]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors[Edit][Delete]: Sloodle - 3D Learning Management System, October 27, 2006
Well I guess it had to happen. Or, at least, to be proposed. This page is the development wiki for Sloodle - 'Second Life With Moodle'. "Imagine a Moodle course that, if you wanted, could turn into a proper 3D interactive classroom with all your Moodle resources available to your students in the virtual world." This is very doable, since you can import external objects (such as videos) into Second Life. To me, the greater challenge will be fusing an open source LMS into a commercial 3D environments. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Peter Suber[Edit][Delete]: HHMI is Considering An OA Mandate, Open Access News [Edit][Delete] October 27, 2006
Peter Suber adds up the numbers. "The HHMI hasn't yet adopted a policy. But if we count its mandate proposal in the mandate column, and do the same for the mandate proposal at Canada's CIHR, and if we count the new semi-mandate in Austria as a mandate, then the HHMI proposal is the eighth OA mandate this month. There are the four new mandates from the RCUK, the expansion of the existing mandate at the Wellcome Trust, the Austrian policy, the CIHR draft, and now the HHMI. We've never had a month like this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Arthur Sale[Edit][Delete]: The Acquisition of Open Access Research Articles, First Monday [Edit][Delete] October 27, 2006
One of the things that has surprised me about open access is the indifference of most professors. This is why it has been argued, "Mandatory policies are now widely recognized as the only way to achieve close to 100 percent of content in institutional repositories." Even with mandatory compliance, it can take up to three years to begin to get the content into the repositories. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release[Edit][Delete]: IBM Files Patent Infringement Lawsuits Against Amazon.com, IBM [Edit][Delete] October 27, 2006
Seriously, I don't care at all what one large corporation does to another, and in the long run, it makes no difference. And after its one-click patent lawsuits, Amazon deserves what it gets. But the significant here is that this latest patent fight illustrates that there is utterly no point developing commercial software or online services unless you are a billion dollar company. Be as innovative as you want, you'll still be dinged with a ridiculous lawsuit for "Presenting Applications in an Interactive Service" or "Storing Data in an Interactive Network" or even "Ordering Items Using an Electronic Catalogue." Of course, none of these frivolous patents should ever have been granted. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cory Doctorow[Edit][Delete]: Copyrighted Fabric: No Selling the Stuff You Make From It, Boing Boing [Edit][Delete] October 27, 2006
Another example of the sorry state our society is finding itself in, as anything and everything must be monitized. It is worth noting that the blog post caused the company to reword their requirement into a request. Related: Interviews with students on copyright. "Education efforts are seen as phony and unconvincing, lawsuits as unlikely, and even college-supplied access to legal music services may perpetuate a view of media as free, offering little educational value". More...