By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors[Edit][Delete]: Defending the Collegiate Press, Harvard Crimson [Edit][Delete] December 8, 2006
As a former student newspaper editor, one twice elected by the newspaper staff, I am certain to echo the opinion expressed by the editors of 20 student newspapers across the United States protesting the refusal of the administration at the University of Southern California to accept the election of Zach Fox to the post of editor in chief of the Daily Trojan. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Craig Graham[Edit][Delete]: iLearnium, [Edit][Delete] December 8, 2006
Oddly named new portal for online learning. Craig Graham writes, "The site features blog aggregation, product ratings and reviews, a discussion forum , and a social networking component - targeted to e-learning professionals." While I applaud the effort, I have to ask whether we need another e-learning portal. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Michael Arrington[Edit][Delete]: Swivel Aims To Become The Internet Archive For Data, Techcrunch [Edit][Delete] December 8, 2006
"Academic types are going to go nuts over this," writes the author. Here's why: "We use farms of powerful computers and algorithms at the Swivel data centers to transform a lonely grid of numbers and letters into hundreds - sometimes thousands - of graphs that can be explored and compared with any other public data in Swivel." This could open some very interesting possibilities. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Kathy Sierra[Edit][Delete]: The Asymptotic Twitter Curve, Creating Passionate Users [Edit][Delete] December 8, 2006
I liked this article, but I liked it better near the beginning when I thought Kathy Sierra was making a different point. She begins by looking at Twitter - "A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?" - and draws the 'Twitter Curve', mapping the adoption of various technologies with the frequency of interruption. So far so good, but this then wanders into a hackneyed discussion of how interruptions make it hard to get into the flow of things, which we've read a million times before. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Associated Press[Edit][Delete]: Report: More Students Getting Free Breakfast, Cnn [Edit][Delete]CNN [Edit][Delete] December 8, 2006
It's not nearly enough - only two in five who need it get fed - but it's headed in the right direction. There will be some who say that giving out free breakfasts won't guarantee improvements in test scores. More...