By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephanie Dunnewind[Edit][Delete]: Schools Trying to Prevent Harassment in Cyberspace, Seattle Times [Edit][Delete] October 17, 2006

Funny. "Mr. Scarpelli does not have a MySpace page, nor will he ever have a MySpace account." This article looks at the issue of fake teacher MySpace accounts in passing as it looks at the impact of the phenomenon on schools in general. "MySpace registered its 100 millionth user in August." Instead of just ignoring MySpace (or blocking it and pretending it doesn't exist) schools are beginning to address real issues - like spoofing and harassing - through education and, in some few cases, litigation. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Herbert van de Sompel[Edit][Delete]: An Interoperable Fabric for Scholarly Value Chains, D-Lib Magazine [Edit][Delete] October 17, 2006

More on Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE). This article outlines some of the thinking behind ORE and offers a description of some of the major functions (or elements) of the new initiative. Again , I don't see anything particularly new here, except that is is creeping federation entering the world of OAI. And so I ask (as I did throughout the eduSource project) do we need a system of learning and research data exchange that is inaccessible to most people? Yes yes, I know, this sort of thing isn't explicit in the proposal. But why the use of OpenURL (which sends a different resource to people depending on the 'context' of the request). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Keri[Edit][Delete]: Summary of a Cmap, Writing for Myself: Writing to Teach [Edit][Delete] October 17, 2006

My own explanation of the relation between blogs and learning, but this concept map has the advantage of representing what might be considered a much more mainstream view. "Blogs are a social tool with the potential to create collaborative communities. Readers comment, and thus, build knowledge on the subject. Readers and writers work together to add to knowledge. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors[Edit][Delete]: The K-12 Online Conference 2006 Agenda, October 17, 2006

This online conference started yesterday with a pre-recorded keynote by Dave Warlick (to me it's not a keynote unless it's live - but that's just me). It features a number of educational bloggers, mostly (as the title suggests) from the K-12 sector, and mostly from the United States (and not, as one commentator wrote, "top educational bloggers from around the world"). It's kind of like a 'Coming of Age', only presented as a conference. Oh hey wait, it's the same people! Who are - according to themselves - the leading edubloggers. As one person commented today - a 'co-prosperity sphere'. I prefer the term from Jerry Pournelle: the CoDominium. Anyhow - I aggregate more than 300 edubloggers (and leave out just as many again) and try to represent their contributions as fairly as I can in these pages. And that is to me the core of edublogging, not self-styled A-listers. But hey - attend the conference, listen to Warlick and Freedman and Fryer and McIntosh and the rest and judge for yourself. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Helen Barrett[Edit][Delete]: EIFE-L Conference 2006, E-Portfolios for Learning [Edit][Delete] October 17, 2006

Helen Barrett writes, "I took the opportunity to create a new graphic that describes a "mash-up" of different Web 2.0 tools that could be combined together for a powerful ePortfolio system, using a variety of online tools that students might already be using". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Helen Barrett[Edit][Delete]: EIFE-L Conference 2006, E-Portfolios for Learning [Edit][Delete] October 17, 2006

Helen Barrett writes, "I took the opportunity to create a new graphic that describes a "mash-up" of different Web 2.0 tools that could be combined together for a powerful ePortfolio system, using a variety of online tools that students might already be using". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge - The Podcast, October 17, 2006

MP3 Audio and PowerPoint Slides (the slides form a nice summary of the paper, if you didn't want to read the paper) from my session at the University of Prince Edward Island yesterday (also Skypecast, but notice came out so late I don't think we had any attendees). I thought it was a good session, not because of the quality of my discourse (in fact, there are some pretty awkward moments in there) but because it shows some of the thinks I need to think more deeply about. It was a pretty good back and forth - Dave Cormier kept saying, "This is great audio." Yeah well I guess it's good to see the points where people disagree with my theories and take apart my presentation. And I suppose it's good to post them on my website. [Tags: Quality] [Comment]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Catharine Munro[Edit][Delete]: Vandalism and Violence, Sydney Morning Herald [Edit][Delete] October 16, 2006

This article has begun making the rounds of the discussion lists. In this semi-literate copy we read, "An informal subcategory of school fights and graffiti-spraying are attracting tens of thousands of users to the site." What is most interesting, I think, is that anyone familiar with YouTube will know that while the videos are of dubious quality, they do not in the main feature vandalism and violence. So why the attacks on YouTube, especially when you can find worse, much worse, watching CSI or Cold Case? So why is the site "impossible to access at public schools" in Australia? If they're going to ban anything from the schools, why not ban commercial media, including the Sydney Morning Herald (I write this as they broadcast a melee at a football game on the morning news). Commercial media are much more demonstrably offensive to our sense of truth and morality. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Michael R. Nelson[Edit][Delete]: Lessons from the Real World, Terena [Edit][Delete] October 13, 2006

A look at the emerged of Web 2.0 from behind the headlines and the bumper stickers. Covers some of the themes we've seen here, but from a more IBMish perspective (hard to explain that; you'll have to look at it). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Artichoke[Edit][Delete]: The Draft NZ Curriculum, October 13, 2006

What I want to highlight in this article is the argument that concludes, "We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production," cited from James Boyle, who offered it last August. The context here is the New Zealand curriculum review (and its idiculous process of asking for 150 word comments in neat little boxes) but it is a tendency I have seen over and over again, whether it be in the construction of repositories, identification systems, metadata design, and more. More...