By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Nico Baird[Edit][Delete]: Innovation in Learning, October 12, 2006

Two new educational technology blogs from South Africa. Driekie Hay leads the Unit for Academic Development at the Central University of Technology, Free State, and offers the blog Academic Development. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Steve Hargadon[Edit][Delete]: Richard Stallman on Free Software in Education, October 12, 2006
Richard Stallman is well known as the founder of the GNU project and of the Free Software Foundation. This podcast looks at his thoughts on free software in learning. "In the interview, Richard defines the use of the word "free" in the context of software. He also defines the four essential freedoms that are behind the Free Software Movement, and the four reasons that he believes that schools should use exclusively Free Software (see also his essay on this topic)." Also worth noting is Hargadon's interview with an "extremely well prepared" Ragavan Srinivasan from HP on open source licenses. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alfred Essa[Edit][Delete]: Sakai Needs to Clarify Its Position and Soon, The NOSE [Edit][Delete] October 12, 2006
This article highlights, if only obliquely, my concerns about Sakai. And that is that, as a consortium of a bunch of universities, it isn't really 'open' and when its interests lie in another direction, that's where it will go. So would Sakai abandon the rest of the open source and LMS community in the Blackboard case? That appears to be a legitimate concern. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Alfred Essa[Edit][Delete]: Educause Severely Rebukes Blackboard, The NOSE [Edit][Delete] October 12, 2006
I completely endorse this statement from EDUCAUSE: ""Brian L. Hawkins, president of Educause, said the organization's Board of Directors had voted unanimously on Sunday to encourage Blackboard 'to drop the patent, drop the lawsuit,' and put the technology 'in the public domain.' [He said] 'We think that it is in their best interest and the best interest of the broader higher-education community.'"
More coverage is povided in the Chronicle (this is a temporary link, I think, so view it quickly - my thanks to the Chronicle for making this available). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Vicki Davis, Cheryl Oakes, Sharon Peters and Jennifer Wagner[Edit][Delete]: Women of Web 2.0, October 12, 2006
According to the site: "Women of Web 2.0 is for all who are using the tools of the internet whether it be in a classroom setting, leading seminars, authoring books, maintaining blogs or wikis, or just enjoying the tools of the internet in an educational and exciting way." They don't need it, but they have my support in any case. And to that end, a suggestion: a list like this. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Peter Suber[Edit][Delete]: CIHR Drafts an OA Mandate, Open Access News [Edit][Delete] October 12, 2006
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in their draft policy on open access "requires grant and award holders to make every effort to ensure that their peer-reviewed journal publications are freely available" and (even better) "will consider a researcher's track record of providing access to research outputs when considering applications for funding. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Will Richardson[Edit][Delete]: School 2.0-The Conversation Continues, Weblogg-Ed [Edit][Delete]Weblogg-ed [Edit][Delete] October 12, 2006
I clicked on the large PDF diagram on Will Richardson's site expecting to say something good - it looked like the diagram showed education taking place throughout the community, linked by a learning substructure. Once I saw the diagram up close, though, it's all just pictures of schools, with classes and teachers and students sitting in rows, even a principal all alone in his big office on the top floor. And I found myself more in agreement with Tom Hoffman - though I can't quote him and link to this post with a language warning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tom Green[Edit][Delete]: The Rise of Flash Video, Part 1, Digital Web Magazine [Edit][Delete] October 11, 2006
The big surprise of my recent Africa trip was this: I could view videos from YouTube just fine even when logged on via a (slow and cranky) Vodacom wireless setup running 3G. What made this possible was the small Flash video files and the capacity of MX to stream them into the display. And what is also significant about the Flash videos is that they always work - none of those weird 'missing codec' errors - and they are multiplatform. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Wagner[Edit][Delete]: Google Teacher Newsletter - 1st issue, Educational Technology and Life [Edit][Delete] October 11, 2006
"I'm a simple man, like you." That's how one of William Shatner's commercial messages begins, and it works because of the audacity of the 'like you' message. The same sort of audacity is present in Google's first newsletter for teachers. "Today, teachers like you are using technology in innovative ways to help students build knowledge." Oh really! responds the teacher. Nice of you to tell us. More...