By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Disintegrated Thoughts On Content Integration and Remix
Brian Lamb, who will be keynoting at this year's this year's Open Education Conference in Utah, ponders the back and forth of whether web deveopers will ever agree on standards. There's the depressing news from the commercial side, as we hear that Blackboard will never support anything like a proper export function, and depressing news from the open source side, as developers hesitate to support proprietary sites like Flickr and YouTube. "I'm dismayed by this stance," he writes, wondering what the online learning video awards would have looked like had clips from YouTube been banned. Well maybe - but let's wait a few years and see how it feels when it transpires that nobody will ever be able to access the actual videos except Google. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Apples and Pears
Interesting - maybe eLearning Guild is changing its orientation a bit. I'm speaking at their conference in Boston next week (and sneaking a side-trip to MIT while I'm there, where I plan to lurk in the hallways like a troll). But even more significantly, I learn that they're now including open source software Moodle in their LMS awards - and the little PHP program that could is sweeping them up. Now author Clive Shepherd says the comparison is not warranted because Moodle is a VLE, not an LMS. I don't agree - nothing would prevent you from using Moodle as an LMS, but most of its operators don't want that level of control. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Student Self Directed Learning
Another new (to me) blog, and this looks like a good one. I'd add it to my edublogger list but I'm just in a transition - more on that tomorrow, I hope. Anyhow, I'll flag this here and hope I don't lose the reference. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Hive 7 Chat World
People who remember The Palace will find this AJAX-enabled chat room an exact clone, except for the web browser. It was way too slow for me (and I have a very good broadband connection) and, to judge by the conversation I saw while there, it's not work-safe (much less school-safe). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Basic Connectivism - Or Connectivism for Dummies
I'm a bit behind, so I missed George Siemens on Women of Web 2.0 last night. But I couldn't pass over a post entitled 'Connectivism for Dummies'. "Connectivism is the assertion that learning is primarily a network forming process." That's pretty good. Just one thing: connectivism is not owned by George Siemens (as he would be the first to say). You surely don't have to ask him permission to write about it. Goodness, I haven't - and I've written as much about it as anyone. Anyhow, there's a lot more to the post than just that - I would recommend it - and there's a link to the Siemens chat at the end. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Second Life Brand Map
What's interesting about this map of Second Life is that it illustrates in a way no number or words could illustrate, this 'corporate utopia' of the world consisting almost entirely of islands owned by corporations or other large organizations. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Is the Medium the Message?
In this short commentary, Howard Gardner ponders, "the print, broadcast, and other communication media are merging; in the future, users may pay no attention to the source of, or the means employed by, converging media." Does this mean the medium will no longer be the message? For the other side, see this item where Roger Schank says, "Online learning can and should completely alter your view of education". More...