By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Just Say No! A Few More Reasons for Universities to Foster Independent Mediated Voices
Some universities are caving to the RIAA's demands that they pass along information about student accounts - Purdue, for example, warned 40,000 students to "remove or at least partially disable any peer-to-peer file sharing software on their computers." On the other hand, some other universities - notably Nebraska and Maine - have had enough and are fighting back. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. World Bank Head Speaks Out On Why Canada Is Needed in Africa
This article doesn't describe learning directly, though it is clear to me that Canada can play a role in this field as well. What the author, the president of the World Bank, stresses is that myths of African development - that "Africa is hopeless, aid to Africa is money wasted, and Africa can solve its own problems" - are no longer true. I don't know, one way or another. But I remain hopeful, and I certainly call for continued, and strengthened, Canadian investment in the future of Africa. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Social Networking As Professional Development
Links to Ning and in particular describes the Library 2.0 network created on Ning as well as the more recent Classroom 2.0 network. I look at that and say, well what, now, you own Classroom 2.0? See - I don't think it's a network if it belongs to someone, if it is created, if it is associated with a place. It's more like, what, a club or a group in such a circumstance. And that is the key difference between social networks such as Ning and the edublogosphere. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. I Just Don'T Get It Yet - Social Networks
Dave Warlick echoes my comments on Ning, including the 'club' remark: "I'm wondering if this sort of social network 'place' is really more for kids. Children need a clubhouse, a place where they can be themselves, pretend to be somebody else, make up their own rules, and dream of other places and times. But clubhouses have walls, as does Ning! It seems to be a container and less in the spirit of small pieces loosely joined. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning with Networks
Terry Anderson, who is well known for his discussions of "various types and function of interaction in formal (usually distance) education contexts," looks at what John Dron calls the interaction between the student and the group. Now again, the word "group" is used loosely here - "Downes' sense of fluid, unbounded networks relates directly to the multiple forms, size and purpose of informal distributed synchronous and asynchronous collections of individuals that Dron refers to as groups." But, as Anderson notes, access to a network from a formal situation works differently than in an informal situation. And so he cautions teachers about what to expect when they access the network: the quality of interaction with the network will vary greatly according to the skill and experience of the student. It will also fluctuate from dead silence to blizzards of activity. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. FlashMeeting - the YouTube of Videoconferencing?
It remains true that Flash is the best means to show video on the web (which is sad, when you think of it - because there are so many better alternatives, but the companies behind the standards could never agree on something everybody could use). The same may hold true of videoconferencing. "FlashMeeting is not a videoconference system in a traditional sense. The one that is speaking is actually always broadcasting her video and audio stream for other participants. All the participants may ask for turns and when you ???stop broadcasting" the turn moves automatically for the next in the list". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mobile Learning: The Next Step in Technology-Mediated Learning
"Learning," writes Ellen Wagner, "is a deeply personal act, best facilitated by relevant, reliable and engaging experiences, yet many teaching approaches still rely on more impersonal 'command and control' models that include an instructor in charge, specific goals to be met and criteria to be mastered." Mobile learning devices stand poised to change this, she writes. "With mobile technologies, training now accommodates people instead of people working to accommodate training." Well... except for the size thing. And the proprietary technology. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Visual Studio Code Can Do That?
Burke Holland, Smashing Magazine, Medium, 2019/02/11
Visual Studio Code is my new favourite text editor, and has been responsible for a bit increase in my learning curve over the last month. It combines three core functions - file management (including version management with GitHub), text editing (with formatting that supports everything, even Perl), and command line terminals (so I can usefully write and test scripts in the same environment, and then publish in Docker or whatever). And as this article shows, there's a whole lot more for power users. Including (just announced this week) something called Live Share, which will allow multiple developers to work on the same project at the same time. It's all open source, written in Node, and compiled for the desktop using Electron. More...