By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OERs, Producers, Consumers, and Reuse
David Wiley gets it right: "The secret sauce in both the cases of the good open source software and the good OER is an actual, bias-riddled, context-bound, historical person located squarely in a concrete place and time addressing their own specific instructional problem." Moreover, this should say something about development: "A person who has conducted a comprehensive user survey in order to be 'consumer-driven' has a very low chance of creating an OER that meets a specific teacher's specific need." Perhaps we should return to producer-driven initiatives, he suggests. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ten Reasons The World Needs Patent Covenants
Good news - Sun has signed a patent covenant around OpenID (not that Sun invented OpenID, but what we like to see is that it would launch any patent silliness around it - we'd like to see the other major players do exactly the same, so OpenID can become ubiquitous). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Holy Grail for Teaching Programming
Videos illustrating how Squeak's eToy and MIT's more recent Scratch work. Definitely worth a look - think about how using this sort of computer is so very different from using a computer loaded with, well, Microsoft Office or even traditional computer games. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Crowd Sourcing Against Perpetual Copyright
I read the editorial in the NY Times proposing that copyrights last forever and dismissed it as a ridiculous argument. Basically, the author's claim is that the expiration of copyright is akin to the government seizure of private property. Which is ridiculous, since copyright, insofar as it is property, exists only because of government intervention. Anyhow, in all the discussion over this editorial I am surprised to note that commentators have missed the author's primary intent - to reframe the debate by putting perpetual copyright on the table as a viable option. Which it never was until now. And all of a sudden life plus 75 years looks pretty good, by comparison. The campaign by Lessig and others to respond to the argument has the effect of embracing the new frame. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Does Pearson'S Purchase of eCollege Give It the Muscle to Compete with Blackboard?
Seb Schmoller links to an article by Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed and notes that "The article hints at further rationalisation and consolidation between educational technology and educational content businesses, and sees eCollege, backed by Pearson as much more serious competition for Blackboard." I don't see Blackboard's share price as an indicator of anything other than a tech bubble, personally, and I think that the major story here is that Pearson is entering a space recently vacated by Thomson. More...