By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Blueprint, A CSS Framework
I have always liked grid-style CSS layouts (my own website is an example of that) and this framework takes a lot of the really picky details out of writing the stylesheets (my own site may look very simple, but the CSS took a long time). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Perl Is Dead. Long Live Perl.
I still do the bulk of my programming in Perl. Not PHPO or Python or Ruby or any of the other scripting languages that have emerged in the last few years. Part of the reason is that it takes a lot of work to become anything like expert in a programming language. But also, the other languages lack the facility Perl offers me. "I'm sure you have heard of and used that are either built entirely on Perl, or have significant portions written in Perl: Yahoo!, Amazon, TicketMaster, The United States Department of State, The BBC, Slashdot, and Shopzilla." And my site. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Wii Remote API
I'm not ready to work with this yet - I would somehow need to convince NRC to give me a Wii to play with - but the possibilities are intriguing. And think about it - what would it be like to program a web page that four people could use at once. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Trying Out Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for M-Learning
I've long wanted to be able to map routes and mix them with photos - as described in this post. I use the gmap-pedometer to plot my route, but can't add pictures to that. What I want to get one day (maybe I can convince NRC to pay for it) is this GPS-enabled system described by Leonard Low - which would allow me to embed GPS information into the photo itself. And while my camera is automatically creating metadata for me, I want it to record my name and website - and it would be nice to embed a short audio clip (which could be translated to text) by way of description. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The King Is Dead - Long Live the King
Could some of the things we've been saying here be beginning to inform corporate e-learning? Mark Berthelemy writes, "For most (corporate) consumers of elearning, content means self-study modules, that sit in some sort of delivery system. In academic and formal education settings e-learning has a completely different connotation - involving collaboration, assessment, eportfolios etc - which is beginning to filter into the corporate space, but very slowly". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Clive's Columns
Looking at the lists of technology collected by Jane Hart, Clive Shepherd writes that he is "swimming against the tide with [his] love of huge, complex, expensive desktop tools." Still, he reasons, they should be used. Thus the production of Clive's Columns, a Creative Commons licensed text containing 33 of his columns on e-larning and blended learning. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. An Ontology and a Software Framework for Competency Modeling and Management
While we have been talking about web 2.0 and personal learning environments, the educational technology standards community has been forging ahead in its own direction, now working on the development of specifications to define competences. "Acquiring new competencies is the central goal of any education or knowledge management process," writes Gilbert Paquette as he presents "an ontology for designing competency-based learning and knowledge management applications." My own feeling is that learning is not reducible to sets of competences, that the whole is, indeed, greater than the sum of the parts. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Which World for 3D Webbing?
I talked with someone from Sun about their own (Java based) 3D world servers. Meanwhile, this article also mentions Open Croquet and Multiverse. We are still a long way away from this being a useful technology but there's a lot of work being done in a lot of places. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Has Blackboard Filed Another Patent Suit?
We reported in these pages last July when Blackboard announced its plagiarism detection service. I wrote, "Blackboard does not even blush when it claims that 'SafeAssign is a unique plagiarism prevention service because student and/or faculty papers are included,'" mentioning the oft-cited TurnItIn. Well now the other shoe has dropped. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Privileged Peer Review - Whose Opinion Counts?
George Siemens responds to concerns that his work, including his book on connectivism, has not been peer reviewed. My own response is similar to his: peer review is not the only way of ensuring quality, and it's not even a good way of ensuring quality. It takes too long and the process is conducted in secret. And there's no reason to believe that a small group of experts can assess quality any better - and more fairly - than an open and public assessment by anyone who cares to read the item in question. More...