By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. I Am a Deviant Tool User. You?
More reaction to Gary Stager's take-down of Web 2.0 proponents, most of it not as nice as I was yesterday. Guhlin wonders, "Is Gary's call for us to wake up and do more than rally around the tools REALLY a call to submit to the accepted culture of schools, or one more in line with his point of view?" That was my interpretation, though people like Tom Hoffman suggest that Stager isn't so "bound to traditional schooling." Maybe not, but if the heart of his argument is that the challenge is "to frame the presentation of these tools to teachers in the best thinking about pedagogy," then it seems pretty 'traditional schooling' to me. More: Dave Warlick asks, Web 2.0 is like Logo? James Farmer writes a screamer of a criticism, including a set of (what I now dub) loljabs characterizing Stager's argument. Dean Shareski comments, "personal freedom and empowerment doesn't have to involve schools." Ewan McIntosh wonders why Stager can't find any research when he's read and summarized more than 100 research reports. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sideways Computing
There seems to be some momentum developing around a programming languaged called Erlang. The logic of Erlang is very different, and I will confess that I don't get it yet (and of course the syntax is sometimes just pointlessly non-standard - cf the notation for comments). A strength of Erlang is (apparently) that it is much better suited to multi-core processors. But I am also sensing that this is where some of the backlash in the Java community is landing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. CIHR Introduces New Open Access Policy
The Canadian Institute for Health Research has announced, formally, its Open Access mandate for all funded research. Peter Suber has coverage. Stevan Harnad notes that it makes CIHR the 31st organization worldwide to do so. It's worth noting that this amounts to "five percent of the world's health research scholarship" - an awful lot, considering the size of our country, and pretty convincing evidence that you do get original research even if you have a public health care system. But it should be noted, as Heather Ross points out, there's a pretty big loophole for publisher embargos. Finally, as Geist says, "It places renewed pressure on SSHRC and NSERC, the other two major granting councils, to at least match CIHR. The same principles apply - taxpayer funded research should be made available to the public that pays the bills and with CIHR now on board, it is now clearly time for the other two councils to adopt open access policies." Quite so, and to that I would like to add my own organization, the National Research Council. We're funded by the people of Canada, our work should be made available to that public. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bill of Rights for the Social Web?
Eight years ago I wrote and posted widely something called the Cyberspace Charter of Rights. Now along come people like Marc Canter and Robert Scoble promoting a shortened and Americanized Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web expressing basically the same principles. Canter's announcement. Scoble's announcement. Peter Cashmore's hot air alert. That's the way of the web - things are deemed Not To Exist until the Right People invent them (and which point they are credited as the inventors). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. News University
This is an interesting site. The courses vary from very short and informal - like the Be a Reporter game - to courses that are rather more in-depth and topical, like the covering water quality issues course. Many of the courses are free, though it looks like they're reserving an option to charge for enrollment. The course list includes live webinars are well as more traditional categories. The site is a few steps away from wheree they want to be, though, as I don't really get a sense of any community or RSS course feeds. There is a blog. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How Should Teachers Be Graded?
The usual argument. My first reaction is to ask, why should teachers be graded, when nobody else is? And then I though - why don't we demand some leadership on this. Why not grade legislators, superintendents and institutional presidents? When we have a system for assessing these people on performance (not popularity! we all know you can simply buy your votes; it has to be objective, like measuring how many of their promises are kept, or how many of their public statements are true - I want every one of a leader's lies to cost him or her in the pocketbook, big time) then maybe we can talk about teachers. Don't start at the bottom, start at the top. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Waiting for the Tipping Point: Why School Choice Is Proving to Be so Hard
PEN Weekly summarizes: "It is now clear that schools of choice present some challenges not adequately factored into the original equation. For example: (1) They are hard to run; (2) They are demanding places to teach and aren't for everyone; (3) They can't compete successfully with district-run schools unless they get as much money as their competition for pupils they educate; (4) They need to prove themselves on the same tests and other outcome measures as other schools; (5) They need strong, not weak, government oversight; (6) They do not automatically inspire districts to improve; and (7) They segment the market. Hindsight makes these conclusions obvious." Hindsight? My memory isn't so weak that I don't remember a lot of people saying these things in advance. But 'school choice' was promoted the way it was on political grounds, not on the basis of reason. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Pots, Kettles, and Other Small Appliances of Like Appearance
More fall-out from Gary Stager's post. George Siemens writes, correctly, first, that we (edubloggers, web 2.0 types, and the rest) need to welcome criticism, and send, that we need to focus less on 'fighting the system' and more on crafting our alternative. He's right on both counts - though I will say that that's what we were doing before Stager decided to take a few uniformed and nasty pot-shots at us. Siemens compares Stager to Andrew Keen, who has parlayed rude and uninformed criticism into a tour of the talk show circuit. "He's the anti-voice to what is starting to look less like a trend and more like a revolution." Could be. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Managing Complex Adaptive Networks
Nice paper submitted in one of the comments on the other blog describing how a complex adaptive network can be managed to enable the communicating, developing and sharing of knowledge. In the course of the discussion, the author looks at the theories of Actor-networks, Foucault's Discourse, and Complex Adaptive Systems, which means that we're getting not just the technology of the systems but some understanding of (what I would call) the semantics behind them. The paper rewards a close reading. Take note especially of the outline of a 'complex system' in part 4. I'm less happy with the representation that results in terms of equity and capital, but I think that this is a matter of perspective rather than of any substantial disagreement. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. My Personal Learning Environment (PLE)
Interesting diagram of a personal learning network offered by David Delgado. He writes, in the explanation, "the learner chooses their own personal learning environment, taking whatever tools that help them to achieve their own goals. Different people have different ideas to build their own PLE." Quite so, and this is an important thing to keep in mind. The PLE, though it may seem sometimes to be described as though iot were an application, is in fact a suite of tools - and one that may vary for each user. If I talk about 'building a PLE application' (as I do from time to time) I am talking about building an application that can be either one of those tools, or a tool that helps me manage those tools. The main point here is (a) no one tool is 'the PLE', and (b) the main thing about a PLE is that the tools can communicate with each other. More...