By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Emergence Is Coupled to Scope, Not Level
Very nice paper (PDF). Some really good observations, including:
- that emergence should be defined by scope rather than level (in my own work I have described it by levels, and not really considered defining it as anything) - and of drawing the distinction (last paragraph) between global and local scopes
- the question of whether emergence is a perceptual (or epistemic) property (ie., 'recognition') as I have defined it, or whether it is an ontologically 'real' property - this paper takes a broad position that it is ontological, but I don't agree with the argument ("Naissance emergence is an ontological concept, since in light of the preceding discussion it cannot be epistemic.")
- that the limitation of mathematical models of emergence is the lack of entropy (which restricts the number of possibilities) - I would contrast this with (mathematical) discussions of scale-free networks
- the description of the phenomenon of 'scaling'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Economist Debate Series
The Economist is hosting a debate on the subject "that the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education." Debators are Sir John Daniel, of the Commonwealth of Learning, and Robert Kozma of SRI International (Stanford Research Institute). Personally I think it's a case of the Economist trying to get into the game and - en passant - annointing the people it thinks should speak on such matters. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. LiveScribe - Smart Pen
The LiveScribe demo is a nifty little movie that makes a pretty good case for the application. Basically, you use a special pen and notepaper, take notes in class, and then when you look at them later, you can get the audio in the room at the time the note was created. The notes are also searchable and sharable. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Lost in Translation: (Mis)Understanding Youth Engagement
I've said this before but it bears repeating (from a report just released by the Canadian Policy Research Networks): "The central finding is that 'Generation Y' - those born after 1979 - is far from apathetical and apolitical. However, while very much tuned into small "p" political life, young Canadians are increasingly disenchanted with our formal political institutions and politics as currently practiced." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. MySpace Opens Up to Developers in Move On Facebook
TRhe last time I went to my MySpace page I was deluged with noisy intrusive ads. So I didn't really care about their announcement that they will, like Facebook, allow external developers. Of course, facebook isn't innocent - more than once I've wanted to wish away its blinking advertisements. When will someone create a personal space service that allows owners to choose the advertisers they are willing to support. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Educational Uses of Second Life
This is a remarkable list of educational applicatiosn in Second Life - easily the most comprehensive I've seen anywhere - with descriptiopns, links and screen shots. You could easily spend the entire day with Second Life and this web page going from place to place (I've gone to a bunch of them). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Information R/Evolution
Another one of those videos, with the text. It's ok - but the format has been done. Done, done and done. This one looks at traditional conceptions of information - like, for example, the way we have always thought of it as something that is on a shelf, categorized. "There is no shelf... the links alone are enough." After a look at Wikipedia, it becomes a paean to tagging. Well enough, but experienced Google searchers know that keywords also are not enough. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How the Net Works
The purpose of this paper is to describe how network learning works and to show how an understanding of network learning can inform the design and evaluation of online learning applications. Stephen Downes, October 18, 2007 [Link]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OLAT (Online Learning And Training): Open Source LMS
Another open source learning management system (LMS), this one called OLAT. The post also contains a link to UNICEF's comprehensive list of open source LMSs. Anyhow, I tried out OLAT (there's a demo on the site). It's fast and mostly intuitive to operate. But as I tried to do different things, I found myself clicking clicking clicking. This isn't unique to OLAT, it seems to be something about LMSs in general. But especially those that work on the file and folder model. Clicking clicking clicking. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. eLML - eLesson Markup Language
One of the things I encountered as I looked at OLAT (see below) was the eLesson Markup Language (eLML), an open source XML framework for creating structured eLessons using XML. This is something we've needed for a long time. The language is the outcome of a Swiss project. As you can see from the XML structure, the XML describes the actual lesson itself. That's why it can be used with IMS Content packaging and SCORM (and hence can be imported into any LMS). This project mostly displays lessons using Flash, but (and I know this from my own work) you can create viewers in HTML and Javascript using DHTML. It can be parsed server-side (they use Coccoon) or client side. Why didn't IMS or ADL or anyone else come up with something like this? It has certainly been needed. It's all open source and the site includes documentation, downloads, applications, and much much more. More...