By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. NMC Publishes Results of Educators in Second Life Survey
Survey of educators associated with Second Life and the New Media Consortium. 100 percent of the respondents use Second Life (question 1) so this survey should be regarded in that light. That's why we see, for example, that 43 percent took a class in Second Life. And 33 percent of them own 'land' in the online environment. You need broadband to use Second Life; that's why only 1 percent use dial-up. But more interestingly, the most popular activity is 'wantering around' followed by 'meeting people'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. DCMI Scholarly Communications Community
Just announced, "the all new DCMI Community for Scholarly Communications established at the recent DCMI Advisory Board meeting in Singapore. The aim of the group is to provide a central place for individuals and organisations to exchange information, knowledge and general discussion on issues relating to using Dublin Core for describing items of 'scholarly communications', be they research papers, conference presentations, images, data objects." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Collaboration Tools and Web 2.0 - The Video
I'm doing a promotion review this week. It just sucks the life out of me. So I'll keep today's newsletter short. This is a very bad video of a presentation I gave by videoconference earlier this year. Here are the slides on the presentation page for this video. For some reason, the video was clipped (I have no idea what happened) - so I added some footage of a cat and then begin at about slide 9. I hope you find it useful. Stephen Downes, Google Video October 5, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Newsletters, Conferencing, Web 2.0, Video]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Random Censorship
I don't know whether I am blocked by the new filtering system described in this article (it's not named, and I have no way to check). But I do know that my site is filtered a lot, this based on the rejections I get from my newsletter emails. What interests me is that the list of pople in this post are (mostly) the people I have previously characterized as 'the Techlearn crowd', while those being censored are (mostly) not from the Techlearn crowd. Now - to be clear - I am absolutely not implying any collusion by the bloggers being named. But, that said, there is a consistency of message in those websites, which is being selectively filtered in. And - also to be clear - if this pattern holds then the filtering is not being used to protect children, but to indoctrinate them. Not random at all, but deliberate and calculated. Not good. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New, Free Miss America Browser Aims to Keep Kids Safe On the Internet
Um, what? " The browser permits access to 10,318 Web sites, all of which were prescreened and determined to be kid-friendly by the Miss America Organization and the Children's Educational Network, which developed the software for it." I wonder whether the now-famous Miss South Carolina video is on the list. Probably not. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Is Text-Only Enough for Today's Students?
This sentence expresses why the rest of this post is worth reading: "I think we're too hung up on the technology and not realizing that we are experiencing an evolution in how humans communicate... Their voice, their graphics, their face, and their typed text all play a role in their future as a communicator in this electronic world." More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Photo in the News: See-Through Frog Bred in Japan
A little off topic, but this is the most amazing (also the oddest) thing I've seen in a while. The see-through frog, of course, doesn't have to be dissected. But it does, I think, redefine 'nakedness', raising it to a whole new level. What happens when people can turn their skin off and on? Or when parents can opt for see-through babies? Is it OK to let someone see your lungs, but not your kidneys. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Real Social Learning or "I Promise, I'M Not a Modernist, Really"
It still feels," writes Scott Leslie, "like we've got a long way to go to catch up with the learning that 4 people 'in flow' around the table can achieve." I think that's true - but I also reflect on how hard that is in real life. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. iPhone Turned Into Pocket-Sized Hacking Platform
I was having a conversation the other day with Rod about mitigating risk, and he made some comment about getting the lawyers to say there's no risk. "The lawyers will never say there's no risk," I said. "There's always a risk. And when there's a risk, they always advise that we take no action." And so organizations - especially government organizations - are scared into cowering before this threat or that threat, letting the scam artists run free. The same thing with security. We now hear that the iPhone could be "a perfect spying device" because hackers might use it to record and send video. Well, yeah, it could be used this way - but how many actually are being used this way? I heard from the lawyers the other day that open source might be considered "inducement to violate patents." Oh no, risk! How many cases based on that have ever taken place? Um, we'll get back to you. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. UC Berkeley YouTube Lectures
Probably the greatest thing about broadcasting videos of traditional university lectures on YouTube is that we might finally get past all the complaints about 'e-learning quality'. After people view this, what will they say about proper e-learning: "lectures spend a lot of time on local questions about homework, projects, scheduling and other workaday topics that will be of no interest to outside viewers." Now let me ask, what is it that makes a great education? Is it "questions about homework, projects, scheduling and other workaday topics?" See also the Inside Higher Ed article. More...