By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ulises Ali Mejias[Edit][Delete]: The Blog as Dissertation Literature Review?, Ideant [Edit][Delete] January 31, 2006

[link: Hits] I thought this was a pretty good paper. The premise is straightfoward: Ulises Ali Mejias argues that the posts in his blog, over the long run, constitute a literature review, as defined by Boote et al. in Scholars Before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation. I think he succeeds uiin showing that blogging satisfies the criteria, but I have to ask, is the resulting literature review a good literature review? My response? No. Consider: he includes Barabâasi but not Watt. Turkle but neither Rushkoff nor Rheingold. Habermas but not Foucault. Maybe the list would be rounded out over time, but he doesn't show that. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Let’s Save Blogging
Ernie Smith, Tedium, 2019/01/17
The message is this: "The independent blog has been in decline for years. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s why you should start a blog in 2019—and host it yourself." It's a longish read, looking at the 'early' days (2009), the impact of social media, the fate of Tumblr, covering your costs, and how federation might move blogging back toward independence. “The fediverse is built in such a way that anyone can create a new tool for it, and each one makes the network more useful to everyone in it,” Baer added. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors[Edit][Delete]: Tata Interactive Systems Blog, December 27, 2005

[link: 0 Hits] Ankush (from the Learned Man) sent me a link, with a request for comments, to a new blog from Tata Interactive Systems. I thought it might be worth sharing my response: "Good blog, but needs more posts. I enjoyed the pictures. Giving us an insight into what it's like to work in that environment (stuff like Life as an Indian Instructional Designer), the sorts of things you think about, etc - that's good content. Instead of telling is about Jay Cross or Performance Consulting, tell us about how you interpret these, how they change how you do work, the sorts of arguments or discussions you have about them in your office, etc". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Roger Riddell: eSN Seeks Nominations in First-ever 'Best of the Education Blogs' Contest, ESchool News December 23, 2005

The publication means, of course, its first-ever education blogs contest, as there have been two Edublog awards thus far (something the article acknowledges). Categories include "Best Classroom Instruction Blog, Best K-12 Administration Blog, Best Higher-Education Management Blog, and Best Education Theory Blog". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Konrad Glogowski[Edit][Delete]: They Begin to Build Bridges, Blog of Proximal Development [Edit][Delete] October 31, 2006

[link: 7 Hits] More reflection on the topic of groups. When I spoke in Castelldefels on Saturday, I noted that education does not have - but maybe needs - a version of the Hippocratic Oath, or at the very least, the admonition to do no harm. People talk about the benefits of groups to some people, but they forget the harm, and it seemed to me that the forced placement into groups could only be justified of no harm would be caused. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. James Farmer: Structured Blogging - Magic or Just Another Wizard?, Blogsavvy December 16, 2005

james Farmer raises some good questions about structured blogging (aka microformats): "I'm not sure if it's that simple and something bugs me about form filling and the impact that might have on content & creativity. Naturally this is going to help all of you SEO [Search Engine Optimization] folks no end but does it work for your everyday blogger? I'm tempted to say 'no'". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. D'Arcy Norman: Structured Blogging: Semantic Web for the Rest of Us?, D'Arcy Norman dot Net December 15, 2005

The concept of structured blogging should be giving educators ideas about a similar approach to learning materials (I wonder what it would take to start something like that...). If it hasn't yet, this closer look at it, via the examples offered by the WordPress plug-in, should stimulate some thinking. A similar initiative is microformats.org, and I really do hope they all mesh well together. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes: PHP RSS Ticker, Stephen's Web December 15, 2005

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed: Blogger Web Comments for Firefox, Google December 15, 2005

This is very nice. "Blogger Web Comments for Firefox is an extension that makes it easy to see what bloggers are saying about a page you're viewing in Firefox and even make your own blog post about it, all without leaving the page you're on." This is basically the same concept as Wikalong, but using blogs instead of wikis. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Konrad Glogowski: Tools Interiorized, Blog of Proximal Development December 7, 2005

This is pretty interesting - what happens when students used to blogging suddenly lose their environment. It turns out, they miss it. "My students didn't really miss writing itself. Had that been the case, they wouldn't have complained about writing in notebooks. What they missed was situated writing, a cognitive activity situated within a specific space that fosters cognitive engagement". More...