Westminster’s newest recruits are now in a position to challenge older MPs who benefited from a free education. More...
By Ray Schroeder. The long-standing tension between "free and open" and for-profit business models is now playing out with textbooks and open educational resources. More...
Why the river of human freedom ought to be our guiding metaphor. More...
By Greta Anderson. A committee at Georgetown University law school is re-evaluating its policies on student protests after a demonstration prevented a speaker's speech. Some law students believe the move will chill free speech. More...
By Lindsay McKenzie. The American Library Association raised eyebrows last week with a proposal to create a “designated area for the expression of social beliefs” at its upcoming midwinter meeting in Philadelphia. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. UNESCO Supports Development and Free Distribution of World Class Educational Materials
UNESCO has signed a deal to support Curriki (White paper), "an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them." I hope that UNESCO will sign similar agreements with similar organizations - the Wikiversity (history) comes immediately to mind. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Freedom Sticks For The Classroom
This is a great story of how one teacher used simple technology - an AirPort and some USB sticks - to get around the IT limitations in schools that blocked useful emails and locked them into Internet Explorer. 'Distributing these USB sticks to teachers is done as an interim measure. For now, this will allow these teachers to get to many great resources and will allow them to use powerful Web 2.0 tools". 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. Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software
Richard Stallman writes, "The rhetoric of open source has convinced many businesses and individuals to use, and even develop, free software, which has extended our community-but only at the superficial, practical level. The philosophy of open source, with its purely practical values, impedes understanding of the deeper ideas of free software; it brings many people into our community, but does not teach them to defend it." I think I am mostly on the side of 'free software', as opposed to 'open source software', as discussed in this article, because I see this as a matter of ethics, not programming efficiency. But as I have written before, my ethics are derived from my science, which could be interpreted as a question of efficiency. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brazil's Minister of Culture Calls for Free Digital Society
Gilberto Gil, a musician and social activist who became Brazil's minister of Culture, called for "the freedom to use and republish digital forms of content as a way of encouraging personal expression, culture and political participation" at a conference at MIT. Today's digital technologies represent a fantastic opportunity for democratizing access to knowledge," Gil said. More...
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