By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A New Solution for Electronic Transcripts
The solution to the problem of fraudulent transcripts, touted in this article as a growing problem, is not "a proprietary data translation engine" but rather an open transcript format that can be used by educational institutions and accessed (with appropriate permissions) by any software capable of reading the XML document. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. RSS Feeds College Students' Diet For Research
Learning technology that was almost unthinkable just a few years ago is now everyday news in USA Today, as this story describing the use of RSS by students to keep up on their research illustrates. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Digital Pioneers?
I like Konrad Glogowski's idea that there may be 'digital pioneers' between 'digital natives' and 'digital immigrants'. And this seems to be right as well: "The 'digital natives' do indeed find the acoustic world, that world of 'oral listening,' more natural but this does not mean that they do not need to be introduced into that world, that they do not need a facilitator who will help them master their voice, online or off". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. New MacTels Using “Trusted Computing”?
There is dismay in the Apple user community as it appears that new systems will prevent owners from playing 'unauthorized' content. "It’s like a blender that will only chop the food that Cuisinart says you’re allowed to chop". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jonathan Potts: Cover Story: Transforming America's Schools, Carnegie Mellon Today November 19, 2005

Mitchell Weisburgh sent me the link to this interesting article about a new program at Carnegie Mellon "to train doctoral students from several disciplines - including psychology, computer science, philosophy and statistics - to conduct applied educational research." I am all in favour of research - it is, after all, what I do - but need to caution that training in reasearch assumes - doesn't it? - that an appropriate research paradigm in the field is already in place. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors: Radio Diaries November 15, 2005

People who are podcasting - or who are thinking about podcasting - will find this link highlighted by Albert Delgado to be of use. The advice looks solid, and even if you don't do everything, keeping the points in mind will help your recordings. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors: Acatopia November 18, 2005

Interesting comment, just sent to me by email. "Just search for a book you are reading, or a book you have read. You will then be able to ask any question you have, and help answer other readers' questions". More...