By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Cautionary Tale....
I'm sure many people will recognize themselves in this story. Well worth reading: a tale of hour an unnamed British university developed a VLE, and why (really) it is purchasing a commercial product. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. IDxchange and IDOL Quarterly
David Penrose points us to this site. "The IDxchange blog is a resource for professional Instructional Designers, who may also be working on their graduate degree at Capella University". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning as a Social Process?
George Siemens is "getting a bit frustrated with the continual statements that learning is a social process." He continues, "My interest in learning networks stems from the individuality of each node in the larger network." People, it seems to me, often confuse 'social' with 'group'. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Austin, Texas
So anyhow I dragged to old scanner out from under the cat, downloaded a driver from the net, and copied some of my old pictures from 1981 (not a typo - that's 24 years ago) when I spent three months training with Texas Instruments in Austin. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bryan Alexander: New Atlantis Grapples with Gaming and Flops, Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education August 31, 2005
This article deconstructs (and slices and dices and serves for dinner) a narrow view of online gaming offered by The New Atlantis's Christine Rosen. Calling the article "ostentatiously, yet uselessly learned," Bryan Alexander asks why the author quotes a 1920s Samuel McChord Crothers essay while at the same time passing over Wittgenstein and other classic texts in gaming, misreading James Paul Gee, and serving scant mention of social gaming and massive online role-playing games (MORPGs). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Zonk: Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong, Slashdot August 31, 2005

A study reveals that more than half of scientific papers are wrong and suggests "many papers may only be accurate measures of the prevailing bias among scientists". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release: Skype Opens its Platform to the Web, Skype August 31, 2005

This is a significant announcement, as it opens the possibility that Skype will be embedded in a wide variety of applications. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Press Release: WebCT Announces Portfolio Design Partner Initiative, Webct August 31, 2005
Not sure what's going to come of this, but WebCT's joining the whole portfolio movement is worthy of note. "WebCT... today announced the Portfolio Design Partner (PDP) initiative featuring a group of customers who will help define the scope and functionality of new ePortfolio software called the WebCT Learner Portfolio. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Michael Feldstein: LMOS Integration and Specialization, E-Literate August 31, 2005
Michael Feldstein has been looking at the concept of the (Web 2.0) 'Learning Management Operating System' over the course of several posts. He asks whether there need to be e-learning specific features. Two things occur to him: calendaring and grading. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Robert Andrews: Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!, Wired News August 30, 2005
A fitting post as my first post on the new system (I know, it's at the bottom of the newsletter, that's how I arrange things), describing the angst of Flickr users as they face impending conversion to the Yahoo! ID system. I remember when Netscape was swept into the AOL fold, I lost my coveted downes@netscape.com UserID. More...