By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Duke Evaluates iPod Experiment
It's still a couple of weeks before we see the results of Duke's iPod experiment, but I think one thing will be clear: in order to obtain a benefit from the technology, you have to use it. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Building Online Communities Beyond Dating
Addressing the online dating community, Michael Jones observes that social networks are increasingly taking on a matchmaking function and suggests that, in order to compete, dating services need to incorporate blogs and social networking tools. This item comes up in the course of a discussion about the introduction in Friendster of Typepad blogs. Here's an example. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. UKeU: The Final Curtain?
Seb Schmoller sent me this link to the Third Report of the Education and Skills Committee in Great Britain, a fascinating and often scathing discussion of UKeU. "UKeU did not have anyone with e-learning expertise in a senior management position." Recipe for failure. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Connectivism
George Siemens launches a companion wiki for his article, Connectivism Still a bit empty, but a good starting point. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Living in a Distributed World
The MP3 of my online talk, Living in a Distributed World is now available. In this talk I contrast centralized and distributed approaches to learning technology and outline the distributed approach. The PowerPoint slides are also available, or if you wish, you can view the session directly on Elluminate. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, February 25, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Government Plans to Abolish BBC Governors
The BBC appears to be headed for significant changes as a Green Paper recommends changes to its governance structure and to its decades-old mandate to "educate, inform and entertain". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. NYPL Digital Gallery
Launched today, this service from the New York Public Library puts online more than 250,000 historical images, all of which are available for free to view, download and print (but not public comercially). No doubt the server is being overwhelmed; it was frequently unavailable during the day today. Opening day jitters. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Letter to Hypathia
Spanish original. "'I can't read any Spanish newspapers; they all ask for an access key.' A man alone, locked in his library, set on saving a stack of books. 'If it has the (c) sign, don't buy it'. Let them keep their texts, their songs, their films. If they soil their work with the signature 'All rights reserved', they will be burying it forever. We will rebuild the Great Library only if we maintain its integrity, and for that we have to post all our knowledge on the Net in a doubly free manner: free of charge and free to use." Putting an entire culture under copyright kills it. ¡Ninguna entrega, ningún retratamiento. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. CanCore: in Canada and Around the World
I covered an earlier version of this paper here a few weeks ago. The list of CanCore implementations in this article, though, seems longer. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Electronic Publishing >> Book 'Em
Useful article discussing electronic publishing in universities: online books, online assignment submission, learning content databases (good links here to a list of commercial academic databases). Good discussion of the move toward open access, noting the institutions' frustration with commercial content. More...