By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tom Hoffman: Filtr Chekr Ready for Beta Testing, Tuttle SVC May 10, 2006
Tom Hoffman is performing a useful service by setting up a 'grey list' of sites (including this one) that ought not be filtered by school filtering systems, but which are nonetheless filtered. You can check the filtering policies at your own institution by running the Python script he is beta testing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Robin Peek[Edit][Delete]: The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, Information Today [Edit][Delete] May 10, 2006
Although it is still a proposal, the American "Federal Research Public Access Act" is creating some discussion, including this article that enthuses, "One of the greatest events in the history of Open Access may have just happened." This is certainly an overstatement, though the act - which would require open access to academic papers funded by large U.S. granting agencies - would certainly have an impact. The act may still be in for a rough ride, though, as evidenced by this unfavorable review in the New York Times. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Wesley Fryer: Ontario Blogs Put Up, Moving at the Speed of Creativity May 8, 2006
The Ontario edublogosphere moves forward. This item describes 'Ontario Blogs', "an online publishing project, coordinated by the Education Network of Ontario, where writers and readers can interact in a controlled environment. Students write articles and submit them online to the teacher for publication in the project blog. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Steve Hargadon[Edit][Delete]: Interviews with Maddog Hall and John Selmys, K12 OpenSource Webcasts [Edit][Delete] September 28, 2006
From Steve Hargadon: "This week I've spoken to Jon "maddog" Hall and John Selmys about Free and Open Source Software in schools... Maddog (and he told me only his mom calls him Jon) is the Executive Director of Linux International, and even though I was struggling with a flu bug, he did a great job of succinctly communicating the value of Free and Open Source Software in education." Note that this link opens an MP3 audio recording. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors[Edit][Delete]: Brandon Hall Network, September 23, 2006
Brandon Hall has discovered social networking, and so naturally, has built a social network site that is, as they say, "Myspace.com meets LinkedIn." There is, the email advertisement said, currently no cost to join - but of course, there will be eventually. I guess we can expect special events available only to members advertised around the net. You may wonder why I didn't build something like this - I could easily have done so, and I certainly knew about this sort of approach several years ago. Simply: it's the wrong approach. More...