By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. I Am a Deviant Tool User. You?
More reaction to Gary Stager's take-down of Web 2.0 proponents, most of it not as nice as I was yesterday. Guhlin wonders, "Is Gary's call for us to wake up and do more than rally around the tools REALLY a call to submit to the accepted culture of schools, or one more in line with his point of view?" That was my interpretation, though people like Tom Hoffman suggest that Stager isn't so "bound to traditional schooling." Maybe not, but if the heart of his argument is that the challenge is "to frame the presentation of these tools to teachers in the best thinking about pedagogy," then it seems pretty 'traditional schooling' to me. More: Dave Warlick asks, Web 2.0 is like Logo? James Farmer writes a screamer of a criticism, including a set of (what I now dub) loljabs characterizing Stager's argument. Dean Shareski comments, "personal freedom and empowerment doesn't have to involve schools." Ewan McIntosh wonders why Stager can't find any research when he's read and summarized more than 100 research reports. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Collaboration Tools and Web 2.0
I also have a video recording of this presentation, which I will be posting later. Presentation by Stephen Downes, Council of Ontario Universities, Online to Toronto, [Link]. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources
This is a huge list of online video resources, including tools that support live video communications, online video how-tos, online video editors, video converters, video sharing sites, video hosting sites, video management, vidcat and vlogging tools, video mashup tools, mobile video, video search, video downloading services, and online television. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. PLEs Are Power Tools
A couple of nice posts from Tom Haskins. In the first, he suggests that "PLE's are power tools. They empower the powerless to break out of their boxes. PLE's invites self-directed learning." Then, in the second, he draws a distinction between 'fortunate' and 'unfortunate' learners, drawn roughly along the level of power, or amount of learning independence, the person has. Depending on our position as a fortunate or unfortunate learner, we will view PLEs differently. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cairo Tools Survey
Useful listing of software tools "for ingesting complex collections of born-digital materials, with basic descriptive, preservation and relationship metadata, into a preservation repository." Cairo stands for "Complex Archive Ingest for Repository Objects". A complete listing of Jisc repository and preservation projects is available online. More...