By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: Round the World Photos, Flickr [Edit][Delete] November 1, 2006
I have finally completed uploading all the photos from my recent trip around the world. I hope you enjoy them; here they are (click on 'slide show' for a nice slide show version).
Frankfurt, Germany [slide show]
Bloemfontein, South Africa [slide show]
Lesotho [slide show]
Kruger National Park [slide show]
Cape Town, South Africa [slide show]
Manley, Australia [slide show]
Dunedin, New Zealand [slide show]
Stewart Island, New Zealand [slide show]
Christchurch, New Zealand [slide show]
Whangarei, New Zealand [slide show]
Tutukaka, New Zealand [slide show]
Auckland, New Zealand [slide show]
Desert Highway, New Zealand [slide show]
Bulls, New Zealand [slide show]
Wellington, New Zealand [slide show]
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Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Learning for the Future: A Vision and Research Agenda
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed[Edit][Delete]: Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Learning for the Future: A Vision and Research Agenda, Computing Research Association. [Edit][Delete] November 2, 2006
Results of a study from several sets of workshops, released in 005. I found this report to be an interesting read but have to agree with Zhao Lin's comments in IFETS today: "Web-based educational research, particularly, in learning theory and technology, is a very promising solution to this situation of mutual limitations. However, neither the cyberinfrastructure report nor the above 2020 report pays sufficient attention to web-based educational research. More...
How Do People Interact with Blogs?
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tony Karrer[Edit][Delete]: How Do People Interact with Blogs?, eLearning Technology [Edit][Delete] November 2, 2006
I comment on other peoples' blogs fairly frequently. It seems a nice thing to do, and I know people appreciate them, even if I am critical. But Tony Karrer has a point. If most people read blogs via RSS (and these days, it seems, they do) then th comments are invisible. You have to click on the link to view them, and people don't click on the link. I too would like to see the comments come through in the feeds. The technology is fairly simple, but mostly it's a problem of timing and flow. I can't imagine RSS readers want to see the post again every time there's a comment. More...
Using Digital Images in Teaching and Learning
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. David Green[Edit][Delete]: Using Digital Images in Teaching and Learning, Academic Commons [Edit][Delete] November 2, 2006
A report that considers what may seem to be obvious, the use of images in online learning. Still, it is worth having a reference that tells us that many staff use images, that these images are scattered and disorganized and have little or no metadata, that Google image is popular, that there should be some common source for images, and that people want to be able to determine the copyright status of an image. More...
Copying Own CDs 'Should Be Legal'
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Unattributed[Edit][Delete]: Copying Own CDs 'Should Be Legal', Bbc [Edit][Delete]BBC [Edit][Delete] November 2, 2006
See, here's the deal. I can put 5,000 or so songs on my iRiver, so that's about $5,000 worth of music, should I ever fill it up. Now, were my $300 iRiver to cease functioning, or be lost, or dropped in a vat of oil, I would need to purchase all those songs again, unless I can copy my purchased songs. I have gone through three MP3 players already. Certainly, I am not prepared to repurchase the digital files each time. This is simple common sense. More...
Education Map of the Decade
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Oehlert[Edit][Delete]: Education Map of the Decade, E-Clippings [Edit][Delete] November 2, 2006
Normally I would not link to this item, because the document Mark Oehlert links to, a graphic by the KnowledgeWorks Foundation called 'Map of the Decade' is released under strict copyright conditions and requires that you supply a (fake) name and email address to access. But it is a very good resource, despite the U.S.-centric approach, which produces some blind spots. More...
Portrait statistique des principales conventions collectives de branche en 2016
Fin 2016, 15,6 millions de salariés sont couverts par 674 conventions collectives de branche (hors branches agricoles), lesquelles sont regroupées en 435 conventions collectives agrégées. La taille de ces branches est très variable : les 67 plus grosses conventions agrégées concentrent 76 % de salariés et les 76 plus petites couvrent ensemble moins de 0,2 % de salariés.
Les caractéristiques des salariés et des emplois diffèrent fortement entre les branches. Ces différences, qui varient peu d’une année sur l’autre, s’expliquent par la diversité des métiers exercés. Au sein des branches couvrant 50 000 salariés ou plus, la part des femmes varie de 2 % à 93 % et la proportion de salariés de moins de 30 ans de 2 % à 63 %. Les taux de CDD et de temps partiel s’échelonnent quant à eux respectivement de 1 % à 17 % et de 2 % à 80 %.
Dans l’ensemble des conventions collectives de branche, le salaire net moyen d’un équivalent temps plein (EQTP) est de 2 280 euros par mois en 2016. Les écarts salariaux entre branches sont à rapprocher des différences de profils des salariés. À catégorie socioprofessionnelle donnée, les écarts de salaire moyen par branche restent toutefois marqués, en particulier pour les cadres.
Le salaire net mensuel d’une femme en EQTP est en moyenne inférieur de 20 % à celui d’un homme.
En 2016, cet écart reste supérieur à 25 % dans neuf branches. L’écart salarial femmes-hommes est le
plus élevé chez les cadres (20 %) et le plus faible chez les employés (8 %).
Ignore the Research and Trust Your Gut
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Lisa Sanders[Edit][Delete]: Ignore the Research and Trust Your Gut, Advertising Age [Edit][Delete] November 3, 2006
This is actually good advice. David Jones, CEO of global agency network Euro RSCG Worldwide "exhorted listeners to stop asking permission." He argued, speaking to advertisers (but he could just as well have been speaking to academic), "Our industry cannot delegate the creation of brilliant ideas to consumers. We have to be at the starting point," he said. More...
DimDim
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Various authors[Edit][Delete]: DimDim, November 3, 2006
Leigh Blackall writes on TALO: "DimDim - open source web conference tool, is available as an alpha download. Dimdim is an open source web conferencing product with features like Application, Desktop and Presentation sharing with A/V streaming and chat". More...
The Semantic Web and the Online Educational Experience
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Andy Carvin[Edit][Delete]: The Semantic Web and the Online Educational Experience, PBS TeacherSource [Edit][Delete] November 3, 2006
Andy Carvin takes the occasion of the launching of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) to discuss how the Semantic Web will change the way the web works. It's not a bad discussion, but I think it misses a very important difference between Web 2.0, properly so-called, and the Semantic Web, properly so-called. And that is this: the latter depends largely on formal specifications involving a lot of overhead, such as schemas, ontologies, web services, and the like. But Web 2.0 was developed using very simple and often informal protocols, such as RSS, FOAF and REST. There is room, of course, for the two approaches to co-exist and even communicate. Still, the semantic web is an enterprise-heavy approach, while Web 2.0 is the populist approach, and there is an ongoing tension between the two. More...