By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tom Hoffman[Edit][Delete]: Turning SIF On Its Head with TinyZIS, Tuttle SVC [Edit][Delete] June 9, 2006
I am sympathetic with the intent of this post, whih is to replace the Schools Interoperability Format (SIF), "a classic top-down, commercially driven standard, with no uptake whatsoever in the open source world," withg a small and agile open alternative. But I don't like some of the phrasing. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Laura Mullane[Edit][Delete]: Eyes Wide Open: Five Views of Quality in Online Education, American Council on Education [Edit][Delete] June 8, 2006
Not five different theories so much as five different people being interviewed for this article on quality. Also some good links, at the top of the article, on some recent reports and studies on quality. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jon Udell[Edit][Delete]: On Business/Education Partnership, Infoworld [Edit][Delete]InfoWorld [Edit][Delete] June 8, 2006
I'm not so sold on Ruby, though I do think it's elegant. But I do share a lot in common with this view of learning: "Thanks to personal online publishing and to an emerging cultural ethos of transparency, there is an exciting new possibility in the world. A young person today who is interested in software can find out what it is like to be a software developer -- by evaluating products, by reading the accounts of people creating them, by making contact with those folks, and by contributing to real projects." To me the key words here are real projects - it is this, I think, that makes all the difference. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeff Jarvis[Edit][Delete]: Books Will Disappear. Print is Where Words To To Die, The Guardian [Edit][Delete] June 8, 2006
I was thinking about this in the train station in Manchester. I once wanted to be a science fiction author, an ambition I sometimes secretly reconsider. But these days, they only publish what seems like one or two science fiction authors. It was always a nice job, but now even more so. "In print, books rely on scarce shelf space, gatekeeping agents and editors, and expensive production. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sherry Saavedra[Edit][Delete]: Schools Weigh Control Versus 1st Amendment, San Diego Union-Tribune [Edit][Delete] June 8, 2006
As you have probably guess, I was not lucky in Innsbruck, and so did not have internet access from my hotel yesterday. I am now at the Microlearning conference here, which I will address tomorrow morning. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Johncn[Edit][Delete]: Connectivism: Danger or Opportunity, The Education Bazaar [Edit][Delete] June 6, 2006
Good discussion of George Siemens's recent Connectivism White Paper. "Where I'd like to see connectivism go is in the direction of personalized learning environments, or perhaps what Siemens calls 'learning ecologies'. However, I'd like to take that idea in the K-12 realm to be a PLE that would follow the student through school, and then beyond. I think we can take existing technologies that build social relationships and harness these for learning AND instruction". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sharon Begley[Edit][Delete]: Science Journals Artfully Try To Boost Their Rankings, Wall Street Journal [Edit][Delete] June 6, 2006
Interesting item looking at the use (and abuse) of impact factors in academic journals (impact factors measure the importance of a journal through metrics such as citations and are used when making purchasing decisions). As Marc Meola notes, some practices are underhanded, such as "blatantly asking authors to cite more studies the journal has already published to limiting citations to outside journals. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Harold Jarche[Edit][Delete]: The Relevance of the Learning Profession, jarche.com [Edit][Delete] June 6, 2006
Another way of saying pretty much what I'm saying. "As a learning professional, it's time to take a stance. Enabling learning is no longer about disseminating good content. Enabling learning is about being a learner yourself, sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm and then taking a back seat. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: London, England, June 5, 2006
I spent the day today at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, where I took part in a panel on 'the global university' and then presented myself on 'The Students Own Learning'. I will have media available soon. It's now late at night after a long day and I'm in Manchester for tomorrow's PLE meeting (see below). So it's a short newsletter today, beginning with this link to my London photos - though I have finished the descriptions, I'm sure you will enjoy this set. [Tags: Newsletters] [Comment]. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Daniel Schuhmann[Edit][Delete]: 500 Hour Test of Tomorrow's Windows Vista, June 3, 2006
This is an exhaustively comprehensive article previewing the forthcoming Windows Vista system composed of dozens of pages and hundreds of screen shots. The key, I think, is "a complete blurring of the boundaries between online services and normal software". More...
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