Seminars via Blog
Could you conduct an academic seminar using only blogs? Some of the writers from Crooked Timber thought so and have put together this work, based on a series of related posts. The genre - literary criticism - and the subject - China Miéville's Iron Council - doesn't fare much better. More...
RSS_LOM on Downes Wiki
A lot has happened since I posted my first version of RSS_LOM almost two years ago. Since then, both RSS and LOM have changed a lot. There has also been more interest in RSS_LOM recently, leading me to work toward a redraft. Not everyone agrees with what I've put out thus far, which is fine. That's why it's on a wiki, which you too can edit (the nice document or PDF will come after the discussion). This link takes you to my new RSS_LOM proposal and to an application (source code provided; bugs waiting to be discovered)) that converts LOM files to RSS_LOM - well, the current version of RSS_LOM. I'd really appreciate any comments you may have, wither on the wiki or by email. Much more is planned; I'll make announcements both here and on the wiki. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, February 2, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...
Smart Online Marketing Promotion Tactics
I signed up for the Scientific American RSS feed yesterday and found that just about every second feed is an add - I don't know whether these were inserted by the magazine of by the syndicator, NewsIsFree (who really ought to change their name). And every ad was the same, and had nothing to do with the magazine or my interets. More...
Against Syllabi
This is an interesting twist on the reusability parasox. "The more syllabus-heavy a course, I would argue, the more context-dependent." The detailed course syllabus, argues the author, has evolved as a legal defense against an increasingly litigous student body. More...
The Blogosphere as a Tuple Space
Nice description of tuples, which will be useful if you ever decide to learn Python. Nice description of Lazyweb, which these days doesn't seem to be living up to its promise. More...
Edu_RSS 2.0
This link is to a barely functional version of Edu_RSS 0.2 - what I've been working on for the last few weeks. Edu_RSS isn't a commercial product, it's me using Perl instead of English to try to explain a concept. What concept? Well, part of it involves distributed metadata - and I today created this graphic to explain what I mean (and if you want context - put the graphic Scott Wilson distributed the other day right over the word 'Use' and you see how the two concepts mesh). It is into this sort of framework Edu_RSS is intended to fit. The wiki pages are intended supplement this description; in particular, please see the section on third party metadata and my discussion with Brian Sutherland on the relation between RSS and LOM. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, February 3, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...
Is Instructional Video Game an Oxymoron?
Overview of the use of games in learning, with descriptions or examples from UNICEF, the American Cancer Society, Greenpeace and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. More...
Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth
First of what looks like a good series on the 'hard truth' about total cost of ownership of Linux desktops in a corporate environment. This article tells us what we (may) have known all along: that you can't save money buying a desktop with Linux installed. More...
Tag Team
Overview of the phenomenon known as 'tagging' - that is, the use of user-created keywords (or 'tags') to classify digital content. The resulting (and some say 'emergent') organization of categories is sometimes known as a 'folksonomy'. Tagging is used by sites such as Flick, del.icio.us and Technorati. More...
When Blogging Goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale About Blogs, Email Lists, Discussion, and Interaction
James Farmer notes that an article such as this that points out the downside of educational blogging "is as valuable as 10 papers on why blogging is great. More...
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