By Stephen Downes
August 27, 2003
Weblogs: Applications for
Artists
Artsy slides (using the Microsoft
'Artsy' theme, which isn't really very artsy) from my
presentation (in Moncton and videoconferenced to
Fredericton and Prince Edward island) yesterday to Arts-Netlantic, "a network of artists,
information technologists, and scholars from the public and
private sectors of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick,
interested in understanding the role of culture in the
appreciation and creation of new media." The presentation
describes weblogs in broad detail and then suggested a
number of applications particular to the arts community.
The videoconference included, from the Island, what may
have been the first ever live videoconferenced rendition of
Blogistan Pie. By Stephen Downes,
Stephen's Web, August 26, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Forced Education: Schools of the
Future
The title of this slide presentation,
prepared for a videoconference I did last week for the eLearning Conference in Tasmania (still
one of my favorite places). Asked to do a 'future of
learning' presentation, outlining the drivers of change in
the school system, I tried to show that while schools will
certainly change, for every driver there is a "back-seat
driver" which removes the inevitability of change, placing
a series of choices into the hands of teachers. The
connection at this end, unfortuately, gave me many problems
and the sound, especially, was awful. By Stephen Downes,
eLearning Conference, August 21, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Fighting for the Freedom to
Tinker
I will let Princeton professor Ed Felten,
interviewed in this article, say it for me, via Corante: "
This is the copyright wars. We're now in a situation where
policy isn't just about copyright, it's about cultural and
industrial policy as well. That's the point of the trend to
try to defend the interests of copyright owners, which are
legitimately threatened, by trying to slow down or control
the development of some general-purpose technologies... In
making policy designed with copyright in mind, you end up
making decisions about whether other important
technologies, such as privacy-enhancing or file-search
technologies, should be encouraged or discouraged. A
collision is happening between creativity and protecting
IP." And: "We will go to a model where people pay a flat
fee for unlimited access, because it costs the same to
provide ubiquitous access to all material as it does having
restricted access to some stuff." By Unlknown, Business
Week, August 25, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
DSpace
Federation
MIT has lanched a new DSpace and
DSpace Federation website at http://www.dspace.org. DSpace is a
"digital library system to capture, store, index, preserve,
and redistribute the intellectual output of a university’s
research faculty in digital formats." Three mailing lists
are available, as are tech notes and news items. Resources
include 'getting started with DSpace' and more. By Various
Authors, DSpace, August 26, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Yahoo!
News RSS Feeds
Yahoo! News has launched a set of
RSS feeds, a list no, unfortunately, including a separate
category for education. By Various Authors, Yahoo!, August
27, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
An Initial Experiment For Attaining Education
For All
In this ambitious paper Alfred Bork
takes on the question of educating everybody. This daunting
task, he writes, will not be accomplished with current
approaches. Instead, we must look at a system using
computer-based, adaptive learning. He proposes an initial
three year "experiment" to launch the system and an
additional seventeen years to implement it across all
grades and subjects. The paper, this month's IFETS
discussion primer, has already drawn the usual objections.
It will cost too much. People need teachers. The cultural
differences are too great. People will object to women
learning. Yeah, maybe. But look: the numbers don't add up
any other way. The cost of not providing an education to
the majority of people in our new, tightly integrated
planet is too high to contemplate. Education is what leads
people toward peace, prosperity and democracy. But we
simply cannot afford to provide nice teachers and classes
for everybody: look at the problems surrounding education
funding even in the United States, the world's richest
country. All the objections in the world won't change these
two realities. We can debate the details, but Bork's plan
has legs. It is something we must look at sooner or later.
Preferably sooner. By Alfred Bork, IFETS, August 24, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Far Away, So Close
Events in
Europe or Australia (say) have an impact on me because I
have so many ties to people in those regions. But is that
affecting my relationship with the guy across the hall?
Maybe. Hector Jose Huyke argues, "When you access this, you
do not access that. The newer technological forms of access
obscure and subtract from other forms of access, generally
devaluing what is near." But perhaps it's not so bad. "If
this devaluation can bring about new levels of abstraction
that can help us see what is near in a new light, and
re-engage with it, and transform it, then it becomes a
useful step in the process." Good enough for me. By Ulises
Ali Mejias, Ideant, August 26, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Patent battle to culminate in
Brussels
Today (Wednesday) is protest day in
Europe as thousands of website owners and other interested
parties express their objection to proposals to impose new
US-style patent laws in the community. The laws would
extend the range of patents, allowing, for example, the
widely detested (and abused) patent on business methods.
"Leaders of the scientific communities and software
business world took the directive proposal apart and
condemned it in every respect. Yet in June, the European
Parliament's Legal Affairs Commission endorsed this
proposal with further amendments that make it even worse."
By Matthew Broersma , CNet News.com, August 26, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Essential Principles of
Quality
This short (three page) document
identifies, in point form, the essential principles of
quality (according to the Southern Regional Education
Board, Georgia) for online courses. The approach is fairly
traditional, as would be expected. For some reason,
copyright issues made it into the list, despite the fact
that the payment of royalties (or not) in no way impacts
the quality of a course. But the copyright lawyers are like
an ubiquitous, destructive virus, infecting everything, it
seems. By Southern Regional Education Board, ERIC, August,
2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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