OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
August 9, 2005

Principles of Distributed Representation
PowerPoint slides (938K) and MP3 Audio (13m) of my talk today at SAC. (I talk about the changing conception of knowledge, the idea of knowing (and learning) as a network phenomenon, and how that changes how we should approach metadata and in particular learning object metadata. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, August 9, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Seminars on Academic Computing
Alan Levine and Cyprian Lomas have a conference blogging thing going using SubEthaEdit here at the SAC conference in Snowmass; I've linked to his main site and you can follow the headlines from there. William Allen is also blogging some short remarks. By Alan Levine and Cyprian Lomas, CogDogBlog, August 9, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Session 3 – Secure Identity Management
Craig Blaha appears to be covering a conference, though I can't determine which conference. Anyhow, this item caught my eye, as being representative of exactly the wrong way to approach online identity management. Why? This: "DOS potential - single point of failure if system shuts down." By Craig Blaha, EDUCAUSE Blogs, August 8, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Berners-Lee on the Read-Write Web
Odd sort of interview in which the interviewer seems most interested in determining whether Tim Berners-Lee feels guilty about the use of the web for misrepresentation and other less than savory content. Which is pretty ridiculous when you stop to think about it. The next time the BBC has someone interview Tim Berners-Lee, I hope they employ someone with a bit less of an agenda. Oh, but hey, blogging is just the sort of thing he had in mind for the read-write web. Via Educational Weblogs. By Mark Lawson, BBC News, August 9, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

I Believe the Curriculum Will Be Free, But...
Rob Reynolds offers a detailed response to my comments from yesterday: "Downes said that my original argument 'is a bit like being skeptical about Wikipedia because Britannica has hired all the encyclopedia authors,' but that was not my meaning at all. I am not skeptical about the possibility of a free curriculum because all the authors already work for publishers, but rather because I know how hard it is to foster widespread, voluntary collaboration on projects among faculty and administrators. And, while they are not the only ones who can create or adopt the free curriculum, they will play in its development and acceptance." By Rob Reynolds, Xplanazine, August 9, 2006 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

New Internet Literacies in the Classroom
Good PowerPoint presentation from Will Richardson drawing the contrast between the old (passive) way of doing things, and the new (interactive) way of doing things. Via elearnspace. By Will Richardson, August, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Growth Industry
This is very interesting. "Of students who graduated from high school in 2004, more than 100,000 used the services of a private counselor." By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, August 9, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Storm Clouds Gather Over Podcasting
A Seattle public radio station, KEXP, wanted to produce a podcast, which it knew it would be a popular service. The record companies, however, were not willing to provide podcast licenses for the music, arguing fears of piracy. So the station invited 14 unsigned or small-label bands from the Seattle area to contribute songs, signing a simple podcast license with them. "KEXP decided that 'we couldn't sit around and wait and wait for a major (label) to sign off on this,' Richards says." Result: commercial labels are left out in the cold. Via digital copyright mailing list (Olga Francois). By Michelle Kessler, USA Today, August 3, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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