December 27, 2005
OLDaily
[link: 0 Hits] "I was born in Catherine Booth Hospital in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on April 6, 1959, the first son of Bernard and Beverly Downes." Thus begins my biography. I feel fortunate to have grown up in an environment where learning and independence are of value. "The role of education is to make the child reflective and articulate, and to achieve this goal education does not have to start from scratch. Children are endowed to think: our job is to build on their innate capacity by giving it an opportunity to flourish." This should be the right of every child, and to not have to depend on where you were born or who your parents are - and that, to me, is probably the biggest lesson of my birth. [Tags:
Online Learning,
Canada,
Children and Child Learning] [
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[link: 0 Hits] I ask myself "what's it all for" on something like a daily basis (I am always questioning myself, my motives, and my objectives) and so this short item gets to the heart of what we do. And the response - "to prepare children [or people] for the future" - doesn't satisfy. As Marco Polo asks, "When has mankind ever been ready for the future?" The problem with this isn't with the 'future' (after all, all our efforts are future-directed) or even 'mankind' (though it would be more inclusive to use the word 'humanity'). It's with the word 'prepare' - because it isn't about
preparing for things. It is, in my opinion, about development, empowerment, self-fullfillment. In other words, the object of our endeavour isn't directed outward, at some (possibly hypothetical) scenario, work environment, or whatever, it is directed inward. And it seems to me that the best, the only, way to
teach, is to make myself a better person, and to share this process with others - instead of telling, to show. This, of course, is the hard way, for who among us is ready to live up to the values we profess? [Tags:
Children and Child Learning] [
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[link: 0 Hits] Ankush (from the
Learned Man) sent me a link, with a request for comments, to a new blog from Tata Interactive Systems. I thought it might be worth sharing my response: "Good blog, but needs more posts. I enjoyed the pictures. Giving us an insight into what it's like to work in that environment (stuff like
Life as an Indian Instructional Designer), the sorts of things you think about, etc - that's good content. Instead of telling is about Jay Cross or Performance Consulting, tell us about how
you interpret these, how they change how you do work, the sorts of arguments or discussions you have about them in your office, etc. In other words, give us a glimpse of
your thinking." [Tags:
Online Learning,
Web Logs] [
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[link: 0 Hits] Skip past the first couple of slides on the
pyramid of learning and you'll find a good presentation (in Breeze, unfortunately, so it will take time to load, though it looks nice and sounds great) on new approaches to learning, and especially
heutagogy and connectivism. [Tags:
Connectivism] [
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[link: 0 Hits] I have been thinking about the concept of 'community of communities' recently (as opposed to the mass-market concept of communities fostered by sites such as Technorati) and the question of how knowledge and ideas flow through such a distributed network. And it's like this, via connectors from one community to the next. And just so, this post from Christian Long connects me to the
Gurteen Knowledge Community, something worth exploring - what is interesting is that Gurteen has explicitly adopted the model of 'Knowledge Cafés' as a model of learning, "mini-workshops where the participants engage in the theme of the evening. They are about networking, knowledge sharing and learning from each other - not chalk-and-talk." [Tags:
Networks] [
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[link: 0 Hits] OK, this item is over the top. Still, it makes some good points and is the first I've seen to explicitly draw the link between wiretapping and digital rights management. That alone makes it worth a link. [Tags:
Digital Rights Management (DRM)] [
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[link: 0 Hits] I enjoyed this concept map on intelligent design (be sure to click on the little concept map icons for more maps). What's nice is that the contemporary debate has been placed into a sociological and historical concept, including even a reference to Hume's refutation of the teleological argument (as a long time Hume devotee, this makes me happy). Via
Mousing Around. [Tags:
Web Logs,
Visualization] [
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Projects & Collaborations
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.
Research
Browse through the thousands of links in my knowledge base
sorted according to topic category, author and
publication.
About Me
Bio, photos, and assorted odds and ends.
Publications
You know, the ones that appear in refereed journals of Outstanding Rank.
Presentations
Lectures, seminars, and keynotes in a wide variety of
formats - everything from streaming video to rough notes.
Articles
All my articles, somewhere around 400 items dating from 1995.
Audio
Audio recordings of my talks recorded in MP3 format. A podcast feed is also available.
Calendar
What I'm doing, where I'm doing it, and when.
Photos
Newly updated! A collection of my photographs. Suitable
for downloading as desktop wallpaper.
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About the Author
Stephen Downes
Copyright © 2004 Stephen Downes
National Research Council Canada
Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle.
Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers,
with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations - or different
interests or affiliations, as the case may be.
This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared,
not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence.
This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward. - Stephen Downes