November 13, 2006
OLDaily
[link: 4 Hits] Darren Kuropatwa argue that there is no distinction between networks and groups. "The edublogging community is a group of people with a common profession that have certain attitudes and interests in common," he writes. "Ultimately, we are all interested in the same thing: improving the education of the children in our lives." That common interest would make it a group, were it the case. But it is not a common interest (many of the people I have worked with are adult educators, others are primarily technologists, and many are interested in 'learning' but not 'education'). That sort of proclamation of 'a common interest' is just the sort of thing I have been trying to guard people against. Graham Wegner responds nicely (see the comments): "I think that groups are broadly defined by a commonality of purpose but I would suggest that a new take on the concept of network is one where you link into what you can learn from or contribute to." [Tags:
Online Learning,
Networks,
Children and Child Learning] [
Comment] [
Edit] [
Delete] [
Spam]
[link: Hits] If there was any doubt that this has been the year of video, this presentation my Morgan-Stanley's Mary Meeker removes any doubt. But as you see by the end of the presentation, it is community, user-generated content (UGC) and personalization that will be key to the future of the web as peer-to-peer video exchanges chew up bandwidth without otherwise generating any revenues. Image-heavy PDF, which means your computer will slow to a crawl if you are using Adobe Reader (mine actually crashed; need to get that Ubuntu going at home). Via
Joachim Niemeier. [Tags:
Bandwidth,
Personalization] [
Comment] [
Edit] [
Delete] [
Spam]
[link: Hits] You are a university and one of your top fans has decided to commemorate your teams' achievements in paintings. What do you do? Thank him? Pay him? Well, no, in today's ridiculous environment, there's only one choice. You sue him. [Tags: ] [
Comment] [
Edit] [
Delete] [
Spam]
[link: 1 Hits] It was inevitable that there would be an attempt to
define Web 3.0 and I guess in retrospect it is only mildly surprising that the redefinition comes from the business community and is a rehash of the orchestrated services promised in internet
bubble versions of the Semantic Web. The latest is in this New York Times article (which in a very Web 1.0 manner will disappear from circulation in a few days). But here's the same story, more or less, from
Zeldman last January. Here's a
ZDNet article citing Tim Berners-Lee, no less, from last November, saying the same thing.
Or here. Or
here. Or
here. Really, what we are getting is
no advance over current thinking.
Don't buy into it - yes, there will be a 'next generation' web, probably in about five years (which means we'll see early traces in two or three years). It probably won't be called 'Web 3.0'. At best, as
Ross Mayfield says, Web 3.0 will be known as a market disaster. And it will be a struggle to understand.
[Tags: ] [
Comment] [
Edit] [
Delete] [
Spam]
[link: Hits] I still find this the most amazing this: "In the absence of
mandates, every encouragement policy known to Man fails to convince more than 15% to 20% of researchers to invest the 5 minutes of time needed to deposit their publications." Hence the author's recommendation that, in the absence of an institutional mandate, advocates should seek departmental mandates - the 'patchwork' mandate. Reasonable enough. But still, I do confess, I don't understand the professorial reluctance to post publications online, not because they are opposed (they are not, in the main), but simply because they cannot be bothered. [Tags:
Research] [
Comment] [
Edit] [
Delete] [
Spam]
[link: Hits] Sun has finally agreed to license Java under GPL, the open source license used by Linux. This doesn't change my views about Java, which I still think is ridiculously over-engineered. But it means that maybe some decent Java applications will be written. That would be nice; the we could see what Java can really do. [Tags:
Open Source] [
Comment] [
Edit] [
Delete] [
Spam]
[link: Hits] This year's
the Community College Survey of Student Engagement shows that "e-learners report higher levels of engagement, satisfaction and academic challenge than their on-campus peers." According to the author, these results are prompting calls for individual institutions to release their data. For those people who insist on publishing surveys of 30 students, not that this study is "is based on data from 260,000 randomly-selected first-year and senior students at 523 four-year institutions."
This is an empirical study. Not perfect. But so much better than the 30 student study. [Tags:
Academics and Academia] [
Comment] [
Edit] [
Delete] [
Spam]
[link: Hits] The translation of this paper is sometimes rough, but it makes some useful distinctions between types of communication (personal (or, interaction), organisational, and community) and types of publication (course, organisation and society). A lot of familiar stuff (learning object metaphors, for example) in familiar settings (blended learning). The representation of learning objects as 'literature' is new, but in my view of limited value. PDF. [Tags:
Learning Objects,
Interaction] [
Comment] [
Edit] [
Delete] [
Spam]
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.
Stephen's Web
Since 1995
About this Site
Why this site exists, what it does, and how it works.
OLDaily
Edu_RSS
FOAF
OLDaily Audio
OPML
About the Author
Stephen Downes
Copyright 2006 Stephen Downes
National Research Council Canada
Contact: stephen@downes.ca
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License
.
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