Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
August 27, 2007

Memramcook

Photos from my cycling trip through the nearby village of Memramcook on Sunday. Stephen Downes, Flickr August 27, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Flickr] [Comment]

Podcasts From KM Australia
If you haven't seen any of Dave Snowden's slide shows, you should give this page a look, especially the first presentation on on sense-making and the current state of KM. Also included is a workshop, with Etienne Wenger, on Complex Acts of Knowing and a summary of Social Network Stimulation. Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge August 27, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Australia] [Comment]

Windows Genuine Advantage Crashes: Everyone'S a Pirate
I have argued at length in the past about the dangers of centralized registry-based DRM such as Windows Genuine Advantage. This is why. The single point of failure renders all your documents - document you own, documents you may have actually authored - inaccessible. More links from Metafilter. And Daring Fireball. And Copyfight asks, reasonable, is private DRM a public failure? (Hint: the answer is 'yes'). Sean P. Aune, Mashable August 27, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Digital Rights Management (DRM), Operating Systems, Accessibility, Microsoft] [Comment]

BbWorld '07 Presentations Available
Presentations delibered at the recent BbWorld conference in Boston are now available online (note: as of this writing the site is throwing a Java error, which i assume will be corrected shortly). Unattributed, Blackboard August 27, 2007 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

M-Learning: Two Years: Two Life Times
Alexander Hayes at his best, linking the technology with the people with the vision. "Despite the organizational reluctance to engage... our esteemed colleagues charge on... extraordinary people with great courage and foresight who link research with practice." A lyrical presentation that at one highlights numerous projects and people working on mobile learning and which may also contain the longest single sentence in the history of presentations. And it strikes me again how disappointing it is that we has some of the most expensive mobile phone rates in the world here in Canada, a short-sighted policy that has slowed adoption and stifled research. Praise for this slide show from and Leigh Blackall. Alexander Hayes, Slideshare August 27, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Canada, Linking and Deep Linking, Research] [Comment]

Porn Filters No Barrier for Net Users
A 16 year-old Australian student took approximately 30 minutes to bypass a government funded content filter that took $84 million to create (other accounts peg the cost at million). He then proceeds to make much more sense than the officials that installed the software, saying, "Filters aren't addressing the bigger issues anyway. Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I'd fix. They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them."

The hack has caused a storm of commentary: Jacinta Gascoigne, Techdirt, Mike Seyfang ("The moral of this story is that anyone who thinks they can shirk their responsibility by relying on software to ‘delete internet nasties' needs to think again."), Cognitive Edge ("the main things that need to be done are collaboration with kids, because the problems that we have are directly affecting kids, not adults, and unless you speak to them quite a lot you're not going to do anything with any effect."), Teaching and Learning, Judy O'Connell. Nick Higginbottom and Ben Packham, Sydney Herald Sun August 27, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Privacy Issues, Adult Learning, Bullying, Australia] [Comment]

Personal Inquiry
Graham Wegner summarizes a post by Konrad Glogowski describing the stages of personal learning: discover, define, immerse, build, contribute. After this week's events, I would suggest there should be one more stage, added to the end: hack. Graham Wegner, Teaching Generation Z August 27, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Experience] [Comment]

U.S. Teen Unlocks the iPhone
A 17 year-old student, armed with a soldering iron and a lot of caffeine, has figured out how to unlock the iPhone's exclusive deal with AT&T. He describes the method in detail on his blog. And here's the video announcing the discovery. There are also reports of software-only hacks (one of which Engadget absolutely swears by, as well as rumblings about legal action from AT&T, which probably won't amount to anything because there's nothing illegal about switching mobile phone providers. Me, I think the lessons in all this are pretty clear. Despite the constant caterwauling about an educational crisis from the usual sources, teens working in loose networks online seem to be able to educate themselves so well they routinely outsmart major corporations.

Additional commentary from Copyfight, Christian Long, Daring Fireball, Lost Remote, Good Morning Silicon Valley, CNN. Associated Press, International Herald Tribune August 27, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Video, Web Logs] [Comment]

 

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