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by Stephen Downes
April 3, 2008

Discussion Paper - Request for Stakeholder Input
At the end of February I went to Toronto to participate in discussions around the Canadian Consortium of Technology Support Providers for Adult Basic Education, "a proposed network of organizations, groups and individuals interested in maximizing the potential of technology assisted delivery to address the adult basic education needs of learners across Canada." The fruits of that discussion are now available as a discussion paper and a call for input from the community. You can either respond directly online, using the form provided, or attend one of the sessions at an upcoming conference, such as the CNIE Conference in Banff in April (no, I will not be at that conference). You can also view pictures of our meeting, including one in which I present a 'network' style of organization to the group. Various Authors, Canadian Consortium of Technology Support Providers for Adult Basic Education, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Networks, Canada] [Comment]

Seven Habits of Highly Connected People by Stephen Downes, Guest Contributor
I sent this off to eLearn Magazine, where it will appear later, but for now it's on Lisa Neal's blog, with my blessing and with apologies to Stephen Covey. This was not written by Stephen Covey (as the first commenter apparently believes) but was written by me, as a take-of on Covey's 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'. It's worth noting that - as my seven habits parallel his seven habits - that Covey's advice needs sometimes to be turned on its head in a networked world. Stephen Downes, Lisa Neal Weblog, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Networks, Web Logs] [Comment]

Desire2Pod Cast 18 - East Texas Law School Lecture
Barry dahl interviews a patent lawyer who, as he says, "regularly works in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas - also known as the Rocket Docket for patent cases in the U.S." The result is, as Seb Schmoller says, "interesting and funny". Barry Dahl, Desire2Blog, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Patents, Copyrights, Patents] [Comment]

When Web 2.0 Attacks: Modernista!'s Nifty Non-Site Backfires
Not really sure what to make of this invention. It's like a web site that takes up only a small part of the page. The rest of the page is someone else's content. Well and good, but the someone else - if it's Wikipedia, say - might not want someone's website sitting on top of the Wikipedia content. You do want to try it for yourself to get a sense of it (don't worry - it won't break anything). Zachary Rodgers, ClickZ, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Web 2.0, Wikipedia] [Comment]

Algorithms Are Terrific. But to Search Smarter, Find a Person
Wired Magazine dedicates an article to Jeremy Brosowsky, a man who, in 2006, came up with the idea of writing 100 word summaries of articles and making them available to subscribers. According to th article, many people now use such services, instead of search engines, to keep up with events in their field. I think it's a great idea! Maybe I should start up a newsletter where I write 100 word summaries of articles. Gee, if only I had thought of it before 2006, then maybe I would have been profiled in Wired. But still, maybe I should... oh, yeah, right. I guess I'd need to, you know, know someone at Wired to get any credit for the idea. Brendan I. Koerner, Wired, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Newsletters] [Comment]

Stages of PLN Adoption
Dave Warlick has taken the concept of the Personal Learning Environment, renamed it (to Personal Learning Network), and is gaining some traction with the concept in the U.S. edublogosphere, as evidenced by this post from Jeff Utecht and another by Marian Thacher. Warlick's diagram looks a lot like the many PLE disgrams (except it has a picture of himself in the centre). More from Warlick here. Utecht adds a PLN adoption diagram, which is essentially the Twitter adoption diagram with different notation. Jeff Utecht, The Thinking Stick, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Twitter, Google, Personal Learning Environment] [Comment]

Discussion Paper - Request for Stakeholder Input
Not everyone agreed with Doug (Blue Skunk) Johnson's take on how to represent copyright issues in the classroom. "Even if we are not the copyright police, do we not have a responsibility to be a role model?" asks Barbara Braxton. And Barbara Coombs writes, "Not good role modelling, Doug! Copyright is a major responsibility of the TL." Fair enough. But I would respond that these people are representing a certain view of copyright as a fait accompli. I certtainly do not regard this to be the case. Publishers have, during my lifetime, attempted to dramatically revise the rules regarding copyright in their favour. The role I wish to model is to the efect that we, the people, have rights too. Doug Johnson, The Blue Skunk Blog, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Copyrights, Patents] [Comment]

Eschew Excess Verbiage
These were fun, and quite good - I especially enjoyed "Down with Fractions!" But I began to grow weary of the professors when they started violating their 60 time limit by two or three minutes. A five minute talk is very different from a one minute talk, and the best of these talks were one minute. You'll need Real Media to view them. Various Authors, University of Pennsylvania, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006
From a study by Sloan-C: "There has been no leveling of the growth rate of online enrollments; institutions of higher education report record online enrollment growth on both a numeric and a percentage basis.Nearly 3.2 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2005 term, a substantial increase over the 2.3 million reported the previous year. The more than 800,000 additional online students is more than twice the number added in any previous year." From eLearning eNews - and I must say, the only usable link from the entire newsletter. One other link was to a subscription barrier, another was to a wrong URL (which I couldn't deduce because it was a redirect) and the rest was advertising. Unattributed, Sloan-C, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: United States, Traditional and Online Courses, Newsletters, Subscription Services, Marketing] [Comment]

Gregory Landini, Wittgenstein's Apprenticeship with Russell
One of the best books I have read in the last year was Ray Monk's Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Readers should certainly not attempt Gregory Landini's Wittgenstein's Apprenticeship with Russell without having read, at the very least, Monk's book. That said, this work, ably reviewed by Nicholas Griffin, will draw out in sharp detail the issues faced by Bertrand Russell and his favorite student, Ludwig Wittgenstein. And these discussions are not merely of historical interest: the issues they wrestle with are exactly those facing people attempting to build things like the Semantic We. Nicholas Griffin, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, April 3, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

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