Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
August 19, 2008

The Blogging Personality
A little fun read and a fun test. My scores were nearly the same as the author's - very high in Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience, average on the rest. I scored a '3' in 'friendliness' - guess there's a lesson there, hm? GrrlScientist, Living the Scientific Life, August 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Big Debt On Campus: Credit Offers Flood the Quad
This can't have any negative outcome... can it? "More college students are turning to credit cards to pay not only for their textbooks, meals and transportation but also for tuition... A recent survey by U.S. Public Interest Research Groups found that two-thirds of college students have at least one card, 70 percent pay their own monthly bills and 24 percent have used their cards to help pay tuition." Tony Pugh, Chicago Tribune, August 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Tuition and Student Fees] [Comment]

RSP Blog Directory
This is a list of open access and repository blogs associated in some way with JISC, including quite a number of project blogs and personal blogs. I only subscribe to a subset of these, so if you're interested in repositories you should look to subscribing to them yourself. helpfully, there is an OPML file so you can easily upload the list into an RSS aggregator and begin reading with a minumum of fuss. Unattributed, JISC, August 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: RSS, Learning Object Repositories, Project Based Learning, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Open Access, OPML, Web Logs] [Comment]

Aug. 19, 1839: Photography Goes Open Source
People ask me all the time how people who create can be compensated for their work. How about this story, describing how the secret of photography was given to the world (one wonders what would have happened had it remained a closed, patented process): "Arago used the buzz to lobby the French Parliament to grant pensions to Daguerre and Isidore Niepce, so they could make all the steps of the new process public and France would 'then nobly give to the whole world this discovery which could contribute so much to the progress of art and science.'" Randy Alfred, Wired, August 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Patents, Copyrights, Patents] [Comment]

Free Digital Texts Begin to Challenge Costly College Textbooks in California
Expect to see more of this. Not only the writing and releasing of free textbooks. But also the attempts by publishers to lure their authors back into the commercial fold. They'll have to change their price points, though. As Tom Hoffman says, "he point is that there are lots of actors other than publishers who can pay a professor to write a text and release it under a free license, and $100,000 is not a lot of money to a state, country, large university or foundation." Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Books] [Comment]

Research Proves Power Corrupts
I tried to post it there but the Disqus comment system entered an endless cycle instead. So I'll say it here, then, no problem. Vicki Davis looks at research showing that people in positions of power abuse their power, and asks "How can we empower effective leaders?" and "how can they retain the skills of leadership that got them there in the first place." My response is: don't empower leaders. Take power away from them. And as for the second question, from what I've seem, the 'skills that got them there in the first place' are skills in the abuse of power. People become leaders by thinking of their own needs first, by ignoring the needs of their underlings, and by acting as though the rules don't apply to them. Vicki A. Davis, Cool Cat Teacher Blog, August 19, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Research, Leadership] [Comment]

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