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by Stephen Downes
March 2, 2009

The Monkeysphere Ideology
I spent my afternoon writing this - the words that express what I have wanted to say about the economic crash have finally come. "Conceptually, we need to begin to think and reason and act in terms of the concrete rather than the abstract. That does not entail the end of abstract reason - far from it - but rather it is to foster in ourselves a clear and precise understanding that the abstract is an artifice, an invention, that we use to facilitate thought and reasoning." Stephen Downes, half an Hour, March 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

Edublogers As a Network of Practice
Terry Anderson bumps into the idea of the "network of practice", a concept attributed to John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, which is the idea of a collection of people not so tightly bound as a 'community of practice', but which nonetheless share some of the same characteristics. He then applies this analysis to the education blogosphere and - not surprising - find that it fits. Except. As commentator Scott Leslie points out, "there is no singular "network of edubloggers," indeed what I find constantly amazing is when I come across another self-styled edublogger with whom I share absolutely NO points of connection." Terry Anderson, Virtual Canuck, March 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: Online Learning, Networks, Web Logs] [Comment]

Best Home Server Software
We're not there yet, partially because of costs, and partially because of ISP policies, but the home server is a technology to expect in the future. This article highlights five major home server configurations. Jason Fitzpatrick, LifeHacker, March 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

The Serotonin System and All That Goes With It
There's all sorts of stuff you can learn from this post about serotonin, the key component of a major neural receptor system in the brain. Scicurious, Neurotopia v 2.0, March 2, 2009 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment]

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