By Stephen Downes
October 15, 2003
A Brief Overview of the Linguistic Attributes
of the Blogosphere
This "brief" (40 page PDF)
essay makes two points. First (and importantly), bloggers
form a community (or probably more accurately, a network of
communities). Probably the most convincing evidence of this
are the graphical representations of links between blogs.
Second, interestingly, blogs are evolving their own
linguistic conventions, beginning with a basis in written
style, but blending in elements of the oral tradition in
order to extend and enhance meaning. Fascinating. Via
Mathemagenic. By Stephanie Nilsson, October 15, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
RFC: myPublicFeeds.opml
Discussion
is filling the Syndication list at Yahoo! groups over a
proposed public feeds file format. The idea of the proposed
PublicFeeds.opml specification is that a website could
display, in a commonly understood way, a list of all the
feeds available. The proposal, which was defeloped to
staisfy a specific use case generated by Yahoo!, has become
a full-blown controversy, partially because it does not
offer enough flexibility for may users (myself included)
and partially because the usual RSS personalities are
involved. This link is to the main proposal; see more notes
and an implementation here. By Dave Winer, Technology
at Harvard Law, October 13, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Districts Line Up In Laptop
Opposition
If you had the chance to distribute a
laptop to every student at $25 per, you'd jump at the
chance, right? Well, not these schools in Detroit, which
find the program too expensive. "The laptops would cost
each district $25 a child under the state proposal, but
schools argue that the costs of maintaining and integrating
them would far exceed that." By Christine MacDonald,
Detroit News, October 6, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Floatutorial
For my own future
reference, some CSS tutorials, as I think about what I want
to do for the next redesign of Stephen's Web. Say, if you
have ideas, send them in. I'd like to take the next design
of the site into new, uncharted directions... By Various
Authors, Max Design, October, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Don't Torch Musicians' Incomes, Burn Media
Piracy
Though the purpose of this article is to
launch PureTracks, a Canadian music subscription
service similar to iTunes, the author, the president of the
Canadian Recording Industry Association, takes the
opportunity to launch a one-sided harangue under the guise
of a news article in Canada's national newspaper (guess
which side of the debate they're on). Much of the article
is misleading in the extreme, such as suggestions that
"other alleged infringers were ignored," that file sharing
in Canada has been "counted", that 10,000 people in Canada
have been laid off due to file sharing, and so much more.
The Globe should give me a technology column! But the
chances of that happening are about as slim as the chances
of a music industry paying fair royalties to artists. The
author urges Canada to ratify WIPO, saying we are "behind
the times" because we haven't - but the author (and our
legislators) should understand that there is deep
opposition stricter copyright in this country, albeit an
opposition with rather less access to traditional media.
Since (as predicted) the Puretracks server failed under the
traffic load, here is some Slashdot coverage with some interesting
tidbits and a lot of scathing criticism. By Brian
Robertson, Globe and Mail, October 14, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Contribute to EdNA Online
EdNA
continues to show the world how it should be done as it
issues a national call for learning content providers to
make their metadata available for harvesting. "'Harvesting'
is the process of gathering metadata records from education
and training-related websites and repositories and
including them within the EdNA Online repository, and then
making them accessible through the EdNA Online search." By
Various Authors, EdNA, October 15, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
What Happens When There Are No Standards In
Curriculum Design?
This article expresses a
point of view that is widely held in academic, that it is
important that courses following one another conform to
something like a standard approach in order to allow for a
smooth transition from one to the next. "becuase there is
no consistency between different sections of the same
course, the student suffers. The problem is that the
student enrolled in what they thought would be a consistent
two course sequence, only to find they enrolled in two very
different courses with very different expectations. This is
what happens when there are no standards in curriculum
design." Well maybe, but what happens when a graduate moves
from one company to the next. Should they expect the same
smooth transition? Of course not. So we have to ask: is a
smooth transition approporiate? Sure, it's easier for the
student, but easier is not always best. Standardized
curriculum design achieves greater interoperability, but at
the cost of diversity. While I would be the first to agree
that there ought to be some consistency (first year
chemistry courses should not cover advanced aerodynamics,
for example) variations in expectations, workloads, course
format and more should not only be allowed, they should be
encouraged. By Randy Brown, Carving Code, October 14, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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