In honour of open source day, I’ve opened up the comments on this blog. You no longer need to have a typekey registration to comment – I think its a good idea, but ultimately too cumbersome to be of practical value.

New Academic Resource on Blogging: Contentious Weblog::Tip of the hat to Amy Gahran for pointing out this online archive of academic papers on the subject of blogging. There are a number of interesting papers, from a variety of fields, but the one that drew my attention immediately was Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Self in the Julie/Julia Project. Since my project for this summer (which I am currently successfully procrastinating by the practice of tangential research) is along these lines, I’m sure the paper will be thought-provoking.

I return – the blog has been dormant for some time for many different reasons (which I may choose to document in the future), but I’m trying to make a return. This article seemed like a good start – Q and A with Stephen Downes – Stephen Downes answers a few questions about e-learning. Part of Stephen’s response when asked about the future of e-learning struck a chord with me: This sort of global conversation — of which learning is a part, in that it gives me access to the background I need in order to converse in this way — is in the process of reshaping political and commercial realities. Well put! Blogs seem an especially interesting tool because in them we are simultaneously influenced by and influencing others. The reduced delay time between reading an article or blog … Continue reading »