Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes (born April 6, 1959) is a maverick designer and theorist in the fields of online learning and new media.

Born in Montreal (Quebec, Canada) Downes lived and worked across Canada before joining the National Research Council of Canada as a senior researcher in November 2001. Currently based in Moncton, New Brunswick, at the Institute for Information Technology's e-Learning Research Group, Stephen has become a leading voice in the areas of learning objects and metadata as well as the emerging fields of weblogs in education and content syndication. Downes is widely accepted as the central authority for online education in the edublogging community. He is also widely accepted as the originator of ELearning 2.0. Downes was the winner of the [http://incsub.org/awards/2005/winners-announced/|Best Individual Blog award] in 2005 for his blog OLDaily (see below). Downes is Editor at Large of the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning.

Downes ran for Mayor of Brandon in 1995, when he was working at the Assiniboine Community College. A member of the New Democratic Party, he ran on a platform to the left of incumbent mayor Rick Borotsik. [Bud Robertson, "Election-Profile-Brandon", "Winnipeg Free Press", 1 October 1995, A1.]

Projects

* Online Learning Daily - a daily roundup of news items relating to e-learning.
* EduRSS - a system that harvests RSS feeds relating to education and makes them available as topic-focussed second-order feeds.
* Half an Hour Blog

Connectivism

Downes has written extensively about connectivism, a theory which he summarizes as the "theory that learning consists of making the right connections." [http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=189] This theory is often associated with George Siemens, but Downes has contributed greatly to the development of this theory. [ [http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=39739 Basic Connectivism - Or Connectivism for Dummies ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ] ] Downes was a keynote speaker at the February 2007 Online Connectivism Conference. [ [http://umanitoba.ca/learning_technologies/connectivisim/ University of Manitoba: Learning Technologies Centre ] ]

External citing of Stephen Downes

As of May 2007, Technorati's rankings indicated that 668 blogs were linked to Downes' website. However, Downes himself has stated that he does not find much value in such quantitative rankings. [ [http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=40205 Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ] ]

ee also

* Edublog
* Elearning

External links

* [http://www.downes.ca Stephen Downes Website]
* [http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/ Half an Hour Blog]

Publications

* [http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=29-1 elearning 2.0]
* [http://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde18/articles/article10.htm Understanding PISA]
* [http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp Educational Blogging]
* [http://www.collegequarterly.ca/2004-vol07-num03-summer/downes.html From Classrooms to Learning Environments: A Midrange Projection of E-Learning Technologies]
* [http://www.learningcircuits.org/2004/jun2004/downes.htm RSS: Grassroots Support Leads to Mass Appeal]
* [http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2004/5/downes-2004-5-disc-t.html Resource Profiles]
* [http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Mar_04/editor.htm Editorial - The Rise of Learning Objects]

Footnotes