A Message from Secretary Paige?Strategic Plan, 2002-2007, Draft February 7, 2002
The United States Department of Education releases a strategic plan for the next five years based on six (vague) principles: create a culture of achievement; improve student achievement; develop safe schools and strong character; transform education into an evidence-based field; enhance the quality of and access to postsecondary and adult education; and establish management excellence. More...

Middleware

Index page for a number of Internet 2 presentations and resources related to middleware. I think your best bet is to review the papers here with an eye to anticipating a range of new applications. More...

Streaming Media Middleware is more than Streaming Media
This paper forms the basis of a CAMP presentation (see below) from the conference this week and is much more rewarding than the skimpy PowerPoint presentation (and conference organizers should perhaps think about posting real papers on conference web sites rather than slide shows). More...

Software Biz Attacks BBC Education Stranglehold
The story here is that Bitish educational publishers are gettig together to protest the BBC's plans to "monopolize" the digital broadcasting in the nation's schools. More...

The Great Giveaway

In what I think may be the beginning of a phenomenon - they've been overwhelmed by the response and are promising future developments - New Scientist releases an article on the concept of "copyleft" for scientific articles. More...

Security Researchers Drop Scientific Censorship Case
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) drops its case defending Professor Edward Felten - a researcher forced to withdraw a paper showing how music files could be decrypted - against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Felton and the EFF had lost a preliminary judgement in a New Jersey court. More...

United States Open University Announces Plan To Cease Operations

Ever hear of the United States Open University? No? That's probably why it is closing its virtual doors. More...

Schools Interoperability Framework
From the about page: "The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) is an industry initiative to develop an open specification for ensuring that K-12 instructional and administrative software applications work together more effectively. More...

Power Point in the Classroom
It's not perfect, it's not interactive, but it is overwhelmingly cute and a surprisingly effective teaching site - Power Point in the Classroom is directed specifically toward teachers and has two objectives: to teach them how to use Power Point, and in the process, to teach them how to teach Power Point. More...

Digging Animation
This is a bit of a heads-up - I've received a number of items about Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) recently - a couple new books and some tools (one from JASC, who make the outstanding Paint Shop Pro package) - so you're probabluy about to be deluged. More...