Learning Object Metadata (The Buntine Oration - Reflection 3)
Albert Ip offers his third (or fourth) post in response to my learning Networks talk in Perth, looking this time at metadata. As with his previous posts, there is a great deal of resonance between his views and mine. More...

Increasing Learner Retention in a Simulated Learning Network using Indirect Social Interaction
I'll leave my disagreements (and there are some) with this article for another day, and highlight the important new concepts being explored in this paper presented last week in Alberta. More...

First Principles of Instruction
First rate paper arguing, first, that there are general principles underlying all instructional theory, and second, that learning suffers if these principles are not followed. The second part remains speculation, but the first part is examined in some detail through the lens of a variety of models and theories. More...

Describe This
According to the announcement, Describe This is "a service designed for the automatic extraction of metadata from online resources. The site offers an easy to use interface where you can indicate the resource to analyze and how to download the results as XML, XHTML or RDF files." I tested it on my own website and on David Merrill's PDF (see below) and it worked for both, though certain desirable metadata (such as DC:creator) were missing. More...

Point. Shoot. Kiss It Good-Bye.
Todd sent me this item from Wired looking at the difficulties surrounding the finding of a photo once you've taken it. Large image libraries, such as the Bettmann Archive (owned by Corbis), employ metataggers, but assigning metadata is more of a dark art than a science. More...

IM Readiness: A View from the Centre
More than I can read while listening to David Macneil's presentation at NAWeb, but readers will want to know that presentations from the Information Management conference held by the government of Canada are now online. Intriguing titles include 'Changing the Knowledge Culture at Canadian Heritage' and 'Framework for the Management of Information. More...