Online Professional Development in Support of Online Teaching: Some Issues for Practice
I've had a number of posts in my Community area concerning the use of telephones to support e-learning (mostly in favour, which surprises me a bit) so I thought this would be a good article to throw into the mixture. This paper doesn't address the blended approach directly but it's a fascinating examination of faculty attitudes toward teaching online (introduced with the observation that people tend to teach the way they were taught). More...

Travellers Rejecting Hotels with Iffy Wi-Fi Service - Survey
This is my second and final newsletter from Cairns - it's off to the Great Barrier reef this morning and then on the flight to Darwin this evening. I now have something like fifteen or twenty hours of audio recordings. Anyhow, this article suggests that travellers are avoiding hotels with iffy WiFi connections. Funny. More...

The Bookmarklet Solution to the Password Problem
On the other hand, here's another solution to the password problem (one which won't get you indexed at Microsoft Central). This nifty script auto-generates a password based on a seed word and the name of the site you're trying to enter. And it seems to me that it wouldn't take a lot to completely automate this, so you basically don't see the password entry. More...

RSS Wave: Good Examples Of Newsmaster Sites
Sometimes the best way to make your point is with a few examples, and Robin Good steps up with a series of examples of what he calls 'NewsMasters'. More...

Firefrss, Your New RSS-enabled Browsing Buddy
The big news on the web this week is the long awaited release of Firefox 1.0, the first 'production' version of the popular open source web browser. And the big news with this new release is the integration of RSS right into the browsing experience, something that not only vaults RSS into the mainstream but which means that designers may well realize their goal of a million downloads in ten days. More...

WebCT and Online Assessment: The Best Thing Since SOAP?
By SOAP the authors mean not web services but Student Online Assessment Program. This essay looks at what may be the best thing since then, the WebCT quiz application. Nice discussion of the evolution of SOAP and a nice chart near the middle of the essay comparing SOAP with the WebCT feature. More...

The Content Conundrum
A fun dialogue in the great tradition of gentle satire looking at some of the assumptions behind the idea of reusable learning objects. "Q: So, RLOs, where will they come from? A: Good question, and one that seldom gets asked. There's tacit agreement that you and I will be creating RLOs." There's some good information behind the links - the colour is subtle so be watching for it. More...

Techno tag team
The response has been overwhelming, but I'm not sure I'd like the job. This article describes a program at USC whereby tech support is offered by 'live-in' tech support people. More...

Blocking Moodle
The people at Bath have been running the open source learning management system (LMS) Moodle through its paces. This article describes the addition of a 'block' on Moodle that can import an RSS feed. More...

ITI: Stephen Downes Keynote
Today is a bit of a catch-up day as I recover from the intensive ITI conference in Utah. This item summarizes my presentation - my slides and an MP3 audio version will be available next week when I get FTP access to my server again. More...