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...

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...

Software Improves School's Test Scores in Reading
OK, for the most part this reads like a press release converted into a newspaper article (the sort of article I complain about on various media discussion lists), complete with the required introductory story about little Deyci Sierra from Mexico. More...

Individual Researchers Gain Access to over 300,000 IEEE Technical Articles

The headline sounds great - access to 300,000 technical articles! But read on and you see that your $US 35 per month allows you to read only 25 of those articles. More...

Mr. Chips or Microchips
Ben wrote to me today to point to a BBC panel discussion (involving Sherry Turkle, David Reynolds, Josh Angrist and others) on the use of computers in education. As Ben pointed out, most of the discussion in the interview and the Slashdot discussion was the usual "the internet's only a tool" type of discussion. More...

Paying for Learning Objects in a Distributed Repository Model
One thing I like vacations is that I am able to get so much work done. A case in point is this long overdue description of how a payment system would work in a distributed learning object repository network. More...

A Glove That Speaks Volumes
This is one of these inventions that could spawn a raft of useful applications: a glove that converts American Sign Language into electronic text. It seems to me that this glove would be an excellent tool for the teaching of ASL. More...

Topic Representation and Learning Object Metadata
Discussion of the use of topic maps and alternative schema generation tools for the creation of learning object metadata designed to handle tasks not envisioned by SCORM and other metadata standards. By Stephen Downes. More...

Microsoft release LRN 3.0 Toolkit, supporting IMS Content Packaging, IMS Metadata and SCORM
Hot on the heels of the release of a similar package by Macromedia as a Dreamweaver, Microsoft releases an IMS and SCORM content packaging toolkit. Naturally, the toolkit is intended to be used with Microsoft's Learning Resource iNterchange (LRN). More...