Open and Distance Education and Learning through University Continuing Education
One of the more daunting acronyms, ODELUCE is funded by the Socrates Programme of the European Community as part of a program to promote European cooperation in the field of Open and Distance Learning. Launched in 2001, it is scheduled to last three years. More...

Where All Grades Are Above Average
I have long maintained that there is an element of conflict of interest involved when the people that provide the learning are also the people who evaluate the learning. The consequences of this are evident in this article as the author describes the impact of grade inflation over the decades. More...

Open Content Network
From the website: "The Open Content Network is a collaborative effort to help deliver large, freely-downloadable content using peer-to-peer technology. The network is essentially a huge 'virtual web server' that links together thousands of computers for the purpose of helping out over-burdened web sites. Using a new Peer-to-Peer technology, called the 'Content-Addressable Web', indviduals will be able to help distribute free content by donating their spare bandwidth and disk space to the network." More...

The Mythical Threat of Genetic Determinism
I am an empiricist, which means, in essence, that I believe that knowledge comes from experience. This places me in close company with those who agree that, to use the old expression, our character is determined by nurture, not nature. Genius is produced by exceptional circumstances, not exceptional genertics. More...

Can Artists Inspire Scientists?
This item focuses on work at the National Research Council of Canada's Vancouver location, but it is an initiative that is important to the organization as a whole. It may seem odd to hire artists to work at an institution dominated by scientists and researchers, but the NRC's artist-in-residence program is expected to benefit both artists and scientists. More...

When Greatness Grates
The flavour of this article is captured brilliantly by the small photo of a statute of Churchill sporting a grass mohawk haircut. What is greatness, and how do we recognize it - particularly since greatness comes so often associated with other attributes that disturb polite society. As greatness becomes something determined by popular vote - as in the BBC's recent "greatest Britons" poll, the essence of greatness is eroded. More...

A Tool to Explain Affirmative Action
If you wonder why I get hepped up about apparently pointless issues (such as, say, the debate between aggregation and federated search in learning object repositories), this article will lead part way toward an understanding. More...

LaunchCast
I spent several hours last night exploring Yahoo!'s LaunchCast service, which yesterday announced a premium subscription service. LaunchCast is the Yahoo! version of web radio, but it is a lot more sophisticated than any previous version I have seen. In particular, it allows you to select genres and artists to tailor your radio feed. More...