The Corporate Blog Is Catching On
The blogsphere is abuzz with this report from the New York Times touting the advent of corporate blogs. As I have remarked previously in this space, there is room for concern as the essence of corporate communications is a form of sanctioned, depersonalized presence - just the oppositie of what a blog should be. Corporation can do what they want in the space, of course, but the requirements posed by corporate participation in a space twnd to spill over into the private and personal arena. More...

Semantic and Syntactic Interoperability for Learning Object Metadata
Book chapter in with the author, one of the principle architects of CanCore, looks at learning object metadata (LOM) and compares CanCore's with other application profiling efforts. More...

Classification 1.8
From the announcement: "The CanCore guidelines document for last of the Learning Object Metadata element groups. This element group is also one of the most flexible in the LOM, as it is able to accommodate a wide variety of classification schemes, including hierarchical subject classifications used in libraries and websites like Yahoo." Related to this, CanCore has also released a system for using the Dewey Decimal system within the classification element of learning object metadata (LOM). More...

Philadelphia Schools Scaling Back Corporate Role
The first sentence says it all: "Private enterprise was supposed to save Philadelphia's public schools. But after just a year, the district's unprecedented experiment in school privatization is looking considerably less corporate." You'd think there was a lesson in this wouldn't you. More...

Round-up of Links About SCOTUS Decision to Censor Library Internet Access
In a decision that will no doubt afect U.S. schools and universities, the Su[reme Court has ruled that the government can force libraries to filter internet access. More...

RSS and Education: The Current Hype
This link is to the main blog page because the permalinks are returning page errors. But if you click right away you should see the author's discussion of a paper which, for unrelated reasons, I can't link to yet. I agree with the author in the sense that RSS is a promising technology still looking for the killer application. More...

Web Accessibility Learning Modules
This site consists of six modules (which in turn connect to a wide array of resources and readings) that cover web accessibility from beginning to end. Every course or learning designer should study this resource. More...

A Report of Research on Privacy for Electronic Government
Written to support planning in Japan toward electronic government, this comprehensive report on provacy and public policy looks at the legal, political, activist and public state of affairs regarding the issue in Canada, the United States and Europe. More...

Radio as the Learning Bridge
This item is for John Hibbs, who has been an advocate of the use of radio in distance learning as long as I have known him. This discussion paper for the IFETS mailing list describes the advantages of the use of radio in education for developing nations, but also identifies some of the barriers that have blocked its widespread use. More...

Microsoft Office Web Publishing Accessibility Wizard
Following up from yesterday's newsletter (and from this week's deluge of PowerPoint files from my desk), Christopher sends me this link. The software provided at this site performs the task that hundreds of engineers at Microsoft seem incapable of performing, the conversion of MS Word and PowerPoint documents into platform-nbeutral and accessible formats. More...