Commonwealth of Learning Conference
More links from the Commonwealth of Learning conference, because even though I am not really participating in the discussion, I am enjoying the process of tracking down the many resources cited: Student Office for Alternative Resources (SOAR); A Review of Good Practice in ICT and Special Educational Needs for Africa; Skype; Oke-Ogun Community Development mailing list. More...

Extenza e-Publishing Services implements Google Indexing of Hosted e-Journal Content
In what is an emerging trend, Extensa, an e-Publishing Service, announced that Google will begin indexing its journal holdings. More...

Open Access: A PLoS for Education
Why do I continually write about open access? Because of things like this: "PubMed was restricted to those institutions that could afford the subscription fee; now PubMed is freely available to all who have Internet access. More...

Current IT Issues: 2004
Somebody asked me the other day to name the three major issues facing e-learning administrators. I replied: copyright, technology selection, and staff training. Now my point of view is different from the panel of administrators surveyed for this EDUCAUSE study, but the differences are start. More...

Musings on the Internet, Part 2
A wandering article that discusses convergence, internet security, RFID, and paying for Voice over IP. Cerf also discusses the idea of a 'layered' internet, or of regulation by functionality, in order to handle things like the regulation of internet telephony, copyright, and similar matters. More...

Politicians Must Push Local e-learning Industry
Interesting item from an Australian newspaper arguing that, while that country has done a lot to establish a leadership position in e-learning, the industry needs more support from politicians and administrators. I'm not sure the example makes the case, however. The author argues that an internet startup, myInternet, is not being adopted by state education departments even though it is well-regarded overseas, serving (it claims) 1.5 million users. Perhaps. More...

Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy
I agree that taxonomies are useful, and this article provides a nice description with examples. But developers of taxonomies need to be clear about what they are doing, because there is never a single best taxonomy for any given domain. In the example in the article, for example, toys are divided between 'educational' and 'plush. More...

Ensemble Collaboration Brings Online Learning Back to Life
Press release for Ensemble's launch at ASTD, covered here yesterday. In particular, follow the three links in the middle of the release. More...

Teach to Learn - The Next Big Thing
One of the more interesting things I learned from John Stuart Mill's biography: homeschooled by his father, James Mill, John was required in turn to teach his younger siblings. While he gained a great deal from the experience, he reports in the Autobiography, his younger siblings fared less well. More...

Online Storytelling
Delivered in the context of the EU-funded project ACTeN, this report provides an overview and analysis of the educational use of storytelling. I like the wide variety of examples used to illustrate the core themes, including corporate storytelling in the consumer oriented industry, public services and pedagogic institutions, such as museums, and political movements and organizations. More...