The Motivational Effect of ICT on Pupils
This study was completed in December and circulated via Sparticus today. In essence, this review of 17 school case studies suggests that the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has a positive motivational impact on students, though this impact varies with use. More...

Geometry Step by Step from the Land of the Incas
What I really like about the internet is the connection you can make with cultures around the world. And this culture reveals itself in the most unexpected ways - geometry, Peruvian style, for example. More...

Analysis of Responses to Consultation Document
Via Seb Schmoller, this is an analysis of the 430 responses the British Department for Education and Skills (DfES) received to last July's consultation document, Towards a Unified e-Learning Strategy. According to the summary, the most common concern express was regarding the digital divide. More...

The Nature of Meaning in The Age of Google
Interesting link sent to me by the author, Terrence A. Brooks, describing some of the tricks and tactics used to register content in the Google search service. The author employs the term 'lay indexing' to describe the 'plebiscites' used to organize and rank pages by link freuqency and page rank. More...

The Once and Future King
Reaction to the Sun agreement with Microsoft. Government does not have the will to roll back Microsoft's monopoly and the company has the money to pay off any sufficiently strong corporate competitor, as it has Time Warner and Sun. More...

Squeakland
Squeak is a multimedia authoring tool used to generate learning by simulation, run as a plug-in (similar to Flash) and available as an free and open source download. The best way to understand what Squeak is about is to look at this Drive a Car demo (no downloads or plugins needed to view). More...

OCLC Research will harvest DSpace metadata
If there is a future in metadata, it seems to me that it lies in institutional (and individual) repositories and harvesting. I have been arguing this for a long time, but not everybody is convinced. More...

Righting Copywrongs
The point in this article is simple and well-taken: legislators considering whether Canada's copyright legislation ought to be changed to prohibit file sharing ought to look at Lawrence Lessig's experiment in free publishing. More...

Online Games
This is an odd article in that, while it describes and touts the use of games in learning, its understanding of what constitutes a game seems to be restricted almost entirely to the quiz show format, following the model of Jeopardy Millionaire. Sure, these are games, but it seems to me that online trivia is only a small part of the picture. More...

Gurus v. Bloggers, Round 1
This is a fun article that makes a great point. The concept is this: line up the websites of eight design and usability gurus against the websites of eight bloggers who write on the same topics. Evaluate the respective websites for design and usability. The result, needless to say, is one-sided, and not in favour of the supposed experts. More...