Using ICT to Share the Tools of the Teaching Trade: A Report on Open Source Teaching
Rod Paley sent me this very nice case study of the Kaleidoscope Learning Object Repository which explains, more clearly that just about any document I've seen, what a learning object is, how it's used, and the role of learning object repositories. More...

The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age
You have to do a lot of reading in this article to get a little content, but the argument is essentially that today's students were raised in a world of images, and especially moving images, and as such, as a consequence of moving image technology, they are losing important things, such as their ability to comprehend deductive arguments, and their ability to identify context, and hence, their own identity with context. More...

How Working Groups Can Further Connect Without Adding Further Technology: Good Interviews Ross Mayfield
"We are social animals for whom networked software is creating a new kind of habitat," writes Jon Udell, quoted in the introduction to this interview. One wonders, though, whether we are only social animals - I think we are more. More...

Surgeons Who Play Video Games Err Less
I think there's an interesting observation here: one of the reasons why learning in the form of computer games may be more effective is that our tools are also beginning to resemble computer games. Take this example, where doctors who used video game training made fewer errors in laparoscopic surgery, which uses a tiny camera and instruments controlled by joysticks outside the body. More...

E-ffective Writing for E-Learning Environments
One of the architects of IMS's Learning Design specification, the University of Alberta's Katy Campbell is interviewed in this article examining "universal instructional design and user-centered design." Topics covered range from accessibility, cultural sensitivity, usability and planning. More...

Thinking Skills in Primary Classrooms
This site leaves me with mixed feelings. It is, in a nutshell, a search system for critical thinking teaching resources available for British primary teachers. On the one hand, the concept and implementation are quite good (though I would want to see LOM metadata or RSS available for harvesting). More...

Reuters to go After Infringers
On the heels of a story circulating around the online journalism lists about Reuters withdrawing its online content from such syndication sites as Yahoo!, in order to create a subscription based single-site resource, comes this item suggesting that the news syndication agency will follow the RIAA and MPAA's leads and start tracking down people who trade news files illicitly. In a much more competitive environment, it's hard to see how Reuters could be even as successful as industries that enjoy virtual monopolies. More...

Don't Let File-swappers Swamp Copyright Law
This unsigned comment on the recent Canadian court decision to the effect that file sharing technology is legal in Canada (though - I might add, advertising, promoting or selling copies of commercial content is not) may as well have been written by an unnamed recording industry executive. More...

Sugar Camp
Last Friday, after work, the e-learning group took a well deserved break for supper and a tour at the Trites Family sugar camp. For those of you not familiar with maple syrup production, the sap of maple trees, which runs for three weeks each spring, is collected in buckets or piped through (blue) hoses. More...

Updated OFAC Ruling Removes Government Restrictions
The U.S. government has relented; IEEE publications are no longer under the embargo rule, which means papers from authors in such countries as Cuba and Iran may now again be edited for publication. More...