E-Learning Centre Pick of the Month
E-Learning Centre has launched a new look and name for its newsletter this month: it is now called the 'Pick of the Month' and features five resources: library (links to selected and reviewed articles, white papers, research reports, journal articles and resource collections in the wide field of e-learning), showcase, products and services, events and bookshop. More...

Adults Better Web Surfers Than Teens, Study Shows
There has long been a supposition - attacked in recent days by writers on the WWWEDU mailing list - that our students are better at using computers than their teachers or parents. This article describes a study that refuts that supposition. More...

JavaScript Triggers
This is a bit technical, though all designers should heed the opening paragraph: "The front end of a website consists of three layers. XHTML forms the structural layer, which contains structural, semantic markup and the content of the site. To this layer you can add a presentation layer (CSS) and a behavior layer (JavaScript) to make your website more beautiful and user-friendly." The rest of the article describes how to trigger executions of Javascript based solely on elements in the presentation layer. More...

Database Fights Diploma Mills
According to this article, "The U.S. Department of Education launched a searchable online database Tuesday that includes the names, addresses and enrollment of all schools accredited by organizations recognized by the federal government." Access to the database is here. More...

Seminars via Blog
Could you conduct an academic seminar using only blogs? Some of the writers from Crooked Timber thought so and have put together this work, based on a series of related posts. The genre - literary criticism - and the subject - China Miéville's Iron Council - doesn't fare much better. More...

RSS_LOM on Downes Wiki
A lot has happened since I posted my first version of RSS_LOM almost two years ago. Since then, both RSS and LOM have changed a lot. There has also been more interest in RSS_LOM recently, leading me to work toward a redraft. Not everyone agrees with what I've put out thus far, which is fine. That's why it's on a wiki, which you too can edit (the nice document or PDF will come after the discussion). This link takes you to my new RSS_LOM proposal and to an application (source code provided; bugs waiting to be discovered)) that converts LOM files to RSS_LOM - well, the current version of RSS_LOM. I'd really appreciate any comments you may have, wither on the wiki or by email. Much more is planned; I'll make announcements both here and on the wiki. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, February 2, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...

Smart Online Marketing Promotion Tactics
I signed up for the Scientific American RSS feed yesterday and found that just about every second feed is an add - I don't know whether these were inserted by the magazine of by the syndicator, NewsIsFree (who really ought to change their name). And every ad was the same, and had nothing to do with the magazine or my interets. More...

Against Syllabi
This is an interesting twist on the reusability parasox. "The more syllabus-heavy a course, I would argue, the more context-dependent." The detailed course syllabus, argues the author, has evolved as a legal defense against an increasingly litigous student body. More...

The Blogosphere as a Tuple Space
Nice description of tuples, which will be useful if you ever decide to learn Python. Nice description of Lazyweb, which these days doesn't seem to be living up to its promise. More...

Edu_RSS 2.0
This link is to a barely functional version of Edu_RSS 0.2 - what I've been working on for the last few weeks. Edu_RSS isn't a commercial product, it's me using Perl instead of English to try to explain a concept. What concept? Well, part of it involves distributed metadata - and I today created this graphic to explain what I mean (and if you want context - put the graphic Scott Wilson distributed the other day right over the word 'Use' and you see how the two concepts mesh). It is into this sort of framework Edu_RSS is intended to fit. The wiki pages are intended supplement this description; in particular, please see the section on third party metadata and my discussion with Brian Sutherland on the relation between RSS and LOM. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, February 3, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect]. More...