The Auricle

Auricle seems to have attracted the attention of a few spammers who seem to believe that readers want nothing better than to find the comments section of Auricle offering to consolidate their debts or sell really cheap DVDs of questionnable themes or parentage. I really don't want to force registration or turn-off comments but, as […]

The following extract from today's posting by James Farmer is self explanatory. “Last Tuesday I received a memorandum from a manager cc'd by am exec. director instructing me to cease supporting and promoting weblogging, wikis or any other technology not officially supported by the University. The basic reason given being that I have, anecdotally, not […]

In yesterday's OLDaily (28 October 2004) Stephen Downes suggests that the October edition of the Morgan Stanley report An Update from the Digital World would be of interest to those from the business world. I disagree. As Stephen highlights the report is well researched but, because there are some signficiant implications attached to the nascent […]

Here's a complement to yesterday's long Auricle article Digital Dust. The UK's Guardian Online article Creative Comfort (28 October 2004) provides a useful summary of the various Creative Commons licenses which have been localised for UK use and which will be released on 1 November. Download article as PDF

Interoperability in Action - A video presentation has been produced by the JISC Exchange for Learning Programme (x4L). The 25 minute Quicktime video is divided into chapters. The web site is self explanatory. Download article as PDF

I recently listened to a two part BBC radio documentary which was, in turn, inspiring, frightening, and anger provoking. Before considering the documentary let's start with a bit of judicious hyperbole … at least I hope it's hyperbole. Question: Where can I find the history of the 20th century? Answer: What history of the 20th […]

Of the many talks Stephen Downes, Senior Research Officer for the National Research Council of Canada, gave during his recent tour of Australia, his Learning Networks paper presented at the Australian College of Educators and the Australian Council of Educational Leaders Conference in Perth, Australia (9 Oct 2004) should give us all pause for thought. […]

It's getting harder to categorize software solutions, what with CourseGenie enhancing Microsoft Word so that it becomes a SCORM/IMS/Blackboard/WebCT authoring tool and now content management solutions or portals crossing over into learning management system (VLE) territory. Like meek and mild Clark Kent's transformation to Superman, some of these latter solutions can metamorphize, with apparent ease, […]

When it was announced in April 2001 MIT's Open Courseware initiative certainly caught the attention of the world. The project delivered its first material on 30 September 2002. At the time of writing, the learning materials for 900 MIT courses are now available online with learning material for 2000 courses slated for 2008. But we […]

The University of Edinburgh's Discovery+ apparently eschews a SOAP/WSDL Web services model for in favour of the much simpler REST protocol. Interestingly, they are also piloting an implementation of the relatively new IMS Resource List Interoperability specification. For those interested in the REST versus SOAP view of Web services, Paul Prescod's 2002 article Second Generation […]