The Auricle

UK Higher Education enjoys a large number of JISC services and programmes and so it’s easy to miss some of the possible gems tucked away in a quiet corner somewhere. One possible example is the BUFVC which, with a small core team, focuses on the use of film, video and, more recently, audio in UK […]

I find Clark Boyd’s technology podcasts for the BBC/PRI coproduction The World are invariably worth a listen. An item in Technology Podcast number 85 (15 February 2006) about China Internet Censorship recently caught my attention. Download article as PDF

Could the combination of Evernote’s handwriting and shape recognition plus a graphic tablet/digital pen achieve at least some of what a tablet PC purports to do? Are there any benefits beyond what can be achieved without this hardware/software combo for students or their teachers? Download article as PDF

Who said this? ” …. to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful”. When was it said and who said it? Tim Berners-Lee? Vannevar Bush? Yahoo? Google? Microsoft? Download article as PDF

In this fairly long post I twist and turn my way through some of the alleyways relating to the user experience of the digital television and video revolution that seems intent on impacting upon as all. Some alleys will be cul-de-sacs and some will have deep holes to fall into. Some alleys will be dressed […]

So Google has bought the company behind the Writely Web based wordprocessor and so adds, what will undoubtedly be, the first of several such online ‘office’ applications to its stable. Download article as PDF

I found this one via Michelle Lamberson’s informative blog. Michelle is the Director of the Office of Learning Technology (OLT) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) where that other persona Brian Lamb resides. Download article as PDF

It’s sometimes useful to sample the business perspective on the proprietary VLE world. Take for instance Business Week’s analysis of Blackboard’s financial health (7 Feb 2006). This is a world away from the concerns of those actually using these products, but such analyses provide an essential reminder why these products exist, and sometimes cease to […]

Way back in November 2004 my Auricle posting A filling station model of e-learning? proposed that, instead of the institutional monolithic model of e-learning, we need to think in terms of: … an emergent model in which various sites on the internet become almost like resource ‘filling stations’ for mobile multi-function devices. Sony’s latest gizmo […]

Stephen Downes’ OLDaily post about MyGlu got me thinking. (OLDaily 9 January 2006). Stephen repurposed elements of his own EduRSS codebase to enable other users to build a rss aggregator in their own sites. Great concept and a generous contribution which has stimulated me to make my own donation; but it was when trying out […]