National Learning Network has a reference document on e-learning.
The new reference document Paving the way to excellence in e-learning has been produced by the NLN Materials Team at Becta, to share the procedures that are followed to ensure the e-learning materials commissioned for the NLN are of the highest quality possible.The guidelines cover pedagogy, accessibility (both design and technical requirements), technical standards and quality assurance. It also contains information about the implementation and dissemination activities carried out by the team to integrate the NLN materials into the post-16 sectors.
I've been out of the office a bunch lately so I'm not just behind on blog posting, I'm behind on the whole news-reading that leads to blog posting, but I'm hoping to get caught up again soon so let's hope people have been doing interesting stuff and I can make a veritable flurry of interesting and fascinating posts here soon.
Christopher Alexander changed architecture, or at least how we talk about it, with his book The Timeless Way of Building. His follow-on book, A Pattern Language gave people a way to talk about the things they cared about in buildings and their surroundings but hadn't known how to talk about before. Alexander calls it 'the Quality without a Name,' the things that make a place worth living in or working in.
Mike Axelrod has an interesting post about traditions in software development that also talks about looking for things-that-work and common languages by which users and developers can create working applications.
Do we have a tradition yet? I think not. Are we close? I think so. The tools are still being refined; the ways of building are still being explored. The pattern languages are still unfolding. When programmers and the people that use these creations can speak these languages fluently and with ease, then I feel that we as a community will have moved that much closer to a real tradition in this craft that we are trying so hard to perfect.Just as in days of old. Any villager could go to the local woodworker and ask for a chair, a table, or a house with a door and windows. And that artisan would build one just right. And perhaps, if it were a barn that was needed, the whole village would help. And each villager would know his or her role in building the barn. The elders would lead and the young would learn. And it would be built just the right way to fit the family that needed it and fit the land it was on and the village that it lived in. So too can our software creations fit just so and run just right and co-exist with so many applications in our world in just the right way. And like the barn raising of old sometimes a whole community may come together to create new software and build a better future. I think that if this is the vision, then I am indeed looking forward to being part of a new tradition
...via mamamusings
RSS In Goverment points to Senator Joseph Biden's news releases, which make him the first senator with an RSS feed for official news.
RSS feeds are also in use in several of the presidential campaigns.
An Australian report expresses concerns about online learning:
UNIVERSITIES may be compromising their teaching standards in order to maximise revenue from online education, a Federal Government report has revealed.The report says while online learning can be a powerful tool for distance education, both students and staff suspect universities are using it as a money-maker and not investing adequate resources.
...via elearninpost
How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put It On the Web
For some reason I thought I might want to know this someday.
...or maybe it could be.
The Edge asks the question--what laws of life ought to be named after you (you know, like Kepler and Faraday and Murphy):
Sterling's Law of Ubiquitous Computation
First, your home is a constant, while the Net is a place you go; then the Net becomes a constant while your home is a place you go.
Sterling's Corollary to Clarke's Law
Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic.
Minsky's First Law
Words should be your servants, not your masters.
Minksy's Second Law
Don't just do something. Stand there.
Godwin 's Law
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Clark's Law
Everything leaks.
...via BoingBoing
Apparently Microsoft actually says:
Not all features that are found on the Security tab are designed to help make your documents and files more secure.
Edward Felten describes what he calls 'insecurity features' and explains why Word's 'Password to Modfy' feature is one:
A classic example is the "Password to Modify" feature of Microsoft Word, as revealed recently on BugTraq by Thorsten Delbrouck-Konetzko. This feature allows a document's author to establish a password that must be entered before the document can be modified. That would be a pretty useful feature -- if Word actually provided it. But as Mr. Delbrouck-Konetzko revealed, it is easy for anybody to modify such a file without knowing the password. In other words, Password to Modify is an insecurity feature.
Check it out. The Google Year-End Zeitgeist.
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