JISC11 video highlights available on-demand
Various Authors, JISC, March 22, 2011.

It is interesting to note that in a very short space of time we have gone from having too little conference material available online to too much. In the back of my mind is a though of some way of managing the information flow.

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When Orwell meets Baden-Powell at the NRC
Ghoussoub, Piece of Mind, March 22, 2011.

Coverage of a recent article in the Ottawa Citizen. "The various institutes of NRC will lose control of 80% of their budgets to the central management, keeping the remainder for "capacity development, curiosity and exploratory activities and business contingencies." And the "management team understands what we are trying to do. Most of them have made the intellectual and emotional commitment to help us move forward and are rallying behind the new agenda. Those who are still hesitant will need our help to develop their courage and conviction." Related: Who is standing up for Canada's basic research?

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IMS Common Cartridge Test System
Various Authors, IMS, March 22, 2011.

Lisa mattson from IMS writes, "We have found a problem with the schemas/namespace of the Content Packaging schema within Common Cartridge v1.1. We have corrected the problem and set up a beta test site with the solution." The link is to the new Common Cartridge validator.

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Model-driven mashup personal learning environments
Mohamed Amine Chatti, Ongoing research on Knowledge and Learning, March 22, 2011.

Interesting work. From the abstract. "In this paper, we leverage the possibility to use the concept of model-driven mashup development (MDMD) as an approach that can drastically tackle the aforementioned issues and drive the rapid and user-friendly creation of mashups. We then present the conceptual and technical details of PLEF-Ext as a flexible framework for end-user, model-driven development (MDD) of mashup PLEs." Thanks, Rita, for the link.

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Open Content Licensing for Educators
Various Authors, WikiEducator, March 22, 2011.

Tgere's a whole pile of materials in this open course in licensing for open educators. You'll be prompted for an 'enrollment key' when you try to sign in - the key is 'oer' (I really don't know why they don't just have the content openly accessible, instead of requiring user-hostile logins and keys). The course runs this week only; grab the material while you can and read it at your leisure later.

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Computer chips wired with nerve cells
Rachel Ehrenberg, Science News, March 20, 2011.

Heh. "researchers at the University of Wisconsin have found that neurons will gladly thread themselves through semiconductor tubes, opening up possibilities for interfacing these cells with computers." So - if you somehow clone neural cells, say from a mouse, and assemble enough of them together, and have them interact through a silicon network, is it life? Via Gearlog.

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Media Converter for Mac
Vlad Bobleanta, Download Squad, March 20, 2011.

Just what I needed for my trip to Spain. "Media Converter for Mac is a simple, easy to use app for all your video conversion needs." It's basically a shell for ffmpeg, the utility file converter that runs on Linux. Drag and drop your files into the box, then convert them. "Media Converter lets you quickly convert any video file into a suitable format for your iPod or for a DVD, while also letting you perform tasks such as ripping the audio from a movie." It's also free and open source.

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Reflections on teaching with blogs and open PD
Ronnie Burt, The Edublogger, March 20, 2011.

Set of reflections on the use of blogs in teaching and learning. This isn't a long post, but it's well-structured and covers the topic reasonably well. Topics include 'setting directions', 'encouraging discussion and collaboration', and 'assessing outcomes', among others. The post summarizes experiences from two sessions - "The first was an introduction to blogging – 30 days to kick start your blogging. The second was 30 days to get your students blogging." Both links contain further links to resources and activities.

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