(phantom) engineering

Motivation

2010-05-18T15:27:00.005+01:00

Sick of all those HR-sourced motivational that swathe you in cutesy images and twee Reader's Digest philosophies? Then try Automotivator and build your own. Just try to put a wee bit more creativity (and less bile) into the process than this one.

Thatcher? Don't ask...

2010-05-05T20:20:00.010+01:00

If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday –

- I warn you not to be ordinary

- I warn you not to be young

- I warn you not to fall ill

- I warn you not to get old."

Neil Kinnock speech in Bridgend, Glamorgan, on 7 June 1983.

For Thatcher, read, well, you know...

Livingston, August 2004

2010-04-30T12:28:00.003+01:00

On the eve of Inverness Caledonian Thistle being presented with the Scottish First Division Trophy, here's a photograph (scanned from a Caley Thistle programme which I never managed to get hold of) of the crowd at the first ever ICT Premier League game, a 3-0 defeat at Livingston. As the provider said, "Lonely In A Crowd". Still, being a Dundee fan must be even more depressing... Eh, Donald???

Ich Bin Ein Forres Loon...?

2010-04-22T10:04:00.004+01:00

A wee bit of manic Doric rap.

Whilst we're on a Northern swing at the moment, a word for my Celtic-minded chums who had a great time when we, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, were relegated last season. You might like to try it sometime - at least ICT have won a trophy, been in a cup final and managed to beat Ross County...

http://bit.ly/awHDj2

Alex Chilton, 1950-2010

2010-03-22T15:50:00.001Z

Well, Alex, no doubt they'll listen to you now...

Google Street View (UK)

2010-03-22T15:30:00.004Z

View Larger Map

Why I don't really have a problem with Google Maps Street View:

The car is clean (for once);
Can't read the number plate;
Just left the Cawdor Tavern;
I ain't driving!

What's not to like...?

Michael Foot ,1913-2010

2010-03-03T14:42:00.002Z

"In my opinion, Marxism is a great creed of human liberation. It is the creed which says that when all other empires fade and vanish, our business is to enlarge the empire of the human mind" - At a Morning Star rally in 1980.

Supercaleygoballisticcelticareatrocious

2010-02-08T11:46:00.001Z

No apologies for this. Ten years ago today...

Youblisher

2010-02-04T16:10:00.002Z

Two years ago I tried to convert our college prospectus to a flippable e-book /e-zine format. Each page had to be scanned, saved as a jpg, embedded in our Joomla-based website with a commercial component / plug-in, and... I gave up. Too much bloody work & not too wonderful to look at.
Well, I suppose that prospectuses (prospecti?) are not supposed to be wonderfully interesting.

Cut to the chase. A tip from Pat Donaghy on her excellent Free Resources for Education blog this morning & it's game over. 3 prospectuses uploaded to the Youblisher website & available as flippable e-books in less than half an hour. Ready to be embedded into your website with a wee bit of HTML cut 'n' paste.

So this isn't really cutting edge any more? Well, our marketing people, on their weekly trawl through the library website for any delinquent language, e.g. vaguely humorous entries, were much impressed. Need I say more?

Anyway here's an example, the JISC Guide to Second Life:

http://www.youblisher.com/

You didn't really want a prospectus, did you?

The deal goes down...

2010-02-02T12:48:00.001Z

At last. The wanderer returns. A new album from Gil Scott Heron out next Monday (7th)

Holocaust Memorial Day

2010-01-27T14:52:00.005Z

Some educational materials.

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/default.htm
An overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, movies, and literature

Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive (USHMM)
http://resources.ushmm.org/film/search/index.php
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive. The Archive serves as a comprehensive informational and archival resource worldwide for moving image materials pertaining to the Holocaust and related aspects of World War II.

Witnessing The Holocaust (BBC Archive)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/holocaust/index.shtml
This site provides free access to a collection of online archive films and recordings relating to the Holocaust of the Jewish population during the Second World War.

Yad Vashem's Channel (YouTube)
http://youtube.com/user/YadVashem
Containing the world's largest repository of information on the Holocaust, Yad Vashem is a leader in Holocaust education, commemoration, research and documentation.

The Holocaust History Project
http://www.holocaust-history.org/
The Holocaust History Project is a free archive of documents, photographs, recordings, and essays regarding the Holocaust, including direct refutation of Holocaust-denial.

Image: Remember by tochis from Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons licence.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43217080@N00/1302364866

2010 Horizon Report

2010-01-15T12:00:00.001Z

Just published, the Tomorrow's World annual ( of Higher (& Further) education. Sorry. Too cynical. The annual Horizon Report is always interesting.

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC’s Horizon Project, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education.

Some technologies may not be relevant to FE but much of them are. The report is broken down into three sections: technologies on the brink of adoption; those which may be adopted in 2-3 years; and in 4-5 years.

Imminent? Mobile computing & Open Content. Fair enough.

2-3 years? Simple Augmented Reality & electronic books. 4-5 years? I'm not looking that far ahead!

Interesting that they consider that the day of the (academic) e-book is not here yet. With this I would concur. We need e-book readers); we need sympathetic publishers or a new publishing model; we're going to get David Cameron. [Sorry. A perfectly structured post (in my head) is being overcome by the office Radio One & endless wittering].

Maybe this is what the future will look like:

But, given that our ICT & ICLT people can't get their heads Windows Server 2003, DNS, LMSs & the alphabet soup that is education, maybe we shouldn't go to this year's BETT show but 2005's. They could handle that.

The Horizon Report (pdf)

The Horizon Report (HTML)

7 Things You Should Know About...

2010-01-07T15:28:00.001Z

Educause has been publishing these useful little (2 pages) guides for some time now. And I've been punting them at my teaching (academic) colleagues...for some time now. I've even uploaded the more relevant ones to the staff development area of the college SharePoint (sic) shrine. Thus far, seemingly to little avail. Little change there then.

As they say:

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's (ELI's) 7 Things You Should Know About... series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies and related practices. Each brief focuses on a single technology or practice and describes:
    * What it is
    * How it works
    * Where it is going
    * Why it matters to teaching and learning.

Subjects / technologies covered recently include next-generation presentation tools, Google Wave, collaborative annotation, microblogging, personal learning environments... This list goes on and very informative they are too. All worth a look. Even (especially?) for those with very short attention spans.

http://www.educause.edu/7Things

The Future of Further Education?

2009-12-31T15:36:00.004Z

Well, this blog is supposed to about education (as was Sid Waddell, once upon a time) so...

I'd like to think that there's an element of irony here but can't really see it. And didn't The Mirror used to be a newspaper famous for it's campaigning & investigative journalism? Or are we all Sun readers now?

Anyway, this final post of 2009 was inspired by a story from The Guardian - Darts academy aims to shed beer and tattoos image by Peter Walker.

All the best for 2010. With Cameron and his rapid puppies on the horizon, we'll need all the luck(?) we can muster. Send in Charlie Brooker I say!

What Matters Now : Seth Godin

2009-12-16T14:17:00.001Z

God knows that we need some fresh thinking in FE.
No. Perhaps not.
Maybe what we do need is listening to some fresh thinking. Not "we've never done it that way before" listening and "it'll screw the integrity of our security" listening and "it's not your responsibility but mine" listening.

Read this. Download it. Tweet it. But listen... Please.

What Matters Now, by Seth Godin

View more documents from Toscana Enterprises Corporation.

Seth Godin's blog & e-book download:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/what-matters-now-get-the-free-ebook.html

OpenLearn Climate Change (Blog Action Day)

2009-10-15T20:11:00.003+01:00

Back. For a good cause. And since we're (still) in the education game (no matter what the accountants might say), here's my no-pence worth. After all we're talking open courseware from the venerable (younger than me) Open University.

Global Warming (E500_111)
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1526
An introduction to global warming. 5 hours.

Climate Change (S250_3)
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2805
Climate change is a key issue on today’s social and political agenda. This unit explores the basic science that underpins climate change and global warming. 18 hours.

And on a less serious note(?), a video from Friends of the Earth:

See you soon...?

The Dark Is Rising...

2009-06-08T13:34:00.000+01:00

So Long and thanks

2009-05-23T14:41:00.002+01:00

Well, it had to happen sometime. Inverness Caley Thistle relegated ten minutes ago. (If you're an Old Firm supporter you can stop reading now. You really don't know how it feels. Missing out on a league title? What a shame!)
Anyway, thanks for the memories. The North will rise again. Sometime...
And this is how we got there.

And I won't even mention civilisation, city status, fastest growing city in Europe, etc. But I have. There you go. Good luck to St. Johnstone, bring on the County.

And Roscoe. Don't worry, you're still the main man.

May Day 2009

2009-05-01T19:48:00.003+01:00

...or given our present plight, m'aidez!

Anyway, here's one of my favourite scenes from the Ken Loach film, Land And Freedom.

And just to add a wee bit of the old learning technologies, the following are links to the same video clip.
The first is on YouTube with all the associated clutter, inane comments, attempted spamming and other such distractions. (To be fair there's just a bit of the good old political factionalism here, but if you use YouTube a lot, you'll know what I mean).
The second link filters the same video through QuietTube, which as it says provides "video without the distractions". There's a bookmarklet available too as well as a shortened, persistent bitly URL. Thoroughly recommended.

Internationale @ YouTube

Internationale @ QuietTube

Venceremos!

For Boris Johnson and St. George

2009-04-23T20:21:00.000+01:00

Not really for Boris. Or the right wingers that would hijack folk. For the Tolpuddle Martyrs and all the others. And Jack Jones (RIP). Read The Guardian story here. Yeah, I know, bloody left-wingers...

2 Wordles in one day? Well if it's good enough for the aforementioned newspaper...

Graphic courtesy Wordle - www.wordle.com
Lyric - Leon Rosselson : The World Turned Upside Down

It's A Mad, Mad World, My Masters!

2009-04-23T15:54:00.000+01:00

Sage words... List well.

How long you sayMichael? About 3 minutes but a great stress-buster!

Image courtesy Wordle - http://www.wordle.com

Earth Day 2009

2009-04-22T16:37:00.000+01:00

Would that he were wrong...

Sorry. Bad day at Black Rock.

e-Books for FE from the JISC

2009-04-17T16:32:00.000+01:00

The e-books for FE Project will provide Further Education colleges in the UK with access to a Core Collection of e-books on a platform which provides functionality suitable for the needs of the community.

Well, we've had the consultation and now we wait until May. Or perhaps not. There's nothing on the project website (http://fe.jiscebooksproject.org/) as of today - maybe we're all still on holiday - but according to a press release published on Wednesday 15th on Yahoo! Finance...

"...ebrary®, a leading provider of e-content services and technology, today announced that it has been appointed by JISC Collections to supply the e-book content and delivery platform for its multimillion-dollar e-books for FE Project. Under the terms of the contract, negotiated in partnership with the company’s authorized distributor 2info, the JISC will fund a collection of over 3,000 multidisciplinary e-books from ebrary and use ebrary’s technology to deliver the content to over 440 Further Education colleges in the United Kingdom. Participating colleges may also supplement this collection by purchasing additional titles through a framework agreement."

Maybe I didn't read the original project documentation properly. Maybe I just imagined that what we would get would be something along the lines of the HE Project (36 e-books). Maybe somebody's just jumped the gun a wee bit (although the press release is from ebrary). We'll see.

What I do know (and this is not a complaint), 3000 e-books is an awful lot of cataloguing if you don't have that MARC import module on your LMS... Goodbye summer projects.

Put people first

2009-03-31T10:31:00.000+01:00

Remember when the Masters of the Universe made poverty history? (That's not as in making poverty a thing of the past, but as in achieving a high (low) never reached before). Well, here we go again...

Beyond Here Lies Nothin'

2009-03-30T12:49:00.000+01:00

Free mp3 of the first track of the new Dylan album, Together Through Life, available at http://www.bobdylan.com/ available until 5.00 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday). Time zone? Who knows.

The music? Think 50s Chess. Think Ry Cooder.

Yeah, the full CD is probably available on Rapidshare or some other site somewhere, but this is kosher and some of us will buy the album anyway.
It's like Brownsville Girl:

Well, I'm standin' in line in the rain to see a movie starring Gregory Peck,
Yeah, but you know it's not the one that I had in mind.
He's got a new one out now, I don't even know what it's about
But I'll see him in anything so I'll stand in line.

Lousy cover though...

Kidnapped

2009-03-30T11:22:00.000+01:00

Everyone seems to have discovered Wordle all of a sudden. The Guardian Media section has a Wordle graphic of the Press Complaints Commission on its front page (sadly not available online).
So, with no apologies, I give you the first chapter of Kidnapped by RLS wordled.

Attribution: Kidnappled by RLL , http://www.wordle.net/ under a Creative Commons licence.

Passing the time on Planet Earth.

Using Moodle...properly

2009-03-27T13:03:00.000Z

We all, well, we all in FE, use Moodle don't we? For what? Loading up endless lecture notes. Which kinda misses the point. You can do an awful lot more and this book will show you how. You can even embed it in your Moodle courses. Now isn't that clever?!

Open publication - Free publishing - More book

The second edtion of the O'Reilly book "Using Moodle" by Jason Cole and Helen Foster. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License.

The Apprentice?

2009-03-25T12:36:00.000Z

Just remember as you tune into this reality show (as in entertainment) what Sir (as in Sir Fred Goodwin) Alan Sugar had to say about us fools in F.E. Colleges are, according to Sir Alan "where dummkopfs come to learn where to make mistakes".

Dummkopfs perhaps, given the amount of money which FE has spent on his seriously-crap Viglen PCs.

Full BBC story here.

Suggested alternative viewing - Only Fools and Horses on Gold. Same business ethics but funnier...

Image: Alan Sugar's Car by Nick Treby at Flickr (CC Licence)

Free stock photographs

2009-03-20T15:36:00.000Z

We keep getting asked for sources of photographs to be used in educational materials - Moodle, worksheets, etc. (The lazy option is of course to use Google Image search and sod the consequences).
Thus I'm putting together a package for my academic colleagues which will hopefully return them to the straight and narrow. So we might as well share them with you, dear reader.
All of the sites mentioned here offer varying collections of royalty-free, copyright-free, Creative Commons, public domain, etc. images. Generally, all that is required is an attribution which, after all, is common courtesy.
I'll have to admit that the site that I use most is Flickr and the easiest way to find Creative Commons photographs there is to use FlickrCC which is a Flickr CC search engine written by Peter Shanks. A very good place to start.
Anyway, these sites might just keep the Intellectual Property Police off your case:

And if that's not enough, Intute produced an tutorial, Internet for Image Searching. Send them back to class!

And lest we forget, the above image is Class Room by cobrasoft via stock.xchang used under licence.

Managing the complexities of the digital economy...

2009-03-20T11:44:00.000Z

This advert for an IT company appeals, not because I like cats (and I do) but because unfortunately it's what we have to deal with (metaphorically) on a daily basis. Here, puss puss. Nice techie / technophobe (delete as in/appropriate)...

Source: Joe Wilson

Google Maps - Street View UK

2009-03-20T11:27:00.000Z

Google has at last launched the Street View "version" of Google Maps in the UK.
Potential educational uses? Well, how about Glasgow Street Sculpture? Or, better still, a virtual pub-crawl? Why not start here - we usually did.
The Scottish bits are limited to Glasgow and Edinburgh at present - having seen the Google-mobile in Inverness & Forres on last year's return to civilisation I suspect (hope) that this coverage will grow.
You'll know when Street View is available when the wee man in the Maps navigation bar turns yellow. Drag him onto the map and a blue grid of the views available becomes visible. It's all pretty straight-forward after that. Except for turning the corners.

http://maps.google.com/

Source: Download Squad

BBC allows video embedding

2009-03-17T12:46:00.000Z

Sadly this does not mean that you can embed anything from the BBC iPlayer or, indeed from the BBC website on your blog or website. And the number of videos which allow this are, thus far, thin on the ground and restricted to the Technology section. Which is fair enough really.
There are restrictions too on where you can embed the material. Again this is reasonable. Full terms and conditions can be found here with full details of the embeddable player here.
I have to say that I like this although coverage needs to be wider & the URLs persistent. Time will tell.

Thanks to Andy Dickinson (http://www.andydickinson.net/) for this one.

Lost in the cloud...

2009-03-16T15:22:00.000Z

Delicious getting a wee bit out of hand.

Still. Looks good.

Image courtesy the good people at http://www.wordle.net/

Watchmen : The Motion Comic

2009-03-13T20:04:00.000Z

Have only watched the first episode of this but, but, I don't know. A grower maybe. The educational possibilities are endless (he blustered). ESOL anyone?

Available for $9.95 per episode or for £7.99 inclusive of postage at Play.com. You choose...

World Book Day 2009

2009-03-05T20:08:00.000Z

Forgot all about this. Excuse = it's a public library deal. Excuse = Up to eyes in OpenAthens LA 2.0.

"Anyway, by way of recompense, here's a downloadable e-book (i.e. pdf) of Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter.

"For those who aren't familiar with it, The Crooked Letter is kinda urban New Weird on a massive scale. It's been compared to China Mieville, Philip Pullman, Ursula K Le Guin, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, yada yada, and it won both the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards the year it was released".

http://ladnews.livejournal.com/112580.html

So, it's the 2002 logo...

It was 25 years ago today...

2009-03-05T19:50:00.000Z

The start of the Miners' Strike.

If you're too young to remember, and you're never to young to find out, try the Justice for Mineworkers Campaign website - http://www.justiceformineworkers.org.uk/

Fairtrade Fortnight 2009

2009-02-22T13:12:00.000Z

One we prepared earlier...
Since the requests of Monsignor Reilly seem to have been roundly ignored by the leaders of our educational emporium (Nestle anyone?), here's a selection of Fairtrade related videos from YouTube. All neatly tied up in an Embedr gift-wrap. Yes, I know thatwe're in the middle (middle?) of a recession but I think that this is meant to be global. Or does the developing world not count in these times? Less to lose I suppose.

So what does it all mean...?

2009-02-12T12:55:00.000Z

Another one of those viral videos that pose a lot of questions but offer no answers. Anyway, there are no answers because ultimately it's all meaningless. Still, if it makes you feel like a philosopher for 5 minutes & 16 seconds, perhaps that's no bad thing...

Remembering the Big Bopper...

2009-02-08T16:00:00.000Z

In all the 50th anniversary of "The Day The Music Died" celebrations, much has been (rightly) said, read & written about Buddy Holly; less so Ritchie Valens & The Big Bopper (Jiles "Jape" Richardson Jr). And to these ears at least, apart from the work of Mr. Charles Berry, Chantilly Lace just about wraps up everything you might need to know about the spirit of Rock 'n' Roll. So Arkive proudly presents:

An afterthought. The Big Bopper was only on the 'plane because Buddy Holly's bass-player gave up his seat for him. One Waylon Jennings. Spooky...

Embedr - "makes videos play nice"

2009-02-06T12:08:00.000Z

Embedr. This one's popped up on quite a few blogs of late and, for once perhaps, I'm impressed. Why? Because it's a neat way to aggregate videos from a variety of sources into a neat package that doesn't run way, way, way down that web-page.

Create an account (you don't have to but it helps);
Create a playlist from YouTube (or from a long list of other video-sharing sites such as TeacherTube);
Save the playlist & embed the HTML code into your web-page, blog, Moodle, Joomla!, whatever.

The widget below was created by Embedr using the CommonCraft social media videos from YouTube. Time taken about 15 minutes. Excellent. And free. We like free in FE! Joomla! users - turn off that WYSIWYG editor!

It Ain't Dark Yet...

2009-01-30T13:01:00.000Z

Seems like this is becoming a repository for the obituaries of, well, musical heroes, for want of a better phrase. No exception John Martyn who lived the wild life so that we could too.

Guardian Obituary

John Martyn website

I don't want to know about evil, I only want to know about love...

Happy Birthday

2009-01-25T15:04:00.000Z

Not much more needs to be said about the man, save he deserves more than the mealy-mouthed words of the middle classes every twelve-month. Or to be hijacked by Salmond et al for the "Year of Homecoming". See previous post.

Anyway, here's some good sites. The BBC one could be especially useful. OK, so the poems are read by the great & good but that is perhaps a little bit better than by some Grouse-fuelled banker from Bridge of Allan.

Robert Burns (BBC Scotland)
The complete canon (eventually) read by the aforementioned great-and-good.

National Burns Collection
Discover Burns close-up through our on-line gallery, virtual tours of the homes and haunts of the poet, and a wealth of poetry and songs.

Robert Burns' Letters
Blog which publishes the letters of Burns on the days which they were written.

Poems & Songs (Bartleby)
557 works with a glossary of over 1,900 words and phrases.

Robert Burns Interactive
What mair div ye need?

Image courtesy Joe Wilson at Experimental Blog

A History of The Internet

2009-01-07T16:09:00.000Z

Very good animated history of the internet.

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Homecoming 2009

2008-12-29T20:21:00.000Z

Oh dear. Welcome to Trump Manor. (Trumpton?)
I suspect that we'll have to revert to an ALT-Homecoming Scotland presence. Watch this space.

Rabbie, wadst thou wert - the warld hath need,
And Scotland mair sae, o the likes o thee!
The whisky that aince moved your lyre's become
The laxative for aa loquacity."

Hugh Macdiarmid - A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle (l.61-64)

Full reading (mp3) here - http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/MacDiarmid.html

But ye'll ken this a'ready, Wee Ake the Furst?

Boxing Day in Civilisation...

2008-12-29T20:13:00.000Z

...and just 50 yards from a decent pint of Landlord.

Davy Graham, 1940-2008

2008-12-17T15:24:00.000Z

No apologies for not posting a version of Anji.
Folk, Blues & Beyond.
Indeed.

http://www.daveygraham.moonfruit.com/

Support this!

2008-12-11T22:11:00.000Z

From today's Guardian:

The list of bands whose music is used to torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay reads like a grim roll call of American pop culture. Metallica, Britney Spears and even the Sesame Street theme tune have all been blasted into cells at Camp X-Ray, with the intention of traumatising and destabalising its inhabitants. But a new anti-torture initiative called Zero dB is hoping to bring an end to the technique by gathering the support of musicians whose songs are used in controversial interrogation techniques by US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

Odetta, 1930-2008

2008-12-04T20:15:00.000Z

Derek MacLennan - Shuas mun Chnoc-fhaire

2008-11-23T12:37:00.000Z

Sorry if this (supposed) e-learning, sorry, learning technologies blog has drifted further into the realms of self-indulgence. Blame it on the Boogie Man. Anyway this was picked up from a BBC Alba programme, Croit, and found on YouTube. Enjoy. And if you don't know the song, well, I really don't know where you've been!

Dulce et decorum est...

2008-11-11T10:52:00.000Z

How many of these are YOU using...?

2008-11-10T15:03:00.000Z

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: tools learning)

It's been a long, a long time coming

2008-11-05T13:42:00.000Z

But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will...

Levi Stubbs, 1936-2008

2008-10-20T19:07:00.000+01:00

Guardian Obituary

Seeing the light?

2008-10-17T10:31:00.000+01:00

For whatever reason - CreditCrunch anyone? - Amazon UK announced yesterday that henceforth all orders totalling more than £5.00 would be delivered free (albeit slowly). A good thing. Certainly there was something suspicious about a lot of items coming in at £14.98 when the minimum spend for free delivery was £15.00. Kind of encouraging you to stick that £4.99 CD on at the end. Or is that the mean teuchter or gotta-buy-a-CD reverse psychology. So now the first port of call might not be Play.com.
A not such a good thing. I've probably been guilty in the past of not acknowledging sources. Sometimes the same information comes from so many different blogs, RSS that it's difficult to tell where the info originated. Shame, then, on LearnTech News for not crediting Open Culture for the New Yale Open Courses story which they (he) has posted nearly 8 hours earlier.

Amazon UK
Open Culture
Yale Open Courses

Tech Therapy

2008-10-15T14:18:00.000+01:00

Tech Therapy is a regular podcast which features in the Chronicle of Higher Education in the US of A.

Episode 33 is entitled: Libraries vs. IT Departments and precis the podcast so:

Librarians and IT staff might share more similarities than they would like to admit. Scott Carlson and Warren Arbogast, Tech Therapy's hosts, talk about the rift between the two groups.

Some caveats. Higher Education. American. One of these guys is a techie (consultant).

Some issues. The gender bit? The young IT guy? Different tasks, different missions?

Some agreement. Neither are faculty (academic) and are therefore (perceived as)second-class citizens.

Have a listen. http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v55/i07/techtherapy/

Holiday in Cambodia?

2008-10-15T13:59:00.000+01:00

Not quite! But Jello Biafra had (and has) a point.

Apart from your carbon foot-print, would you really want to holiday here?

Yes? Oh well. No hope.

Image: En construcción by uno cierta mirada (Creative Commons)

Poverty: You Too?

2008-10-15T12:04:00.000+01:00

"We were poor but happy"; "'The poor are always with us', Jesus said". "We dare be poor for a' that".
Not much to hang a post on there. Cliche, Christ & Burns.
Anyway, having marched shoulder-to-shoulder with Bono et al in 2005 as we Made Poverty History it was refreshing to see him on the front page of a magazine that wasn't Mojo or Q. The magazine was New Internationalist. Not your usual Bono habitat I would have thought, unless to be seen carrying a copy whilst haranguing G8 (G1) leaders re their hypocrisy. See the Tax Justice issue here. Better still, subscribe.
Anyway, we information professionals (sic) are only the messengers; it's for yous academics to use the information we supply. And if you think that poverty is having to make do with a two-year old iPod or PS2, then there's some stuff here that you should read. Especially you Mr Daily Mail Man.

New Internationalist - http://www.newint.org/
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation - http://www.jrf.org.uk/
Oxfam - http://www.oxfam.org.uk/

...and meanwhile at United Nations, Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, & sundry business & government leaders pledge $16bn to help eradicate world poverty. That would barely buy you a decent stake in a failed & failing GreedMcBank!

The Deaf Issue | The Guardian

2008-10-10T13:39:00.000+01:00

Deafness probably isn't an issue, unless you're deaf or have to deal with deaf students, etc. To be fair, education has not exactly ignored deafness - we are inclusive after all. Evidence? Try the uniformly excellent BRITE site & its associated support guides, especially the Guide To Support For Deaf Students.
From The Guardian G2 today:
A new mood is taking hold of Britain's deaf people. This growing confidence is summed up by deaf comedian John Smith, who bounds across the stage in a superhero's cape and shouts, "Deaf power!" More than 8 million Britons have impaired hearing, ranging from the 6 million older people who are mildly or moderately deaf, to the 700,000 whose deafness is more profound. In this special issue, we explore how it feels to be part of deaf culture today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/deaf

BBC RAW relaunches in 2009

2008-10-10T10:14:00.000+01:00

From the BBC:

Skills for everyday life - Literacy, Numeracy, ICT Skills and Financial Capability

Put January 2009 in your diary for the launch of raw!
Using video content, BBC presenters and interactive activities, the raw website will be the destination of choice for adult basic skills.
Building on the success of its earlier adult literacy campaign, raw is broadening out to include a wide range of skills – numeracy, ICT, workplace skills, literacy and financial capability.
Partners will be able to user-test new upcoming content, share their experience with each other and download FREE marketing and workshop resources, ideal for integrating into existing courses and informal learning.
The site will launch with raw money and raw computers. In the future numeracy, literacy and workplace skills will be added.
Everyday life examples as routes into content for your learners such as setting up home, starting a family or planning for retirement
Easy to use tools for pension planning, budgeting and more.
Jargon buster to understand financial words and phrases.
Top tips from BBC’s Dominic Littlewood and Jasmine Birtles.

Every six to twelve months new activities will be added to areas of the raw website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/raw/

Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival

2008-10-10T09:50:00.000+01:00

Mental health is an issue that almost all of us encounter at some point in our lives.

The Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival runs from the 1st - 19th October (yeah, I know) and seeks to promote positive attitudes towards mental health, mental illness, support and recovery, and to effect significant cultural change amongst opinion-formers and the public through the insights and influences of the creative arts.
Remembered because today is World Mental Health Day. And the various events (cross-Scotland not just Weegieland) look "interesting", especially Music Like A Vitamin this weekend. Music Like A Vitamin? It works, believe me, it works...

http://www.mhfestival.com/
http://www.wellscotland.info/
http://www.samh.org.uk/
http://www.seemescotland.org.uk/
http://www.breathingspacescotland.co.uk/

Grandpa's Soup by Jackie Kay

2008-10-09T15:08:00.000+01:00

For National Poetry Day 2008.

Send a postcard to a friend.
Scottish Poetry Library

The Video Republic

2008-10-08T15:10:00.000+01:00

Demos has launched a new report, Video Republic, exploring the contours of a new public space enabled by cheap digital technology and broadband access. Production companies and broadcasters no longer hold a monopoly over moving-images - instead, a new theatre of public information has emerged. Spread across the internet, television, festivals and campaigns this emerging Video Republic is a messy, alternative realm of video creation and exchange, dominated by young people. Who inhabits, shapes and regulates the Video Republic and what is its future?
And most pertinently for FE, why are the powers wot be & their gestalt polizei blocking the likes of YouTube when other slightly "higher" institutions (want a list?) have openly embraced the medium & the technologies? Read this please...

Download the report here (pdf).

Demos via The Guardian.

vi.sualize.us - del.icio.us for images

2008-10-07T14:38:00.000+01:00

"vi.sualize.us is a social bookmarking website for visual contents — vi.sualize.us (read visualize us) allows you to remember your favorite images around the web, and share them with everyone."

If delicious is for tagging & sharing web-pages, vi.sualize.us is delicious for images. Easiest way to use is with the Firefox extension which installs on the toolbar. Just activate - add image to vi.sualize.us - click on the image you want to "save" & a thumb-nail is saved in your vi.sualize.us account. (Yeah, I forgot, you need to register). Tag the image when you're adding it. And you'll get this:

Why use it? Well, if you're working in education / e-learning & use a lot of Creative Commons images in your materials, it's desirable to acknowledge the source. Necessary even. (If you're using copyrighted images, well, stop reading now, this will be of no interest or concern to you).
Scenario. Find a "nice" image on Flickr, save it locally, upload to website / blog / whatever. Of course, you saved it as 2pussycats_playing.jpg & you can't remember the where, when or from whom. Tag in vi.sualize.us & you don't have that problem. And you can share your bookmarked images with your colleagues. (It's called collaboration).
And it's free. Highly recommended.

On the subject of Creative Commons images in Flickr, the advanced search option does allow searching for images available under the various flavours of the CC licence. Neater option is FlickrCC which again comes highly recommended. Use both & you won't have to bother about the copyright police ever again.

vi.sualize.us - http://vi.sualize.us/
FlickCC - http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/

Doublet barman done good...

2008-10-04T13:41:00.000+01:00

Good to see that my erstwhile colleague (a long, long time ago in what seems a different galaxy) and MP for East Renfrewshire has been "elevated" to Secretary of State for Scotland in Gordon Brown's Cabinet reshuffle.
Just don't go forgetting former comrades when we start building the new college in Barrhead...

Jim Murphy's blog
The Doublet on MySpace (what?)

Aaah, Jimmy Wales...

2008-09-28T12:57:00.000+01:00

The final remake...?

2008-09-27T14:14:00.000+01:00

I certainly hope so. Hollywood has always recycled - if I recall correctly The "Bogart" Maltese Falcon was the third attempt at filming Hammett's novel.
Now we have a remake of the classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still". With Keanu Reeves. OK, so the original looks dated & somewhat hackneyed 56 years on but will CGI save the planet from the ravages of Keanu? Somehow I doubt it.

And whilst we're on the subject of film, RIP Paul Newman.

This is water...

2008-09-21T16:06:00.000+01:00

I was only vaguely aware of David Foster Wallace before his death last week. Sorta bundled him in with Jonathan Franzen & Richard Powers & never quite got round to reading them, well, apart from Powers (File under "Difficult but (probably) worth the slog").
The McSweeney's Blog & Open Culture kinda explode & you wonder, well, maybe I should have been reading the guy instead of ambulance-chasing after the fact.
And reading yesterday's Guardian Review at 3.00 a.m. this morning, well, it struck me that here was a guy with whom I could totally empathise. I know that it's easy to romanticise the (recently) dead but on re-reading these articles this p.m. Shit, it strikes a chord. (Em7).

Speech by David Foster Wallace.
Christopher Tayler's appreciation.

Thinking Worlds

2008-09-17T13:42:00.000+01:00

Having been ridden out of Second Life on a rail for asocial networking (convicted introversion) and having failed miserably to furnish my Google Lively world either with avatar (straight from the Next dummy line) or paraphenalia (ersatz-IKEA), I have tended to avoid virtual worlds. Unless of course they have decent draught beer & a sociable clientele.

Then suddenly a double whammy. The JISC RSCs in Scotland are hosting a Virtual Worlds 2008 conference / seminar at the University of Stirling on October 29th & the September / October 2008 issue of Educause Review is virtually (sorry) awash with the (real) uses of virtual worlds in (US) Higher Education.

And then I discovered Thinking Worlds. Thinking Worlds is a learning educational game authoring engine which is effectively Open Source or at least is free for non-commercial use. Which I suppose (and this is stretching a point in this fiscally-driven FE world) means us. And very good it looks too.

The package consists of the Thinking Worlds player & an authoring program. There are also a lot of existing add-ons (learning modules) & assets (basically some off-the-shelf worlds that can be used to build your own add-ons). There's certainly enough documentation in terms of pages but then we don't read manuals, do we? Can be installed on a server (aye, right; we canna have that) or locally if you have local admin privileges.

There is probably a lot of work involved in developing any learning package although I suppose that the Medieval add-on, say, might be customised (and they can be) to resemble the mental if not the physical aspects of FE librarianship. A jest...

Certainly worth a deal of further investigation. Persuade an HN Games Programming student that this represents a worthwhile college project.
One gripe. Both the documentation and the online help suggest that there is a Thinking Worlds community. This would obviously be very useful but I sure can't find it.

Dammit, they've probably set one up in Second Life...

http://www.thinkingworlds.com/

OpenSim? Methinks not!

...and I feel fine

2008-09-10T11:27:00.000+01:00

Well, we same to have made it safely through the first 3 hours since the CERN Large Hadron Collider was switched on. Which, I suppose, is something of a relief. (There may be, for some, a certain prurient satisfaction in watching other people's disasters - hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. but the potential mass-production of black holes a mere 1299km away is too close to home for this physicist. (Higher, 1970))

Geneva, 10 September 2008. The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery.

CERN (Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire)
http://public.web.cern.ch/

CERN TV (YouTube Channel)
http://www.youtube.com/user/CERNTV

What was supposed to happen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM

Guardian Science Interactive Big Bang Machine
http://bit.ly/4tmUiq

...and just remember who Tim Berners-Lee (& friends) were working for when they invented this WWW thing...

Google Chrome

2008-09-02T20:07:00.000+01:00

Oh God, not another web browser! Ah but it's a Google web browser. Only been using this for about 20 minutes so no comments other than to say it has a nice clean interface - just exactly what's beneath the bonnet I don't know. Is it a Firefox killer? An IE killer? Or as some in the blogosphere are suggesting, a Windows / Microsoft killer.

Will we be able to install it on college PCs? Probably not. Why? Precisely...

http://www.google.com/chrome

...and fame at last - http://www.oculture.com/2008/09/the_50_greatest_arts_videos_on_youtube.html

What we did on our holidays...

2008-08-14T14:44:00.000+01:00

Just so you don't have to ask...

Win student essentials at The Guardian

2008-08-08T13:50:00.000+01:00

The Guardian has five packs of student essentials to give away, courtesy of all-unied.com. For your chance to win a pack of 67 items, from dinner plates to bath towels, correctly answer a question - answer can be found in the Guardian's 2009 University Guide.

One proviso: The competition (the "Competition") is open to residents of the UK aged 17 and over who have a place (or who are applying for a place through UCAS Clearing 2008) to attend higher education for the first time in September 2008. We reserve the right to ask you for proof of your eligibility to enter the Competition.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/competition/2008/aug/08/clearing.highereducation

At last, the new Delicious

2008-08-01T14:40:00.000+01:00

Nota bene: delicious not del.icio.us.

From the Delicious blog:

Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here

Over the past few days we’ve been transitioning Delicious over to our new platform, quietly starting with RSS feeds and APIs. Today we’re taking the final step and flipping the switch on the new web site: delicious.com.

The new Delicious is just like the old del.icio.us, only faster, easier to learn, and hopefully more delightful to use and to look at. Here are the main changes:

Speed: We’ve moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster. This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable. You may not have noticed, but the old back-end was getting creaky under the load of five million users.

Search: We’ve completely overhauled our search engine to make it faster and more powerful. Searches used to take ages to return results; now they’re very quick. The new search engine is also smarter, and more social: you can search within one of your tags, another user’s public bookmarks, or your social network. Now it’s easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at large.

Design: Finally, we’ve updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we’re hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn.

http://blog.delicious.com/

Perhaps not...

2008-07-21T20:49:00.000+01:00

Says it all really...

2008-07-17T11:34:00.000+01:00

Hiding here for the next 14 days...

2008-07-11T13:24:00.000+01:00

View Larger Map

The Evolution of Dance

2008-07-09T12:11:00.000+01:00

The most viewed (55 million+) video on YouTube.
Check it out. 'Sgood, awesome even, nay clever...

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Google gets its own Second Life

2008-07-09T11:31:00.000+01:00

So much to blog, so little time...

I dare say we'll add a little more later in the summer once we get all of the techie (hi guys!) stuff out of the way, but I thought that this was at least worthy of a special mention.
This doesn't seem to be based on a virtual world like Second Life (where I'm still standing naked trying to get clothed) but it is rather based on rooms. You'll need to download the plug-in software for IE / Firefox (the whole thing runs in a browser window).

Could be worth a look if only as a "libraries ain't that uncool" gesture. Truth is, we aren't. Naturally they'll be some techie problems (hi guys!) with software & firewalls & stuff. Check back later, but for further info check the Frederic Lardinois' post at ReadWriteWeb.

Lively website

21st Century Library / Learning Space Design

2008-06-19T12:32:00.000+01:00

...being a brief (what?) aide-memoire to an excellent seminar held at Blackpool & The Fylde College yesterday.

The Loop Learning Resource Centre takes the Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caley as a starting point (this is important, financial people) and adopts and adapts that centre's principles into what appears to be a very workable solution for us lesser mortals in the FE industry.

Thanks to Chris and her team.

Cast in order of appearance:
Blackpool & The Fylde College
The Loop (MySpace)
Les Watson
Les @ YouTube (JISC InfoNet)
Embervision
Fiona Emberton's blog
Intellident Library Solutions
Curious (what happened to the Oranj?)

Supporting documents:
Desingning spaces for effective learning (JISC, 2006)
Planning & designing technology-rich learning spaces (JISC infoNet Toolkit)
Spaces for learning (Scottish Funding Council)

Postscript:
How long before this newly re-found optimism is dashed on the rocks of managerial indifference and internecine (internetcine?) wars. Watch this space...

After the silence

2008-06-16T10:08:00.000+01:00

Don't forget. Firefox 3 available for download tomorrow. Should be here.

We seem to have reached the low-tide mark of this venture. We are not time rich. Google (Blogger) pisses me off with its endless captcha hysterics which eventually screw the formatting: there must be another way - IP address recognition? Wordpress? Joomla! And colleagues, the co in collaboration means with. Remember that.

Word verification?

Move over MIT, here comes IIT

2008-05-28T15:22:00.000+01:00

For someone whose wages are paid by an institution delivering courses in a more traditional fashion, maybe this interest in open courseware is distinctly unhealthy. But this is classy stuff...

From Open Culture:
In India, there are seven institutes dedicated to training some of the world’s top scientists and engineers and making the country an up and coming world power. They are collectively known as the IITs, or the Indian Institutes of Technology. And now some of the IIT courses are being made available in English on YouTube for free.

Topics covered at present are:

Civil Engineering
Computer Science and Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Electronics and Communication Engineering
Mechanical Engineering

This is a massive resource with each course taking around 40 hours. On brief acquaintance some look fine, others consist of a PowerPoint narration. Given that India is at the forefront of software development, etc. these resources are definitely worthy of your consideration.

The National Programme of Technology Enhanced Learning
http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/

The YouTube Channel
http://youtube.com/iit

Source: Open Culture

One who hopes

2008-05-21T12:18:00.000+01:00

From Bill Chapman:
I hope you'll allow me to add that the Esperanto Association of Britain offers a free Esperanto postal course. Suitable for those who would like a quick taster, this course gives an overview of the language in twelve bite-sized portions.
Once you have received the first lesson, simply return your answers with an SAE. Your tutor will reply with guidance and the next lesson. All learners pay is postage!

Further details @ http://www.esperantoeducation.com/

Tel: 0845 230 1887 or write to:
Esperanto Education
Esperanto House
Station Road
Barlaston
Stoke-on-Trent
ST12 9DE

Give me your answer do...

2008-05-21T12:07:00.000+01:00

The long awaited DAISY plug-in for Microsoft Word is now available to download from the DAISY website . DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) is a universal standard format for reading and publishing digital talking books. With the ‘Save As’ DAISY plug-in Word documents, versions XP to 2007, can now be saved as DAISY compatible XML format.

http://www.daisy.org/projects/save-as-daisy-microsoft/

Source: JISC RSC Scotland S&W

Of course the download is at SourceForge and it's zipped so we can't download it here so we have to go and get our technical chums to "release" the site which may take some time and anyway SourceForge is run by dangerous cyber-terrorists so we're not sure if we can do that without compromising the integrity of our network which we've seriously compromised anyway by having this obsession with "network integrity" and tweaking it so that it barely creaks along now...

Thanks. I'll download it at home.

Adult Learners' Week #1

2008-05-19T16:38:00.000+01:00

As promised a selection (ragbag) of sites which may (or may not be) of some interest to adult learners. All free and all come with the Phantom Engineer's seal of approval.

OpenLearn
The Open University's OpenLearn offers a number of free online study units related to the themes of Adult Learners' Week.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1217

BBC Adult Learning
OK, so it's a bit obvious but the BBC still produces the goods, from basic skills to IT and much more.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/subjects/adult_learning.shtml

Mi Vida Loca
BBC again, but this is new. Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life) is a Spanish course for beginners. There will be 22 episodes, themed according to language topics such as directions, shopping, etc. Each episode is a combination of real-action video with language teaching and practice, focused on developing communicative skills. First 5 episodes are avalable now.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/

Annenberg Media
Very, very American. Very, very good. A series of series of educational broadcasts on the arts, history, literature, economics, etc. etc. For example, The Western Tradition is a series of 52 half-hour programmes on the rise of western civilisation or, rather, civilization. You have to register to stream the videos but worth the effort. Like having the Discovery Channel on tap.
http://www.learner.org/

Interesting though that in this Web 2.0 age of collaboration (wikis, blogs, CMS, social bookmarking, etc.) collaboration still means, for some, allowing others to do their collaborating for them. I was (probably) much too far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.

eMail problems? Try this!

2008-05-13T16:45:00.000+01:00

Without going into great detail - after all we do not live in a blame culture here at aRKive - sometimes it is necessary to kinda think outside the techie box and preempt any, well, potentially disastrous loss of data.

So when your Exchange Server goes toes up about every few days, don't worry, be happy!

Or rather download a copy of the Personal Folders Backup plugin for Microsoft Outlook. (Why isn't this a standard feature?). Works in Outlook 2002 / 2003 / 2007. Choose which of your folders you want to back up; choose how often you backup.

Does it work? We'll see when they get the server back up (sic) on its feet again.

Download here.

Adult Learners' Week 2008

2008-05-13T14:34:00.000+01:00

It's Adult Learners' week in the UK next week so this will be the start of aRKive's (rolling) contribution. Why support Adult Learners' Week? Well, NIACE figures published today show that there has been a 3% drop in the numbers of adults participating in learning in the last year. And since we're in the lifelong learning business, and I suppose that business is the appropriate term these days, we'll try to do our bit here, on the interweb, since it's a wee bit late to provide anything in the physical world. Failure in communication systems, I'm afraid.
So over the next week there should be a selection of online sites which may interest the adult learner (and hopefully others), all free and, I suppose, available if you have internet access...and that's another story and another problem for another day.

NIACE (National Institute of Adult Continuing Education)
Adult Learners' Week 2008

Gi'e us ten guitars...

2008-05-13T12:26:00.000+01:00

Not ten guitars exactly and, to be honest, I'm not sure where this flurry of guitar-related internet activity came from, but here we go.

It's Guitar Week in The Guardian / Observer. If you didn't get the two-part guide in the weekend's papers they are online in their entirety (I think). With an added video ingredient. Very useful stuff even to these gnarled and rheumatic fingers. Every day this week (from Monday 12) they're publishing "songbooks" - tab, notation, chords - from, well, the usual suspects. You'll have to buy the paper for those though.
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/guides/playingguitar/

Some free software - information courtesy of the ever-excellent MakeUseOf.com.

Power Tab - A tab editor for bass & guitar.
Ultimate Guitar - Free tabs
911 Tabs - More free tabs
Power Tab Librarian Organise your tab collection
Guitar Scales 2.0 Learn your scales (requires Adobe Air)

Just a thought

2008-05-09T11:11:00.000+01:00

Did Wendy Alexander read (& subsequently act upon) Ian Jack's article in The Guardian of April 26? Entitled If Boris Johnson wins next week....it might be time to leave England and move north, he ruminates upon a future Britain with probably the most powerful politicians in the UK being two old Etonians (& Bullingdonians - seriously scary stuff), Messrs Cameron [2] & the aforesaid Johnson [8].

Just asking...

Give Nine Inch Nails The Slip...

2008-05-06T10:27:00.000+01:00

...or rather, they do, to you.

The new Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip, is available for free download (MP3, FLAC, M4A Lossless) at http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup . Just register to be emailed the download link, then buy the CD / vinyl in July.

Marketing ploy? Sure. Any good? Download and listen!

Source: ReadWriteWeb

MayDay, M'aidez!

2008-05-02T16:16:00.000+01:00

A day late perhaps, but, still it's the MayDaze weekend, so no apologies. And no apologies for the Billy Bragg version either. Don't want this blog to be seen as having a political axe to grind. This one's for Boris Johnson!

Look At Me

2008-05-02T10:55:00.000+01:00

5th - 11th May 2008 is Deaf Awareness Week and organisations working with deaf people across the country are inviting everyone to 'Look At Me'. The theme aims to improve understanding of the different types of deafness by highlighting the many different methods of communication used by deaf, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people, such as sign language and lipreading.

Supported by over one hundred deaf charities and organisations under the umbrella of the UK Council on Deafness, Deaf Awareness Week involves a UK wide series of national and local events. "The UK Council on Deafness are delighted to coordinate the all-inclusive Deaf Awareness Week campaign, promoting the positive aspects of deafness, social inclusion and raising awareness of the huge range of local and national organisations that support deaf people and their family and friends."

If you're in FE, you'll certainly know about the excellent Brite resources, won't you? If not, resources to support deaf students can be found at http://www.brite.ac.uk/resources_interactive.html

http://www.deafcouncil.org.uk/daw/index.htm

Learning Technology News

2008-04-30T11:07:00.000+01:00

Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my...remote.

How about a TV remote that's shaped like a 9mm semi-automatic handgun? This device "slides snugly beneath elastic waistbands for quick-draw access and features a detachable lithium-ion magazine, posi-lock channel changer and safety mode to prevent dropped pistols from accidentally going off (or switching to The Apprentice)."

Ideal for BBC Four, huh, gangstas? Librarians? We got this techie stuff sussed!

Meanwhile in a distant galaxy 30 years later...

2008-04-29T09:26:00.000+01:00

Have you ever wondered what happened to Han, Luke & Leia after the events of Return of the Jedi? [Not really]
Now, in BETRAYAL, the legacy that began with Anakin Skywalker has finally come full circle. Join Han, Luke, Leia, & the other heroes of the New Jedi Order in their epic struggle to maintain peace in the galaxy, as a new threat rises from the most unexpected of places.

Download a free copy of STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE: BETRAYAL and see why fans are raving about this New York Times bestselling series!

Available from today from 9.00a.m. (which probably translates as early this afternoon (or later if you're further east)) for a fortnight from the publisher, Del Rey.
http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/starwars/sw_legacy.html

Librarians like free. Librarians like books. Ergo, to like not what?
A marketing ploy? Surely not! Philanthropy? Exactly!

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Trying to make your e-life a little easier

2008-04-28T10:30:00.000+01:00

First of a series (we'll see) of tips harvested from...everywhere.

Sources acknowledged when we can remember them.

Google Search
Google can reorder search and news results from the last day, week, a few months, or entire year by adding a small string to the end of the search URL. After you've done your search, just add &as_qdr=d to the address bar (at the end!) & press Enter. You'll get a custom drop-down box that lets you re-order results based on date. It's great for getting past the same top results you've already looked through, as well as grabbing only the newest links related to gadgets, software, or whatever else you're searching.
Source: Tech-Recipes

Windows XP Service Pack 3
This has been downloadable from various sites for the last week or so but is available from Microsoft as of today. Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system.
Source: Microsoft

11 Tips for Better Tech Support
Not so much a tip, more of a timeous dose of sage advice.
Former tech support guy Brett Kelly says there are a few things you can do to get the computer help you need most efficiently over the phone. Whilst this is aimed at users of the tech support that comes as part, say, of a service or hard/software package, all the advice is eminently pertinent when dealing with in-house ICT support. Example:
Don’t be an Ass - One of the quickest ways you can get to the land of the banished is to treat the tech like some peon who’s just “beneath you” or something. Trust me, if you want help, humility is like gold. And if you think that certain tech support people won’t give you the runaround if your attitude is sour, you’re very, very wrong. Very.
Source: Lifehacker / Cranking Widgets blog

Alternatives to Acrobat Reader
I don't know exactly how widespread the problems with Acrobat Reader are but on the evidence of browser crashes / freeze-ups experienced within these hallowed walls, I suspect that there is a problem, Houston. (Nice brewery though).
Two tips:
1) Foxit Reader is a completely free, useful utility for viewing .PDF files. It has a very small footprint, taking up only 2MB of disk space–about one-tenth what Adobe Reader takes. Best of all, you can perform many functions that you would typically turn to the expensive verson of Adobe Acrobat for, including editing text in .PDFs, annotating files, and saving completed .PDF forms.
2) If you're using Firefox (and you should be), PDF Download relieves the pain experienced when encountering PDF files on the Web. Whenever you click on a PDF file, PDF Download lets you know before trying to open it, and then offers you choices such as downloading, opening, or converting it straight to HTML.
Source: Robert Waugh / The Phantom Engineer

A small point tool used for making holes? That's awl folks!

VADS relaunch

2008-04-25T14:59:00.000+01:00

The Visual Arts Data Service relaunched (rebranded?) earlier this month and offers students & staff access to 100,000+ images.

VADS has been providing services to the academic community for some 11 years and has built up an impressive portfolio of visual art collections. The image resources are free and copyright cleared for use in UK Higher and Further Education, providing a valuable resource to students and academics which can be incorporated into lectures, seminar presentations and essays.

Collections available online through the site include 'Spanish Civil War Posters', 'Concise Art', and 'Posters of Conflict' all from the Imperial War Museum, and the Design Council Archives and Slide Collection from University of Brighton and Manchester Metropolitan University respectively. There's an awful lot more.

http://www.vads.ac.uk/index.php

Songs of Praise

2008-04-23T12:42:00.000+01:00

Caveat emptor. The Man invented holidays to confound the blogger. We say "less holidays now".

A few essential apps & websites for your (re)consideration.

Google Reader
After flirting with Pageflakes, Netvibes, etc., we've returned to the Google Reader fold because, basically, it does all this librarian needs without the FlashJava frippery. Example: new additions to Intute's resources accessed & tagged in a couple of minutes. Example: your del.icio.us network's tags added in seconds. Essential.

WAMP
WAMP installs Apache, MySQL & PHP on a desktop PC. Why would you want to do this? Well, if you don't want to hang around for months waiting for your tech people to install Moodle so you can experiment before they let you loose on the full monty, or you want to try Joomla! 1.5 before upgrading & migrating your original website, WAMP is for you. Simple install turns your PC into a web-server. Installing apps reasonably simple. No registry changes means that you can circumvent techie paranoia. Come play in the sandbox.

G24
G24 brings you the latest stories from the Guardian, guardian.co.uk and the Observer - updated throughout the day. There are five pdfs to choose from: Top stories, World, Media, Business and Sport. Simply click on the Open pdf link and print.

Britannica Webshare
If you’re a Web publisher—a blogger, webmaster, or writer—you can get complimentary access to the complete Encyclopædia Britannica online. It’s a rich trove of reliable and high-quality information that you can use to check quick facts, etc. [The facts, ma'am, just the facts. Which would be nice.] Register here.

Inanimate Alice
Definitely a work in (pretty slow) progress but one worth watching. Why? Because.
'Inanimate Alice' tells the story of Alice, growing up in the early years of the 21st century. Written and directed by writer Kate Pullinger and digital artist Chris Joseph, this series of multimedia, interactive episodes uses a combination of text, sound, images, and games as Alice takes us on a journey through her life from the age of eight through to her twenties.

YouTube
Worthless, worthless, worthless. Pussy cats, drunk kids, duff video, Duff beer and porn. Worthless.
Well, perhaps not. Notwithstanding the presence of a number of Ivy League (Tossing & Turning) universities with YouTube channels, Southwest Tech in Wisconsin have IMO an exemplary channel which offers 1 minute videos of students describing the courses that they're following. Marketing propaganda perhaps but not the dead (& expensive) propaganda of the printed prospectus.
SouthWest Tech channel on YouTube.

...and the graphic. Roll your own at http://www.fodey.com.
PostScript: so Blogger doesn't handle animated gifs? Shame! 'Twas brilliant too, believe me!

Tho' I Be Aul'

2008-04-04T09:34:00.000+01:00

YE needa think tho' I be aul',
An' a' my bonnet haps is grey,
My heart is grizzen, crined or caul'
An' never kens a dirl the day.

A bonny lass can stirr me still,
As deep her mither did when young,
An' aul' Scots sang my saul can fill
As fu's when first I heard it sung.

...

There's some hae looks, there's mair hae claes,
That's but the brods, the beulk's the thing,
The heart that keeps for dreary days
Some weel-remembered merry spring.

The ca' me fey or ca' me feel,
Clean draft or dotit, deil may care,
Aye faur there's fun, at Pase or Yeel,
Gin I be livin' I'll be there.

Charles Murray - Tho' I Be Aul'

Praise of Folly

2008-04-01T11:42:00.000+01:00

"The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are."

Desiderius Erasmus - Praise of Folly

Source: Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian Review, 29 March 2008

Picture Credit: Holbein's studies of Erasmus' hands, in silverpoint and chalks, ca. 1523. The Louvre

Here comes that rainbow again...

2008-04-01T10:40:00.000+01:00

Today, a thousand epiphanies:

IT Help Desks around the world stopped saying "Just reboot your system" and admitted they hadn't a clue;
4x4 drivers everywhere threw away their personalised number-plates & Princess-On-Board silliness and embraced the new Fiat 500;
students handed in work that was properly spell-checked, grammatical and not cut 'n' pasted from Wikipedia;
the last wearer of a "It's All About Me" t-shirt did the decent thing at the Erskine Bridge;
teachers taught;
somewhere, someone thought - there must be a better way to find information than constantly using the first page of Google results;
Daily Mail / Sun / Star readers did the decent thing at the Erskine Bridge;
John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton invite Noam Chomsky to stand unopposed in November. Ralph Nader spoils the party;
Blogger lightened up on the Captcha overkill
new legislation states that Heat, Hello, Nuts & Zoo readers, as not "fit and proper" citizens will not be allowed to vote in future UK elections. The Erskine Bridge beckons;
all MySpace / Bebo / Facebook egoists (LOL) are abducted by each other (LOL);
txtspeak disappears IMHO LOL;
Richard Branson bought this blog for £750,000;
Marty Scorsese optioned the film rights for £500,000;
all worthless bloggers everywhere were suddenly termin

Adobe Photoshop Express

2008-03-28T10:59:00.000Z

Couldn't afford Photoshop? Photoshop elements still to expensive? Both too complex for your bog-standard digital-snapper?
Try Photoshop Express:

Simple, Fun and Accessible(?)

With Photoshop Express, digital photos can be uploaded and sorted anytime, edited non-destructively to always preserve the original image, and shared from anywhere, on any Web browser. In a few easy clicks, Photoshop Express empowers anyone to make standard edits, such as removing blemishes and red-eye, converting to black and white, cropping and resizing, and much more.

Full service is available to US residents only at present.
It does work though for the rest of us, just a bit slow.

Adobe Photoshop Express testdrive (no need to register).