Fortnightly Mailing

Semantic Web - interview about early adoption in the life sciences

Worthwhile, if fuzzy enough to give podcasting a bad name, 10 minute interview done in December 2005 by Salvatore Salamone, senior IT editor of Bio-IT World, with Matthew Shanahan, chief marketing officer of Teranode, in which Shanahan provides examples of the Semantic Web in action in life sciences.

Google search syntax - summarised on one printable page (and a cross-platform keyboard reference)

Of course we all know how to use search tools efficiently. In which case this handy one-page summary of Google's syntax will be of little value. Personally I would like to have it as a mouse mat, backed up on the London Review of Books cross platform keyboard reference, image above.

All in a good cause - retrospective request for sponsorship

Over the Mayday weekend I ran two legs of a sponsored relay along the whole of the Pennine Way, which goes from the Scottish border through Northumbria, Durham, North Yorkshire, West  Yorkshire, Lancashire, finishing up in Edale in Derbyshire. Nearly 300 miles.

The purpose of the relay was to raise money (having fun did not enter into it) to bring some young people from South Africa on a visit to Sheffield organised by the Woodcraft Folk, a "national educational charity working with children and young people, with the aim of building a world based on equality, friendship, peace and social justice" - think of it as mixed scouting without uniforms, badges, or hierarchies.

Leg 1 I ran alone on Sunday morning from Middleton in Teesdale to the A66 near Brough. Good weather. Daylight. Up close to lapwings and curlews. 11 miles over fairly gentle and open terrain, with not much more that 400 m of ascent. All went smoothly. 

Leg 2 was different. By 00.15 on Monday morning, I was dozing in my car in Thornton-in-Craven with Dave Pearce, my running partner. The team handing over to us had got badly lost, chased by cows etc., and arrived at 01.45, by which time it was raining steadily. Our leg - 12 miles with 900 m of ascent - was across  broken moor and farmland, with plenty of stiles and cuts through walls, and pathless in many parts. Apart from the rather sparky shine of sheep's eyes in the light of our headlamps, it was pitch dark. About 2 miles in, Dave twisted his ankle on an old injury. From then on we had to move rather gingerly. By about 05.00 it was just beginning to get light (recommended - the transition from pitch black to indistinct monochrome, to the very palest of colours, to proper daylight). I ran on ahead across the wet and forbidding Keighley Moor, handing over to the next pair at 06.00 near Pondon Hall, where the Bronte sisters lived. Eventually the last team got to Edale only 1 hour behind schedule. 

If any reader wants to sponsor any or all of my 23 miles and 1300 m of ascent, please send a cheque - payable to "Woodcraft Folk" - to 312 Albert Road, Heeley, Sheffield S8 9RD, UK. If cheques are difficult we should be able to organise something using Paypal.

Marmots - so rich in fat that they are regarded as medicine

This memorable phrase in an article by social anthropologist Piers Vitebsky led me to his difficult-to-put-down Reindeer people - living with animals and spirits in Siberia and to his Arctic as a Homeland web site; and also to the quaint Marmot Burrow, which is a "single resource for marmot-related popular and scientific information, .... periodically up-dated with references, diagrams, photographs, and tape-recordings".

Dromography - making images by scanning objects

Here are some interesting images, and a method for making them, by Italian book-binder Carmencho Arregui, who writes:

Scanners are restricted to the mere reproduction of flat images. Some years ago I started to lay objects on mine and I realised that it was possible to get very interesting results.

To graduate from secondary school you'll need to complete at least one online course

According to the 20/4/2006 US Chronicle of Higher Education, the State of Michigan will require all high-school students in the state to take at least one course online before they can graduate, apparently because making students conduct some of their education over the Internet will better prepare them for college and the workplace, which relies more and more on online tools. Further details in the Chronicle's "Wired Campus".

Home Computer Initiative - will it be resurrected?

It looks as if the UK Government is rethinking its decision - see report in previous issue of Fortnightly Mailing - to scrap the Home Computing Initiative.  According to and article by Martin Veitch IT Week: 

In an interview with IT Week, a Treasury spokesman confirmed that the original scheme had been scrapped because it was being abused and that a replacement for the HCI more targeted at the “elderly and very poor” is under discussion. However, there is “no concrete timetable” for the putative scheme.

“We are looking at how we can best use the resources of HCI but avoid the abuses we were witnessing of people buying third home computers or iPods,” the spokesman commented.

See also this 3/4/2006 press release from the TUC, in which TUC General Secretary welcomes signs of a rethink.

JISC uses blog to support the Digitisation Programme

Earlier this month the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which works with further and higher education on the use of ICT to support teaching, learning, research and administration, began using a blog to provide an interactive news and views forum to support JISC's Digitisation Programme.

In the short term it is intended to be a space in which interested parties can post comments and questions before the Town Meeting on April 21 and a platform for coverage of the meeting on the day.

In the longer term it will be a place on which to post new information about the programme and projects and where those involved can comment and debate.

In praise of older bloggers. Guest Contribution from Kevin Donovan.

The Guardian reported recently that bloggers and internet pundits are exerting a "disproportionately large influence" on society. So, six weeks after I retired from full-time employment in education, I've arrived. First off, thanks to Seb for inviting this guest contribution - and for establishing and maintaining this extremely useful and accessible mailing.

Retirement has given me an opportunity to do lots of things, including to reflect a bit on what's happened to education during my time, and how technology and e-learning have come to play increasing (albeit disputed) roles. I started teaching in 1968, spent most of my career in further education colleges, and ended up with the then Learning and Skills Development Agency. Now I'm working part-time and finding more time for things I enjoy and am involved in otherwise.

My big introduction to technology was very privileged for a classroom teacher: in 1979 I was seconded to the then Council for Educational Technology (one of Becta's predecessors) and worked for the inspirational Geoffrey Hubbard. Apart from learning a lot about education and about 'technologies' (including - on a later secondment - becoming an early Apple Mac user), the first big lesson was that the core mission of education and training (if I didn't know it already) is for the student. (And here I confess to one of many prejudices: I can't stand the word 'learner'. Student, please, and teacher.)  The second lesson? That 'educational technology' is only incidentally about technology; the real ed. tech. is a systematic approach to teaching and learning. From those, all else follows.

But does it? The dangerous zealots of Neo Labor are busy sacrificing socially progressive education on their faith-based altar of liberal economics. Following the links in the previous sentence pretty much says it all for me. But most readers of this post will be involved in 'technology' and we've seen this flag flown by government and its friends to represent the boys with toys. E-learning will give us 'personalisation'. Well, possibly. But see elsewhere in Fortnightly Mailing - and worry about whether personalisation really means privatisation (where not just economic capital but social capital, values, emotions and finer feelings are also privatised, commodified and debased). Shouldn't e-learning rather be enlisted to encourage particpation and achievement and - a word we forget at our peril - solidarity.

How long is a blog? Is this one a rant? Ho, hum. I hope you will join a discussion anyway. Meanwhile - discovering that "The Wikimedia Foundation servers are currently experiencing technical difficulties" it's probably time for me to leave my desk for a while.

The South Yorkshire learning technology team. Guest Contribution from Nick Jeans.

This is a guest contribution from Nick Jeans, who leads the South Yorkshire e-Learning Programme's team of learning technologists.

E-sy.info is a VLE available to many primary schools, all secondary schools, colleges, Adult Community Learning and 400 small businesses in S.Yorkshire. A team of Learning Technologists have recently been appointed to promote the development and use of high-quality interactive learning materials by teachers, trainers and students which can be accessed via the internet any time, anywhere. These materials can be accessed through the  VLE, at www.e-sy.info .