I had my first spam weblog comment yesterday. Thankfully I was able to delete it because I host comments on my own server. Not sure what I would have done otherwise. I do think we webloggers have been lucky so far. There's little we can apparently do to stop spam comments. I hope this recent comment I received isn't the start of a trend. I've already had to pretty much give up on email because of spam. I hope I don't have to turn off comments. Any tips out there for dealing with this?

I've uploaded a gallery of some pictures from our holiday in Pembrokeshire. All pictures were taken with my trusty Nikon CoolPix 950.

Well whadya know, I was on holiday not 5 miles from where Steve Hooker and family were staying in Tenby. No jokes about the hookers in Tenby, please. We were staying in Saundersfoot, a mere stone's throw away. Of course, being Welsh Steve would have blended in with the locals so no wonder our paths never crossed. Little known factoid, my paternal family are all from around New Inn in Wales, not far from where we were on holiday. So I guess that makes me 1/4 Welsh. There's lovely, isn't it.

Back from two week's holiday. I've never been away for two weeks before but people told me that a week's not long enough. So we went for two this time. I can tell you it's very tiring, at least it is if you try to pack a lot in. After trying to visit somewhere different each day I feel like I need a third week to get over the previous two.

Anyway, funny story. I was lucky enough to get a new laptop to take away with me, a beautiful Titanium 15" Apple PowerBook. I rushed the order through so that I could use it to post to my weblog on holiday using a Bluetooth GPRS internet connection to my Nokia 7650 mobile phone. I was the electric road warrior with this killer mobile solution. I could moblog anything from anywhere. Or so I thought. When we got to the holiday flat there was no mobile phone connection. I was incommunicado. Sweet. I managed to post a few pics from my phone when I got a signal but not the full blown mobile picture weblog I intended. Oh well. Maybe next time. In the meantime I'll post some of the best pics here and to my Fotolog.

I'm on holiday 9th-26th August!

What I've never fully understood is why there's only one SCORM. Why do people talk about the SCORM instead of a SCORM? The very notion that there can be a Shareable Content Object Reference Model for learning objects would seem to suggest that there can be more than one. What's relevant to the US Department of Defense in terms of e-learning is unlikely to be relevant to, say, training doctors. There's an a priori assumption made by many that one size fits all. This isn't a claim made by those developing SCORM but it has been an assertion that's formed nonetheless.

The work of IMS is to create interoperable specifications that allow domain-specific requirements to be catered for by selecting the most appropriate combination of specs. For example, a subject domain that requires groups of learners to interact can adopt aspects of Learning Design and Learner Information that fits their needs. A domain that's more focused on objective knowledge and the sharing of content might pay more attention to Meta-data and Digital Repositories Interoperability, and so on. More likely an individual subject domain would select a wide range of specifications to create a reference model and application profile. More precisely, they would create a SCORM for their domain (rather than adopting the SCORM that exists at present).

Expect to see at least one new reference model and application profile emerge over the next 12 months as initiatives such as IVIMEDS establish themselves.

This is a group I've not heard of before. I found a reference to the Observatory in the recent UK government's 'Towards a Unified e-learning Strategy' document. The Observatory provides an environmental scanning service to higher education, particularly the Association of Commonwealth Universities and Universities UK though the analysis and commentary they provide will be of interest to anyone in HE. Their monthly Breaking News commentary seems to provide some useful links in the field of e-learning. Check out their national reports section under 'Key Resources'. Loads of really useful strategic documents.