Friday, December 23, 2005

eLearning Online courses key to PCC's future - Gale Rose, Pratt Tribune. The numbers are clear. Student populations are decreasing in the Pratt Community College service area. In order to keep student numbers up and keep the college going in a direction that will attract students, PCC has to maintain a product that will attrac [Online Learning Update] 11:11:19 PM    comment

open source Firefox Secrets. [Slashdot] book for the rest of us 5:16:55 PM    comment

eContent mapping More tag cloud visualization. Chris Gemignani at Juice Analytics has a much better treatment of tag cloud animation than the one I came up with the other day. Very cool! ... [Jon's Radio] 5:01:36 PM    comment

open source - bigtime Blender 2.40 Released. [Slashdot] 4:33:52 PM    comment

open source MySQL Beats Commercial Databases in Labs Test. [Slashdot] 4:25:23 PM    comment

blogs in education BlogBridge Adds Library Feed Suggestions!. BlogBridge is a really interesting idea for an aggregator, a Java-based client that you can run from any computer. They host your subscriptions on their server so you can access them from anywhere. It’s got a lot of potential, and I’m not just saying that because they asked me to put together a starter list of recommendations for library feeds. Jenny Levine Joins Us as a Topic Expert for Library Blogs “If you are interested in libraries or are involved with them, you should definitely check out Jenny's recommendations…. The list of recommendations come directly from the topic expert, and is first announced in our blog. At the same time they are added to our growing directory (on the left) as well as integrated into the BlogBridge application as part of our 'suggestion' mechanism.” [BlogBridge] Follow the link to see the list. There are a bajillion and one other library blogs I would recommend, but they wanted a dozenish list of starter feeds for the librarians new to RSS, so I didn’t want to get too specialized. It’s a little heavily on library technology, but I think that’s one thing the biblioblogosphere excels at and I tried not to get all tech-geeky. I think it’s awesome that an aggregator company wants to include an easy way for folks to find library-related feeds within their product, so big thumbs up to BlogBridge. I’ll be talking about them more in the future, so if you’re looking for a new aggregator, give theirs a whirl! [The Shifted Librarian] 4:21:17 PM    comment

eLearning BBC to launch elearning site for school kids - Net Imperative. BBC has selected digital agency Cimex, as one of the external agencies to develop content for the broadcaster’s new online learning service for children, BBC jam. Launching in January 2006, BBC jam is designed to encourage children to explore, learn and [Online Learning Update] 2:06:34 PM    comment

podcasting Podcasting could be the next big thing - Dave Peyton, Tribune Media. Podcasting isn't big on the Internet -- at least, not yet. But those who predict the next big thing in cyberspace say it will be podcasting -- the publishing of audio, and eventually video, broadcasts on the Internet, is growing and could become as big as [Online Learning Update] 2:04:24 PM    comment

audio All the World's a Podcast. It's incredibly easy to create and syndicate your own audio content. Here's how. By Michael Calore. [Wired News] 1:44:03 PM    comment

addiction Shape of glass influences how much alcohol is poured. When pouring liquor, even professional bartenders unintentionally pour 20 to 30 percent more into short, squat glasses than into tall, thin ones, according to a new Cornell University study. Yet, people who pour into short, wide glasses consistently believe that they pour less than those who pour into tall, narrow glasses," said Brian Wansink, the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing, Applied Economics and of Nutritional Science at Cornell. "And education, practice, concentration and experience don't correct the overpouring." [Science Blog -] 12:37:02 PM    comment

Brain Researchers develop new method for studying 'mental time travel'. Neuroscientists at Princeton University have developed a new way of tracking people's mental state as they think back to previous events -- a process that has been described as "mental time travel." The findings, detailed in the Dec. 23 issue of Science, will aid efforts to learn more about how people mine the recesses of memory and could have a wide-ranging impact in the field of neuroscience, including studies of brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. [Science Blog -] 11:09:57 AM    comment