OLDaily
By Stephen Downes
May 6, 2004

New Version of UK Education Metadata Profile Released
A new version of the UK Learning Object Metadata core (UK LOM Core) has been released. UK LOM is an application profile of the IEEE-LOM standard (just as, say, CanCore is) for use by British educational institutions. UK LOM Core will remain a public draft until July 31st. Short article with a link. By Wilbert Kraan, CETIS, May 6, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

XML TV Listings in RDF
This item is a bookmark for my later use when I turn my attention to events listings in RSS later this summer. By Matt Biddulph, Hack Diary, September 7, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Surf's Down as More Netizens Turn to RSS for Browsing
The story in a nutshell: "While most Netizens still surf to Web sites to catch the latest postings, more users have found that to be a laborious, time-consuming way to browse. Instead they are installing "newsreader" software that constantly plucks feeds from Weblogs and news outlets and pulls them together onto a single screen." By J.D. Lasica, Online Journalism Review, May 5, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Beyond Band: Music Technology Inspires Students
When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to be in the school band. Not being especially musical, I chose to play drums. The day came for band practice, and I was given a kettle drum and some sticks, put in the 'Drum Room' and told to practice, which I did, all by myself for a couple of hours. My tenure with the school band lasted through three days of this. Today's instruction in music, according to this article, is somewhat more inspiring. "Students in the high school and the junior high work with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) connections, which are in essence keyboards hooked up to computers... Music technology expert David Mash of the Berklee School of Music in Boston, calls it a 'musical word processor.'" Yeah, my kind of instrument. By Ashley Ball, edutopia online, May, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Commonwealth of Learning Conference
More links from the Commonwealth of Learning online conference, which today continues with discussions of open content and open source, resistance to technology and the use of blogs in learning: Planet Apache, a collection of blogs written by members of the Apache Software Foundation (an Open Source software development community); Fast Forward, Trinidad and Tobago's national information and communication technology plan, Imfundo, ocusing on the benefits of ICT in sub-Saharan Africa; Facts and Hypes of Information and Communications Technology, a discussion of ICT in Ghana; Blogging Across the Curriculum, Blogs and Learning Objects, and The Blog and the Borg: A collective approach to elearning (MS Word document). By Various Authors, Commonwealth of Learning, May 6, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

Analyst: Expect a 64-Bit Desktop by 2006
Every once in a while I write about 64-bit computing, a development that is taking much longer to roll out than I expected (my prediction in my 1998 paper was 'a few years' and I have since predicted 2004 or 2005). This article suggests that we should target 2006 for the arrival of the new systems - and, of course, the massive replacement of hardware and software that will follow. But when it happens, notes the article, it will happen very swiftly. Via Corante. By Tom Mainell, PC World, May 5, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

The Internet's Wilder Side
Inter-Relay Chat, or IRC, is one of the internet's older services. At any given time, according to this article, about 500,000 people may be using it to exchange ideas or, in some cases, software, MP3s and video files. The author captures the free-for-all spirit of IRC effectively, but although he notes that it can't be stopped, the story contains overtones that suggest it should be. That might not be so easy, though. As the diagram in the right column illustrates, IRC is a distributed network of connected servers and free-floating channels. Via Corante. By Seth Schiesel, New York Times, May 6, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect]

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Copyright © 2004 Stephen Downes
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