The Auricle

If you're working in the learning technology arena and feel pretty satisfied that you've got things pretty well bedded down in your institutions, based on a good well established relationship with your VLE vendors, then you certainly don't want to read this. Since the inception of Auricle I've argued in one form or another that […]

In a previous article eBeam me up Scotty - Drat, the lights have gone out! I highlighted the problem of different technologies interacting negatively. In our case the eBeam system in some of our teaching rooms was in electronic 'dispute' with our automatic lighting system. We now have a solution. Auricle, unexpectedly, played its part. […]

Sandy Britain's report A Review of Learning Design: Concept, Specification and Tools (Word document) is an excellent resource for anyone wanting a grounding in Learning Design (LD) and learning design (yes, I did repeat that). The report is part of the JISC E-Learning Pedagogy Programme. Read on for more. Sandy's document does a good job […]

Stephen Downes' Edu_RSS alterted me to Maish Nichani's article for the Australian Flexible Learning Community on How to use weblogs to create engaging learning experiences. A nice summary of why an apparently simple solution like a weblog can have a big impact. I like the fact that Maish recognizes that a personal point of view […]

JISC provides us with a little more news about the BBC Creative Archive Initiative which will provide us with access to potential learning material without transgressing rights. I found it particularly intesting that apparently access will be based on the 'middle way' of the Creative Commons model. It's good to know that Greg Dyke's inspired […]

One of the risks of publishing in web vectors like Auricle is that sometimes many hours of analysis, reflection, and eventually writing can be hijacked by someone, somewhere, who, with a few judicious tweaks, magically transforms the original article and puts it forward as all their own work. It happened to Auricle just the other […]

The TOIA - Technologies for Online Interoperable Assessment - project has just completed its beta testing stage and so we thought we would give it a spin. First a caveat, I'm not someone who claims to be an expert in CAA so my evaluation is that of a real tyro … but I guess that's […]

Auricle's focus is information, issues and perspectives related to the technologies associated with learning, but we still consider paper to be such a technology. Publishing your own book has been, traditionally, a non-trivial exercise, involving a long, complex, and potentially expensive, chain of interests and processes. But this doesn't have to be the case any […]

So far, I've been resistant to the concept of a specific e-learning strategy but, being a canny Scot, I've been doing some groundwork just in case my mind decides to change itself; if so I'll be ready for it. As part of the groundwork, I've started by asking myself is e-learning really so special and […]

The recent CETIS article Blackboard, OUNL deal widens Learning Design access (29 April) commenting on the Blackboard/Open University of the Netherlands alliance to enable the latter's Learning Design 'player' to work transparently in a BB environment perhaps rings the changes to the thinking of mainstream VLE vendors. It may only be me, but I've noticed […]