Dave announced Radio Community Server today:

Radio Community Server (RCS) is a software application for Radio UserLand or Frontier/Manila that makes it possible for individuals or organizations to host communities of Radio users. It offers all of the community functionality currently offered by UserLand's centralized system.

RCS is the perfect product for the development of private knowledge networks that live behind firewalls in corporate or institutional environments. It also is perfect for publications and ISPs that want to host public communities on their own systems. By offering this software for free, UserLand is saying: Let's Grow Communities Now.

Wow! This is a mindbomb. RCS costs $0. This is bound to grow the Radio/Frontier/Manila community. No wonder Seth says he's busy - he's working on a search engine for RCS.

It's going to be a week or so before I can dig into this but it looks like a candidate for part art of the Extreme Learning project at the local school. The price is certainly right!

All you computer language historians might want to check out the Computer Languages History (preview) timeline. My second prgramming language - taught at university - was Algol 68. My first was FORTRAN covered in school as part of the CSYS Maths class ;-) Ah! happy days ;-)

Oliver Wrede's owrede_log: Golden rules for Newbies to Frontier and Radio Userland

via SiT - MVU - Instructional Design Standards for Quality Online Courses

More than a year ago, MVU began developing rigorous standards to guide the design and evaluation of online course quality. Based on decades of research and the work of the best minds in the field of Instructional Design, we have recently completed a comprehensive set of standards that can now be used to design and evaluate online courses.

The relative dearth of posts made over the weekend is due to a hectic calendar of events rather than a diminution of my enthusiasm to wweblog. I didn't even find time to complete the exam paper questions that are (over)due B-{

Chores took up much of the day on Saturday but the drudgery of that was more than compensated by the 25th wedding anniversary party that Alison and Andy threw on Saturday night. Not that it was a wild party - it was just that the company was great and it was good to catch up with old friends.

Speaking of old friends, one of our teachers was also there. It's been 30 years since I was taught by Mr Forrest (Robin) - he was the PE teacher at Dunbar in the 70s - and we reminisced about school volleyball and rugby and Dunbar Sand Yacht Club of which we were founder members. Volleyball, in particular, since our Dunbar team won the East of Scotland regional finals in, I think, 1976. All the more remarkable was the fact that we came from the smallest school in the competition and no-one even considered serious contenders. The team had Robin to thank for coaching us so well. I was vice-captain. My best friend - Huey White - was the captain. Robin, sports, and sand yachting, were very positive influences on my life at that time. There's no doubt inspirational teachers can have a major impact on our lives. Robin was one such person.

Time flew at the party which is always a good sign. So it was 3am before we got home. I had about 4 hours sleep before getting up to take Heather to the farm she helps out on on a Sunday. I was on the beach with Rio, our dog, by 8 o'clock. It was great to have the two-mile long stretch of Belhaven Bay to ourselves.

TThe rest of Sunday was a basically taken up with Dunbar's John Muir Association activities. I helped to set up and staff our exhibition at a local volunteers' event in the afternoon.

Why I didn't get round to posting this on Monday heaven alone knows. Perhaps I was going to add some interesting news...

My latest thoughttrain about Extreme Learning (XL)

Linked from the Technology and Standards Watch Reports: The relevance of gaming and gaming consoles to the Higher and Further Education learning experience [RTF format]

Thanks to a colleague for e-mailing the link and providing the following synopsis:

This report presents an overview of gaming consoles and a comparison of consoles and the PC. Benefits of games to learning and the learning environment are touched on, as is the use of games consoles in research and teaching. Issues pertaining to potential future applications of games and consoles to learning and teaching, especially through the enhanced functionality of consoles, are addressed. The report concludes with an overview of other gaming platforms, and a summary of key points and trends to monitor.

Of course, some of us are using games consoles as a focus of study in themselves ;-) - [52.225] CAD Practical #1

...a comparison between the new architecture of the Xbox [xbox.com] and the architecture of A N Other console(s). The A N Other console(s) could be, for example, Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Dreamcast, or a game-specced PC (or even a Mac ;-))

I'm enjoying Channel 4's Salvage Squad series. Tonight's Salvage Squad - Thames barge episode was especially interesting because there's a family connection with Thames barges - Google Search: george smeed thames barge!

The Thames barge George Smeed is one of only a small number of surviving Thames Sailing Barges.

In Re: Extreme Learning (XL) Don announced:

Over the past couple of days I have handed back 120 reports to second year students (13 year olds). I took the opportunity to ask each student what they thought about the idea of a collaborative weblogging project along the lines we have been discussing. The response was very positive from students across the range of ability. I think we could get all of our students to partipate in the pilot project.

This is very exciting news. Looks like there's a whole slew of things that are coming together nicely.

I have some more thoughts about XL I'm mulling over but I'm really tired just now and will hone these on the train in to work in the morning.

Thanks for the very positive feedback Don. Looks like I'm going to be be busy over the coming months on XL stuff. Very much looking forward to it.