The Course Profiles application for Facebook has been praised in a report by Childnet International and funded by Becta, the UK Government body for learning technology. The report's author, Josie Fraser left a message on the forum for Course Profiles to let us know: "I'm delighted to let you know that Course Profiles has been featured in Childnet's Young People and Social Networking Services report ... thank you for providing such a great example". The report covers the use of social networking services by children and young people in education and coverage of its contents (including a link to the full report) can be found on Josie Fraser's blog.

Last week I had the pleasure of being at the SocialLearn workshop held for OU students, staff (including many Associate Lecturers - the vital members of staff who act as learning mentors to students) and alumni to discuss and get input for the SocialLearn project (a next-generation educational social network platform, more information can be found in Martin Weller's slideshow). A few of the participants have already written blog posts describing their experience of the event, Jo Badge asked if this is a new OU philosophy, Nigel Gibson reflected that the event was a chance to "an opportunity to share space with some really imaginative, smart, intelligent, bright, awesomely clever and switched-on people", ok I like that quote I have to admit! Martin Weller reflected on the use of Twitter and how it added an extra dimension to the workshop. I've been working with my OU colleagues Nick Freear and Alex Little to produce some add-on applications for the platform, early forms of which were demonstrated. I also got the chance to run a small spin off workshop (for the first time) to explore scenarios for the use of mobile technology with SocialLearn.

I can't help noticing the number of Asus EEE PCs around now, it is strange to think that twelve months ago these weren't really about and there was still discussion of when will be the "year of the Linux desktop". Of course, events took a different turn, and suddenly the desktop didn't seem so important anymore. The real prize was a computer that was small and convenient, inexpensive and easy to carry about. The EEE PC came supplied with a version of Linux called Xandros (which I'd never heard of until then), but more importantly, in a fatal blow to the argument that Linux is too difficult for non-technical users, it came with an "Easy mode" menu that made finding and running applications very easy, with a tabbed menu and large icons. Now other manufacturers are working on their competitors to the EEE, and Canonical, the company that provides commercial backing to Ubuntu, has been working with a couple of them to produce the Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

After the relative ease of getting a local Moodle installation going on Kubuntu, is it possible to shrink this whole situation so we can get a few Moodle powered OpenLearn courses onto the Asus EEE PC and then take them with us wherever we go? It could be very handy to those who would like to learn but don't want to take a full sized laptop with them or even to those who are on the other side of education, the people who write the courses and would like the convenience of being able to work on them while out and about.

You might find your self in the situation where you have a bit of time to spare, but sadly with an unreliable, absent or just very expensive internet connection. This might happen if you are travelling, maybe on a long distance flight, or staying somewhere without internet facilities. Well now you could be using that time to pick up some new knowledge, maybe taking a course on a subject that has always interested you, or learning new skills to enhance your career. I'm not talking about one of those cheap CD-ROMs you see in computer shops promising to teach you vast amounts of knowledge, but are often disappointing, instead I'm talking about genuine Open University materials that can be loaded onto your computer absolutely free and used interactively when your are offline.