I am full of admiration for the Bristish Broadcasting Corporation. Unswayed by advertisers with a narrow view of a segmented market, they continue to push the limits of what their charter should mean in the 21st century. This time they are testing RSS delivery of MP3 content, also known as "podcasting".

Via "Auricle", I read that the BBC has made a trial feed for Melvyn Bragg's "In Our Time" history/philosophy radio series. This is such an excellent idea - a proper, useful, implementation of "TIVO for the radio".

Every now and then I notice something on BBC radio that I'd probably like to listen to. But radio recievers aren't like VCRs, with "video plus" or "electronic program guide" buttons so you can time-shift listening. I don't want to have to organize my life around the radio schedules ("sorry boss, can't work for half an hour, there's a radio program I like"). With RSS/MP3 I can get my regular aggregator to fetch the stuff I'm interested in, ready when I want to listen to it.

Further out, couple this with the rumblings of releasing archives of BBC-owned material under a "Creative Commons" licence, and we have the makings of an incredible academic community, able to research, excerpt, criticise and reconstruct this material. Add in a load-sharing P2P or BitTorrent delivery mechanism to reduce the load on providers, and we could have a new "golden age of radio".

I don't listen to music much. P2P/BitTorrent delivery of pop songs has never got me interested. Delivering good quality, in depth, radio education, entertainment and information on the other hand seems really appealing.

Via Bruce Landon and Online Learning Update, an impact of on-line learning I hadn't thought of. Online learning used to prevent infection!

Everyone knows that when your kids go to school they share germs with the other kids. In most cases that just means a few colds and sniffles, but with a major infection such as SARS that risk is too much to take. So, on-line learning fills the gap when the schools are closed.

All the arguments about whether classroom instruction is more or less efective fade away if going into the classroom might mean death for the students.