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The ever-increasing production of digital textual data in a wide variety of forms presents both opportunities and challenges to researchers. The opportunities derive from the rich availability of secondary data with which to work. The challenges are the familiar ones of lack of time and resources to undertake the analysis. The qualitative researcher is often faced with a trade-off between analysing a large amount of textual data at a cursory level and selecting (sampling) a small subset of that data for deeper analysis. This paper describes a new computer-aided technique for automatically analysing large amounts of textual data. The approach is proposed as an addition and a complement to the existing computer-aided qualitative data analysis software methods rather than as a substitute. The technique needs little investment either financially or in terms of learning to use the software. The particular software used has been developed principally for knowledge-management purposes; however it has clear potential for researchers. Examples of the use of the technique are given as well as suggestions for further applications. The paper also weighs the advantages and disadvantages of the technique compared with more familiar approaches. (Contains 16 notes and 8 figures.)

In April 2008, one sees the start of the consultation on the second phase of the government's e-strategy for education, published in 2005 as "Harnessing technology: transforming learning and children's services." This follows hard on the heels of the progress report and implementation plan for the technology strategy for further education (FE) and skills ("Harnessing Technology for Further Education, Skills and Regeneration," Becta 2008), which details the work being done to develop the strategy for the FE and skills sector. In this article, the authors look at how the new ambitions for the system-wide strategy have been developed and at new concerns arising from recent government policies. They consider the implications of the new strategy and examine data from recent studies.

Teachers in adult and community learning (ACL) are making increasing use of technology in their work, while the overwhelming majority of providers are devising strategies for the implementation and monitoring of e-learning and technology. These are two of the findings of a survey, commissioned by Becta, the government agency promoting the use of information and communications technology, of the level of technology adoption and engagement in ACL. The second annual study of its kind, it is one of four parallel surveys, looking also at offender learning, work-based learning and further education, which assess progress made against the Government's "Harnessing Technology" strategy ambitions. Compared to the 2004 and 2006 surveys, it is clear that considerable progress has been made in terms of access to technology, particularly computers. In 2008-2009, the year covered by the survey, all practitioners had access to computers for their work, although this does not yet represent one computer per practitioner. This indicates that organisations are making provision for staff to access computers both centrally and in specific learning centres, a finding confirmed by practitioner data. This is a considerable improvement upon the findings of earlier research, although such access is not equally reflected in all community and outreach locations. In terms of organisational strategies, nearly all (95 per cent) local authority providers or contractors now have e-learning or technology policies in place, with the majority of these being updated and communicated to staff on at least an annual basis, suggesting high levels of strategic commitment. This commitment is equally reflected in staff and provider attitudes to technology, which were overwhelmingly positive, particularly in terms of learner impact. Practitioners felt that information and learning technology (ILT) had led to "creative teaching and learning", "learner access to relevant digital/electronic content", and "flexibility of delivery", though practitioners were less confident in identifying the impact of technology on learner attainment, progression and retention.

Since the advent of Web 2.0, which established the participatory web as a platform, we have been involved in rethinking how we might design and support learning to match the potential of this possible new webbased world of education. In our Open Context Model of Learning (Luckin et al 2010) we captured what we had learnt from theory and web-based learning projects, arguing for a model of "informal e-learning", and for fresh thinking about pedagogy in terms of both andragogy (collaboration) and heutagogy (creativity). We thought this provided an opportunity to rethink the contexts in which learning might take place in the 21st century, as education could be released by the potential of new technology platforms and tools. For us Web 2.0 highlighted the informal social processes of learning over the institutional, formal processes of organising the institutions of education, which raises ethical, cultural and social issues concerning how we might design new contexts of learning. When the EU identified that, post-Bologna, we should look to integrate informal, non-formal and formal learning, we found this inspiring and wrote the Emergent Learning Model (ELM), to both capture what we knew from our own work with informal, nonformal and formal learning and also to be socially inclusive. ELM builds on the Open Context Model and is an attempt to be a learning design tool, what we call a "development framework" for the Digital Agenda Post-Web2.0. We will discuss its origins, the "development framework" we created and how we have used it in designing new learning projects Ambient Learning City & WikiQuals [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]