Monthly Archive for January, 2004

http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_freesoft/
Software/Courseware_Tools/

Via an email from Jim Sibley came mention of this list of open or free ‘courseware tools’ - there were a couple of ones new to me (MANIAC and OLAT being examples). But the reference was as useful also for introducing me to the UNESCO Free Software Portal which collects together a large number of resources on the topic. - SWL

http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content
&id=12840&repository=0001_article

Via Ray Schroeder comes this article from Stanford outlining the possible future of the CourseWork project and stating a possible $730K a year price tag to keep it going. This seems unlikely, but probably shouldn’t be discounted out of hand. - SWL

http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&
lid=1&sid=54598&adBanner=eGovernment

Article from ITBusiness.ca that seems to accurately capture the current state of affairs at the National level in Canada when it comes to funding elearning initiatives, likely no surprise to attendees of the CANARIE/Industry Canada meetings a few weeks back in Vancouver as summarized by Paul Stacey’s recent article. - SWL

http://projects.aadlcolab.org/repository-directory/

New from the Academic ADL Co-Lab is this searchable database of existing learning object repositories. Most of these are not software you could download to run your ‘own’ repository but instead existing institutional or subject-based repositories in which you *might* be able to participate (which raises the entirely sticky issue of ‘how many repositories do we actually need?’ but that’s for another post!)

In particular pay attention to the ‘Advanced Search’ feature - it seems to confirm the same set of repositories that support RSS as I have previously discovered, but also lets you do some neat things like find out which repository projects support the OAI Harvesting Protocol, or which ones support Global Unique Identifiers (GUIDs). - SWL

I just noticed today that people still refer to the old page I built illustrating RSS feeds from known Repositories. That page was built on my old Radio site using a simple Radio macro that rendered RSS as HTML. Since then I’ve moved the site into MoveableType and onto another host, but I have only recently got around to recreating this page. This time, though, I did it using a public Bloglines page (one of the beauties of a web-based aggregator that lets you share!)

The new page illustrating the results of these feeds is at http://www.bloglines.com/public_display?username=EdTechPost&folder=322938. It’s actually pretty interesting to have them in one’s aggregator as you get a better sense of how regularly materials are being added (not that regularly). As before, the page includes feeds from:

• Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects (CAREO, http://www.careo.org/)
• Maricopa Learning Exchange (http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/index.php)
• The MedWeb Testbank Search (http://medweb5.bham.ac.uk/databases/interop/mcqs)
• Humbul database (http://www.humbul.ac.uk/help/rss.html)
• UK Centre for Materials Education (http://www.materials.ac.uk/index.asp)
• Edna Online (http://www.edna.edu.au)
• Merlot (http://www.merlot.org/)

Originally when I built this it was mostly to try and illustrate for myself the results and the utility of such feeds. The page is still fairly referenced, though, and so I have tried to add new ones as I find them. If you know of other Repositories that offer RSS feeds please let me know and I will add it to the list. Eventually I will decomission the old site, and will probably do something to re-direct this particular page.

The title of this post is a question, and I’m actually interested to hear a few different things from people out there:

• not only what you think the difference between ‘digital repository’ software (e.g. DSpace) and ‘learning object repository’ software (e.g. CAREO) actually is, but also
• are any differences you think exist there because these types of systems really are trying to accomplish different functions, or are dealing with heterogeneous resource types, or are they different simply because they originated in different camps within educational institutions (libraries and archivists versus educators or educational technologists)? Other reasons?
• should institutions adopt a single institutional repository system for both archiving research publications and their learning objects? Do you work at, or do you know of, an institution that is adopting a single repository software solution for all of there needs?

more…
Continue reading ‘‘Institutional Digital Repositories’ and ‘Learning Object Repositories’ - What’s the Difference?’

http://www.medicalrounds.com/

This site, in part the work of the Lion’s Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, presents a large collection of talks on a variety of medical topics in the form of quicktime audio streams and slide shows. One could argue for a variety of reasons that these aren’t ‘proper’ learning objects, but it seemed a good way of disseminating some of the knowledge, as well as some of the dialog, that is found in teaching hospitals and medical rounds across the country. The issue it did raise for me, though, was how quickly some of this scientific knowledge becomes dated, and how important it is to be clear about when a certain presentation took place. - SWL

http://raymondyee.net/wiki/
CanadianElearningWorkshop2004

Well, I can’t be there myself, but reading Raymond’s notes in his wiki is the next best thing. He is involved in the hugely intriguing Scholars Box project, part of the Interactive Univeristy Project at UC Berkeley, and brings his own great context to these notes. Thanks for sharing these, Raymond! - SWL

http://ets.berkeley.edu/etstandards/sakai/

Similar to the last webcast they provided back in December concerning Lionshare, the University of California system (and specifically UC Berkeley, who seem to be hosting the event) are providing a webcast stream of a presentation by Joseph Hardin, the Director of the Collaborative Technologies Lab Media Union at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor concerning the SAKAI project. I only caught the morning of the Lionshare talk, so don’t know if the question and answer sessions in the afternoon are typically broadcast. But hopefully they will be for this one, as the ‘Questions on Chef and Sakai’ put together by the UC Berkeley Educational Technology Services - Learning Systems Group are of great interest and extremely pertinent to anyone embarking on the development or deployment of an open source CMS or other elearning component in an post-secondary enterprise environment. The talk is on Monday, January 12th, 2004 from 9 am - 12 noon PST, so I guess there is some small solace in not being able to get to the CANARIE sponsored sessions in Vancouver that day. - SWL

You may have noticed that EdTechPost has been a bit quiet of late. Apart from the regular seasonal break (which should have been over by now) I just found out on the weekend that I have chickenpox! Somehow I managed not to get it as a kid (thanks Mom!) so I have the pleasure of suffering through it now as an adult. Mostly it’s just freaking inconvenient - I was all set to start the new year with a bang, and was really looking forward to attending the Pan-Canadian Elearning Workshop in Vancouver next week hosted by CANARIE. Now it seems highly unlikely that I will be able to go. I know there will be a number of other bloggers there - any session notes you folks can share will be much appreciated. But what I will miss obviously even more is the chance to see folks face to face. Oh well, next time I guess. - SWL