Monthly Archive for March, 2004

http://www.tasi.ac.uk/resources/vocabs.html

In searching out existing controlled vocabularies for a project you could do far worse as a starting point than this extensive collection from the ‘Technical Advisory Service for Images,’ another JISC-funded service. Hats off to David Mattison for the pointer. - SWL

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?
folder=621267&since=9&Display=Display

Note what I mean here are the LOR projects (not the repositories themselves, which you can find over here) that are producing RSS feeds as a way to communicate about their projects or otherwise coordinate their efforts. These include:

- D’Arcy Norman’s Learning Commons Weblog (for the CAREO/APOLLO projects)
- The Resource Pool, a Eduspecs-funded test pilot of a CAREO implmentation
- R2R: Learning Design - a new initiative out of University of Calgary to implement a Learning Design tool

- APOLLO-DEV, the proper technical blog for the Apollo project at U of Calgary
- Stòr Cùram, a blog from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland on their LOR initiative, apparently employing Intrallect’s Intralibrary

I haven’t listed CogDogBlog in here, as Alan posts on so many other things beside the Maricopa Learning Exchange, but it’s certainly not because it doesn’t deserve attention. I expect I missed other’s as well, or maybe have you filed somewhere else in Bloglines but still cover your feed. If you are working on an LOR implementation or development project and running a blog, I’d love to hear about it, include it on this list and follow along.

And what, you ask, about my own project… embarassingly, I am so swamped trying to meet our initial project requirements phase deadlines that we haven’t created anything public to date, except this space here, which is not an official ‘organ’ of the project. Stay tuned for more news, though… - SWL

http://www.fp.ucalgary.ca/maclachlan/
projectdiffusionintro.htm

For people either building new repository software or even figuring out what they need in implementing existing software, this might be of interest. Not quite a set of use cases, but maybe close - a set of scenarios which “attempt … to map the process that an educator might walk through to implement digital resources in classroom or online environments….
While the exemplars focus on K-12 learning, the Model and Workshop could apply to post-secondary instructors and designers as well. Developers may find the Case Examples informative in the development of flexible content tools.” - SWL

http://www.elearningresults.com/

If anyone has a few extra thousand dollars laying around and wants to spend it to send me to the Portofino Coast in Italy to attend this conference in May on their behalf, just let me know - SWL

http://www.imsglobal.org/
DLims_white_paper_publicdraft_1.pdf

I can only assume that the only reason someone didn’t point this paper out to me during my recent thrashing about concerning the difference between ‘institutional’ repositories and ‘learning object’ repositories is that, like me, they had never seen it before (or maybe you’re all just sadists and like to watch me flail about in public!)

Well in any case, hallelujah! This draft paper by Neil McLean and Clifford Lynch from June 28, 2003 is in my mind a model of clarity on the reasons for why these beasts are different (for one, the ‘transient’ versus ‘archival’ nature of their contents) but also why and how they need to interoperate.

Which is where I’ve landed on this topic - we need distinct types of repository software because they fill distinct end-user needs. But by implementing both common open protocols and using structured markup languages that can be mapped, we keep open the possibility of interoperating if and when this make sense. And I stress that last ‘if’ - the next piece in the puzzle I am waiting to see are convincing use cases, or even better yet convincing demonstrations, of search interfaces across catalogues of heterogeneous materials (e.g. records for books, ‘eprints’ and learning objects all at once) that don’t just confuse the matter entirely. - SWL

http://www.dokeos.com/

More proof of open source’s burgeoning effects in the field of course management systems - this Belgian company has taken the open source CMS Claroline and run with it in a value-added hosting/development/services/support model. News to me was that they have made strides developing a SCORM import tool, for which the lack of widespread support amongst many of the open source CMS has at times been used for an excuse not to adopt or investigate them. No longer! (see also Atutor in this regard). And for North American users, particularly those in the West, a small note that at least one of their customers, Washington State Community College, is nearby. - SWL

http://www.uen.org/ueninfo/

I recently came across these folks because of a project I’m working on ‘down’ in the States (yes, that’s how we Canadians say it) and wanted to highlight it because what they have accomplished here is really pretty impressive. From the site - “The Utah Education Network (UEN) is consortium of public education partners, including the Utah System of Higher Education and its ten universities and colleges and Utah Electronic College; the Utah State Office of Education, local school districts and the Utah Electronic High School; and the state’s Library system.” That is a truly broad constituency. There are some useful resources here too - both the Lesson Plan tool and the Rubric Tool are worth a look (they are k-12 focused) and I always wish there were ways for guests to take a look at people’s portals, as this looks like it could be good too. - SWL

long SEC URL

Other than the subscription-protected piece at the Chronicle of Higher Ed (and Charlie’s reference to it at Kairosnews) this is the only thing public I can find on this so far, but yes, the rumours seem to have been well founded, and Blackboard is going ahead with it’s IPO. Congratulations to them and good luck. - SWL

One of the big “Fear Uncertainty and Doubt” questions I often get asked as someone who spends a fair bit of time looking at the course management system landscape is “But are open source systems really ready for use as enterprise systems?” (Up until recently one might have done well to ask the same questions of the commercial systems that alleged to be ‘enteprise ready’!)

I don’t know what better way to respond than to simply point to where these systems are being used, so as some initial examples:

• sites running Moodle

• sites running Atutor (scroll down the page to see the list)
• case studies on 16 institutions representing over 60k users running .LRN

There are lots of fears held by Directors of IT, EdTech and others (some justified, others extremely unfounded) that need to be addressed before it becomes easy to adopt open source for ‘enterprise’ needs. This should be an easy one, though - any open source project that seriously wants to be adopted and that doesn’t actively solicit information on who is using it and share this back with potential users is clearly overworked or missing something. Better yet, segment your responses (k-12/colleges/universities/corporate training” might be a start for the education sector) so that people can point to a peer group and say ‘look who else has adopted this software!’ You’d be amazed how effective an argument this can be, especially as we move along the famous curve of innovation adopters (e.g. early and late majorities are like that for a reason.) - SWL

pingConfigurations - Technorati Developers Site

Do you ever check out the technorati site to see who is linking to you and vice versa? Ever notice ‘gaps’ in the coverage, sites you know that have linked to you or you have linked to that don’t appear in the list. Here’s one small tip you might be interested in - simple instructions on how to add manually add Technorati’s XML-RPC interface to your list of automatically pinged sites in your blogging tool, so that when you post, your blog will get placed in their high priority queue for faster indexing. - SWL