Monthly Archive for June, 2004

http://www.aboveandbeyond.ltd.uk/products/loda.htm

I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with this package and would care to comment on its usefulness. In general, I am on the hunt for resources that might help instructors grapple with the issue of how to develop both re-usable (e.g. re-purposable in different instructional contexts) and interoperable (e.g. usable in different technical delivery environments) learning objects. If you know of other resources that might be useful, I’d be grateful for the reference , either in the comments area or on this wiki page - SWL

http://www.athensams.net/

Arguably more of an administrative than academic computing issue, this was still of interest to me, and I think to elearning systems developers, as I’d argue single-sign-on is one aspect of giving users a better alround experience (presumably leaving their mind more free to actually learn).

This is a U.k.-based Access Management system that provides “secure single username access to multiple web-based access controlled services” with “devolved administration facilities at the organisation level.” Most of us can only look on in envy at the situation (politically at least) in U.K. higher education. In Canada, education is the jurisdiction of the provinces, but even within provinces institutions typically function somewhat autonomously. And The U.S., well fugedabowdit! Private, public, 2 year, 4 year; no wonder such schemes as this just aren’t even considered, and instead something like Shibboleth needs to happen.

Still, there’s likely some things to learn from here, and it seems difficult not to admire their list of protected resources. I expect there’s a British reader out there who might be able to shed more light on this, but single sign-on has been of growing interest to me in the project I am working on, so I thought I’d post on it, regardless of my lack of familiarity with it. - SWL

http://www.atutor.ca/acollab/index.php

If you weren’t already impressed enough with Atutor, the accessible, open source LMS from U of Toronto’s Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, along comes the second piece in their ever-growing suite of accessible learning technologies. With shared document authoring, calendering, chat, threaded discussion and extensive group support, ACollab is WCAG 1.0, Section 508 US-compliant software that can be easily integrated with Atutor to provide a powerful open source learning environment. Caution: use of this product may actually enable learning amongst an entire class of people who are otherwise discriminated against by badly designed, inaccessible technologies. - SWL

A few times over the last two months I have mentioned the project I am currently managing, to implement a learning object repository for both BCcampus and Open School B.C., and the fact that we had done a fairly lengthy product evaluation that has led us to back an open source project as our way forward.

Well I can finally let the cat out of the bag; I hadn’t wanted to say anything yet as I didn’t want to steal any thunder from the software’s originators, who presented their work to the public for the first time recently at the NMC 2004 conference in Vancouver, and partly because we were still trying to work out the details of our ongoing relationship. But I think the times is right, in part because I want to explain our motivations for choosing an open source solution, and specifically *this* open source solution. (read more…)
Continue reading ‘10…9…8…7 - Start of a new open source LOR partnership’

http://www.reusablelearning.org/index.asp?id=26

Based on a reference in a recent intro to learning objects I went back to a site I thought I new, but instead found this newly developed resource that the Eduworks folks produced for the NSDL. It is really worth spending some time on, for both newbies and old hands alike. The section on “Fostering Reusability in the NSDL” is very helpful, and the Reusability Framework is, I think, top notch and I would be surprised if I didn’t start to see it show up more as a canonical reference. - SWL

http://www.trails-project.org/

This NSF-funded project in the States just makes so much sense - have the univeristy students currently studying to be educational designers and developers work on actual learning content for the K-12 system. As the site says, “Through these courses TRAILS intends to have three major effects: to better prepare tomorrow’s designers of educational tools, to better prepare the teachers who will use such tools, and—by publishing select course projects— to generate new tools for K-12 education.” Obvious? Maybe. Innovative. Seems to me, definitely! - SWL

http://www.edusplash.net/technical/ecl/index.html and
http://edusource.licef.teluq.uquebec.ca/ese/en/index.jsp

I’m sure there’s some good reason for working on software for a few years, releasing it into the public domain, and then not telling anyone about it, right? In any case, with amazingly little fanfare the impressive ECL connector software is available for download. Billed as one of the first implementations of the IMS DRI specification, it will allow repositories to share search results, gather records, alter each other to new materials and submit new materials in other repositories. You’ll likely see the ECL show up in some format or another in a number of future initiatives as a way to interconnect repositories and other stores of learning materials, and we hope to have it implemented in the repository we deploy here in B.C. by September. - SWL

http://www.thelearningedge.com.au/

One of the 6 finalists in our evaluation of various learning object repository packages in the BCcampus LOR project I am currently managing, The Learning Edge is from a relatively small company based in Tasmania, Australia. Even though we ended up going with another option, we were really impressed by this software and on the straight-ahead basis of features it actually looked to be the strongest of the lot that we looked at. Boasting a clean interface that was incredible customizable through a set of powerful administrative tools, the software impressed on many fronts; it was one of the few that seemed to be cracking the nut of digital rights management, and had an impressive workflow engine and a Java-based authoring and aggregation tool that was quite powerful. If you are in the market for a learning content management system (which is a closer description than just a ‘learning object repository’ to what this software actually is) and are looking for a commercial product you might do well to include this one on a list of those to examine more closely. - SWL