‘Through the Web’ Editor Widgets

Really useful reference on WYSIWYG web page editors that are usable over the web (much like what I am writing in right now in Radio8!) More and more there is no excuse for any application that uses forms to create web content not to include this – many are free or cheap components that one can just include in larger applications. – SWL 

Extending the Pedagogy of Threaded-Topic Discussions

FINALLY! Maybe others are thinking and writing in this way, but this is the first article I have come across that throws into question the efficacy of threaded discussion forums. This feature is included by default in so many ‘course management’ suites and yet I have  seen it used well in only a few occassions, and badly in many. I was waiting for someone to propose a better solution – I first started introducing educators to the idea of using threaded discussions to support class discussion in 1994 and knew there was a better model ! – SWL

Rubric For Online Instruction

“The Committee for the Evaluation of Exemplary Online Courses (CEEOC) was formed to address the need for demonstrating quality in online instruction, and for setting some guidelines for developers of online teaching. The committee reviewed best practices, learning styles, and standards to develop a rubric for evaluating online courses or course components at Chico State.”

– originally cited in : [Distance-Educator.com]

Content at Your Fingertips: Better Ways to Classify & Tag

Good overview of an increasingly important issues. It would be great to find a site (or create one) that brought togehter in one place issues and resources on meta-tagging, taxonomies, ontologies, the ‘semantic web’,  their relationship to search engines and other discovery/sharing technologies, and their histories in the variety of displines they come out of (library science, artificial intelligence research, general computer science). I’m sure something like this is already out there.

– originally cited in: [elearningpost]

LORAX Specification

“The Le@rning Federation’s Learning Object Repository Access and Exchange (LORAX) Specification defines a web service for interacting with the Exchange repository of Learning Objects. The web service provides a simple programmatic interface allowing client systems to discover and download metadata and Learning Objects from the Exchange using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). This draft (version 0.3) is good work and should be considered by any agency considering the use of metadata repositories. PDF file. “

By Various Authors, Le@rning Federation, July, 2002 – reposted from [OLDaily]

CETIS-IMS Simple Sequencing approved

“What Simple Sequencing enables is the specification of what learning activities a learner will be presented with, in what order and other what circumstances. At the moment, the learning experience afforded by your average learning object is basically limited to reading or viewing your way through a number of pages or videos, which is followed by a test. Results are recorded, and the learner can go on to the next object. ”

Comment: It will be really interesting to see how the various standards activities and specific instantiations hang together as the sequencing stuff gets worked out – it seems to me to be one of the places where there are some real differences in opinion on how to proceed. – SWL