Technologies for Learning, Thinking and Collaborating
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/dspace-LOR
I am somewhat loathe to post this as for reasons which I’ve outlined a few times I think this is not a great idea, but there is now a mailing list available for people trying to employ DSpace as a learning object repository. Good luck! – SWL
http://www.northplains.com/media/pr072704.asp
I wouldn’t normally carry a news release like this but I have a bit of a personal connection with this story – the folks from UEN were partners in the recent project I did with WCET to research a number of learning object repository software packages, and based on their urging one of those packages ended up being NorthPlain’s Telescope product.
But I think the story is more generally significant because it adds a spin to the standard ‘repository’ players. NorthPlains is a Canadian company that has made its fortune selling ‘digital asset management’ software to large media companies, specifically ones like Sony Pictures. While it isn’t purpose built for higher ed learning objects per se, it offers quite impressive functionality for dealing with media assets in general. And given its flexibility to deal with multiple metadata schemas or any type of workflow and its smart integration with a host of 3rd party authoring tools, it’s actually not so hard to see how software like this (and there are a fair number of other packages in this space, all fairly mature when compared to some of the LOR stuff) can serve as the basis for a LOR play. In fact, in that WCET project (results of which will be published in the fall), of the 6 products we looked at, only one could be said to be a ‘learning object repository’ in the strictest sense – in addition to North Plains, the others were variously a ‘learning content management system,’ an ‘institutional repository,’ an ‘Education Institution Content Management System’ and finally a ‘digital content management’ originating from the library world. All of which, to varying degrees of success, could fulfil the role of learning object repository, proving yet again how slippery a beast those are. – SWL
http://www.bccampus.ca/Page95.aspx
Well, hopefully better late then never, a public presence for the BCcampus/Open School BC LOR project I’m working on. There’s not tons of content, but you can see some of our high-level requirements and the results of our product evaluations. I’ve also included the feed from the Apollo-Dev blog using Alan’s handy-dandy Feed2JS script so that people not in the RSS/blog ‘know’ can still keep track of developments in Apollo (note the page I’m posting on here shouldn’t be confused with an official Apollo site, which will probably happen sometime in the future.) – 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.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
http://www.lornet.org/eng/index.htm
While this project was announced last fall, it seems to be up an running now and has this website. For those who missed the announcement last October, this is the NSERC-funded $7.5 million/5 year project that, as far as I know, represents the largest ongoing learning object repository research initiative in Canada.
The project has 6 themes and stretches across 6 Canadian research Universities. I don’t know if it is fair to call this ‘edusource II’ as the aims of the project seem farther reaching, but it does involve some of the same principals from Canada’s last ‘nation-wide’ learning object repository research project. – SWL
It seems like the idea of using RSS as a means to syndicate new items in learning object repositories is steadily catching on. The page I’ve set up to aggregate a number of these feeds now has three more, two of them thanks to Ian Winship from Northumbria University.
The new feeds are:
– latest additions to the EEVL repository, a UK-based guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing
– latest additions to the Learning and Teaching Support Network Centre for Economics’ collection of resources
– a ‘by subject’ feed from Chalkface, a UK-based publisher of K-12 online courses and photocopy-master lesson plans
http://lionshare.its.psu.edu//cgi-bin/twiki/view
Announced with no little fanfare at the end of last year, the Lionshare project has since been quietly chugging along. In addition to the above Wiki pages, which give some insight into what they are actually working on, you can follow the project’s latest news through their RSS feed (another one to add to the list of LOR projects with RSS feeds). – SWL
http://www.becta.org.uk/page_documents/
research/open_source_teaching.pdf
Likely you will have already seen reference to this paper in today’s OLDaily, but I felt it was worth reposting as it is a good paper and early on makes an important distinction that I think is too often left dormant in LOR projects and leads to no end of confusion about what people are trying to achieve.
This distinction has to do with the drivers behind the use of learning objects/repositories. The paper outlines 4:
– The efficiency route: the argument that learning objects and repositories enable scaleable reuse of materials and are thus a more efficient way to develop materials
– The teacher-centred route: sharing LOs will enable cross the board improvement of teaching materials
– The pupil-centred route: LOs, in that they also promote the separation of content and presentation and can be traversed to present new versions, enable accessibility and learning-style-centric versions of online materials
– The freedom argument: the LO approach allows instructors to take control of the means of production and share the intellectual product widely