Connecting people.

Presentation by Doug Ransom on April 16, 2003. [via syndic8.com]

11:29:29 PM    

Rob Reynolds over at Xplana has posted this useful piece that helps frame some of the issues an institution should factor in when considering looking at an open source solution to course management systems, proposes a rating scheme based on these factors and rates many of the currently available options. While I might differ on a few small points (OCW is not a CMS!!) I think I would also end up suggesting the same four products that show up in his 2 top 3 lists (CHEF, LON-CAPA, Moodle, FLE3) are the most likely contenders.

There are a few things I think we at edutools can learn for the factors he highlights as important (we allow reviews by features, but don't tie features to these kinds of factors in any strong manner). That said, one lesson I think we've learned is that you end up getting way to much clumping in the middle on a 5 point scale (mean on this was 21 with highest score 24 and lowest 17). But I'm probably getting nitpicky as it is getting to the end of the day - SWL

9:25:44 AM    

George Lorenzo at Educational Pathways has a nice write up on OKI and OCW - in fact that's how I found the piece, via a reference at the end of Rob Reynold's piece on open source CMSes to 'OKI and OCW Defined.'

But what I want to know is why OKI have never posted an equally as straightforward explanation on the actual OKI site which is to my mind a model of unclarity. I recognize that there are some subtle concepts at work, but the number of times I've had to explain the difference between OKI as an architecture and the various systems (CHEF, Stellar, LON-CAPA, etc) that will be reference implementations, to people who should know better...sheesh! - SWL

9:24:55 AM    

Quote: "ContentPackage provides ZOPE with the ability to import IMS Content Packages and turn them into Zope objects (see http://www.imsglobal.org)."

Well this bodes well for the future. Has anyone heard from the eduzope folks lately - for a while it seemed like it was going to be vapourware, and then I checked back in a month or so ago and saw so release stuff, but in general it seems to have been quiet. Must check back in - SWL

- via [Serious Instructional Technology]

9:24:03 AM    

"A CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and grade tests that:

• Most humans can pass.
• Current computer programs can't pass. "

You've seen this before - think of systems you've used that ask you to access a web page and read text off that page that was somehow obscured, then feed it back to the system to prove that you (and not some automated agent) are in fact there. But did you know they had a name? - SWL

4:49:06 PM    

The latest issue of the U.K. publication The Journal of Interactive Media in Education is structured around expert commentary on the recent book, edited by JIME editor Alison Littlejohn, Reusing Online Resources: A Sustainable Approach to eLearning, (Ed.) Allison Littlejohn. Kogan Page, London. ISBN 0749439491.

- via [CARETblogging]

[EdTechPost]

I have been waiting for this article for months. This is another "study" item, the ideas thrown off by it will take a while to understand.

4:26:50 PM    

"The MetaMap is a pedagogical graphic which takes the form of a subway map. Its aim is to help the information science community to understand metadata standards, sets, and initiatives of interest in this area."

- via David Mattison's [TenThousandYearBlog] which I subscribe to, yet only found this by chance as his main RSS feed seems to be broken. Still, dig further into his categories as he is still blogging and finding great stuff.

[EdTechPost]

This map is amazing!

4:14:07 PM    

1. Introduction to the SCORM Content Model
2. What is Meta-data?
3. The SCORM Meta-data Information Model
4. Introduction to SCORM Content Packaging and
5. Introduction to SCORM Content Structure.

9:57:52 PM    

Ikarus: Teaching and Learning in Virtual Learning Environments

I stumbled across this free course very recently via a mailing list post, managed to sign up just in time and it is so far turning out to be a very interesting if a little bit too academic an experience (I'm studying the pedagogy stream so that probably explains it :-)

There are several hundred students participating from around the world. It appears to have started originally as an online law course! Unfortunately the pedagogy stream is presently concentrating on the science of instructional design (or is it?!) which is a bit of a dry argument, but later discussions look promising.

The course runs for 13 weeks. They use a special system called Moodle that is not a clone of any usual online courseware package.

2:38:03 PM    

[Learning Design, Virtual Learning Environments and Learning Activities]

The license to use the software is free. Support is not. Hosting (if you need it) is not free. Read the license carefully - do you think you could tailor this application to your needs? There are true open source LMS applications that are much better deals, imo.

Look at OpenACS for example. See the article published January 27, 2003 in the eLearning Developers' Journal about how Berklee School of Music used this to provide their own tailored LMS.

In my opinion, the first two questions that should be asked regarding LMS are: "How do we know we need an LMS?" and "How do we know we need to buy an LMS?" More often than you might expect, the answers to these questions are "No" and "We do NOT need to buy an LMS when we can build our own for free."

2:26:07 PM    

XPLANA http://www.xplana.com

Xplana is definately one of THE hot learning and teaching sites of the moment. Although it does a fair amount of LMS bashing it offers a fair amount of good stuff in return.

Well worth a look. 4.5 chocolate fish out of a possible 5.

[Learning Design, Virtual Learning Environments and Learning Activities]

The White Papers are better than the articles, imo. Their RSS feeds are a bit complicated, and need some study.

12:29:18 PM    

ADL Technical Team Releases first Working Draft of SCORM Version 1.3 Application Profile.

SCORM Version 1.3 Application Profile Working Draft Version 1.0 was released March 26, 2003 and this is still considered a work in progress after a year of effort.

12:43:25 PM    

DoD Distance Learning Advances.

The Defense Department is committed to transforming every facet of how it wages war and conducts business, and using distance learning to educate DOD employees worldwide is already paying dividends, according to a recent General Accounting Office report. But steep challenges remain, GAO warned.  [Federal Computer Week, March 4 2003]

Specific areas where ADL initiatives are working and where they are not. It may be some years before the implementation is complete. Meanwhile, DoD faces the same problems seen in the private sector, and full evaluation of effectiveness is not yet possible.

12:36:56 PM    

Making E-Learning More Than "Pixie Dust".

An e-learning program can be a cost-effective alternative to classroom training, but it also can be a huge waste of time and money if it's not implemented correctly. Three organizations show how to do it right.  By Sarah Fister Gale [Workforce Magazine, March 2003]

For myself, I wish the author had interviewed and quoted more than just consultants and vendors (those are the "three organizations" -- not what I hoped for). This was pretty superficial.

12:31:32 PM    

This site has some decent resources categorized into:

• Applied eLearning Standards
• Theories of Online Education
• Web Technologies
• eLearning Standards

but NO RSS FEED! Which is o.k. I guess if it doesn't see itself as a 'blog' or want to update people regularly about its contents, but looking at the source code (to see how easy it would be to scrape) it even calls itself a 'blog' in the comments!

Note to self - Maybe it would be helpful to gather a collection of pointers to creating RSS feeds from various different sources and from different formats, or what you should do if hand-creating content to make sure you don't cut certain avenues off - there seems to be hundreds of ways and suggestions out there (can someone point me to an existing list?). In many cases instead of people having to change tools they use to create the more effective approach in some cases is to lead them to ways to bootstrap their current content. - SWL

8:03:33 AM    

Weblog Trackbacks to provide context for learning objects.

"Imagine this: "Person A" is searching a LOR and comes across a really cool LO that they want to use. They have some comments that they might be wanting to share with a community outside of the LOR. They publish these comments to their weblog (say a departmental or institutional or even personal LO-related weblog), and include a trackback to a URL provided by the LOR for that specific LO.

Sometime later, "Person B" is searching the LOR for some content, and finds the same object that "Person A" found. They click the "Details" button to learn more about the LO, including the metadata context stored in the LOR, and all trackbacked weblog entries related to this LO. They are able to see "Person A"s comments directly in the LOR, providing some addition outside-of-mandated-metadata-schema context that wouldn't have been available otherwise.

"Person C" is surfing the LO-related weblogs, and come across the post from "Person A" about a LO. They click the link, and are brought to the LOR's "Details" page for that LO, where they can see the "official," centralized metadata, as well as all informal, distributed metadata and comments aggregated by the Trackback feature of the LOR.

This could be quite cool.

Imagine this going one step further... There is no reason for Trackbacks to be restricted to weblogs... They could just as easily be generated by other LORs, or even other completely unrelated software. Imagine a user on CAREO being able to trackback a LOR in MERLOT. Or vice versa. Or a CAREO user being able to trackback and comment on something in the Corbus collection. Or an instructor working on a BlackBoard course being able to search for and add to comments on LOs in LORs all around the world, in the context of their course..." [D'Arcy Norman, with Alan Levine and Brian Lamb]

9:37:47 PM    

Comments from David Davies re Norm Friesen's article.

I had somewhat the same reaction, with a few additions. First, I don't know that learning objects are necessarily about single learners. There's no reason there couldn't be collaborative learning objects (or learning objects designed for use in a collaborative setting). Second, I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that e-Learning can totally replace human tutoring/coaching/mentoring, certainly not in the lifetime of anyone reading Friesen's article. I would like to suggest that, based on my experience suffering through many a lecture by Old Doctor Fossil and his colleagues, many educators have been using Learning Objects for centuries. The content never changes, the delivery never changes, and the amount of individualized tutoring is nil. I'm sure there are exceptions -- but they are exceptions. Finally, I think there's definitely an agenda behind Friesen's rant on "the military-industrial complex" (and I thought that phrase went out with Eisenhower!).

David's take follows:

Putting the learning back into learning objects. I read Norm Friesen's 'Three objections to learning objects' but something in the arguments raised didn't match with how I view reusable learning objects. So in the spirit of Norm's article, here's another perspective on the debate about the positive and negative aspects of the vision of sharing educational resources. 1. The old 'what is a learning object' debate. In the context of e-learning, "any digital, reproducible and addressable resource used to perform learning activities or learning support activities, made available for others to use" works for me (thanks to Rob Koper, 'Combining reusable learning resources and services with pedagogical purposeful units of learning' in this book). 2. When I read the IMS learning Design specification is see "The IMS Learning Design specification supports the use of a wide range of pedagogies in online learning.". I don't see pedagogic neutrality, in fact I see a tool that builds upon the excellent groundwork laid down by those fine fellows at the Open University of the Netherlands on the Educational Modelling Language (EML) and delivers a specification that can put the learning back into learning objects. Here's a key paragraph from the IMS Learning Design Best Practice and Implementation Guide: "While the Learning Design approach allows different kinds of learning strategies to be supported, there is currently no vocabulary provided for describing different kinds of learning approaches, in part because the runtime system does not need to have such a vocabulary in order to correctly interpret learning designs - it just has to be able to interpret the meta-language. This provides a means of expressing many different pedagogical approaches in a relatively succinct language as set out in this document. This language in itself must be pedagogically neutral. In consequence, a system that has to interpret this language does not need to know the pedagogical approach underlying the design: it only needs to be able to instantiate the design, allocate activities and their associated resources to participants playing the various roles, and coordinate the runtime flow." 3. If you have a strong pedagogic model and are serious about learning design then forget SCORM. How can anyone be serious about SCORM when it only models the single learner, single interaction, and is fundamentally unable to model the kinds of interactions between groups of learners and learning objects that makes e-learning (and learning objects) work. IMS Learning Design is new, and as such will be refined, but right now it could be the most significant e-learning specification yet developed. [David Davies' Weblog]

9:04:18 AM    

from Denham Grey's KMWiki, a large collection of links to various knowledge tools, including

11:11:42 AM    

So I finally got a chance to actually look a little more closely at the feeds from the existing repositories that I posted last week and am slowly starting to get my thoughts together. Here are some reflections.

Not all <links> are the same

A seemingly small thing that jumped out for me is the different interpretation of what the <link> element should point to in D'Arcy's CAREO feed - his is the only one that uses the object's URL instead of the metadata record's URL. I'm interested to hear from D'Arcy's whether this was intentional and if so, the reasoning behind it. There aren't any rules yet as far as I can see; at first I thought that pointing to the record made most sense because un-extended RSS doesn't do a great job of displaying any of the existing metadata schemas I know of, but then I realized that this might just be anticipating extending RSS 2.0 through namespaces and so in fact the <link> field pointing to the object's url might in fact be the right way to go.

Some metadata filters seem more exciting than others

I'm glad I placed multiple feeds from the same source that used different criteria together onto this page. While I can see some cases where presenting the latest entries to the LOR might be useful (and I understand that proofs of concepts need to start somewhere), streams like that are likely to be less interesting than ones that use more pedagogically relevant metadata fields - e.g. "latest history objects," or "biology objects containing the word 'blood'."

Which led me to my next thought - unlike the way RSS currently supports news distribution where for the most part a 'channel' is defined by the content author , RSS as a distribution mechanism for learning objects repositories seems to get really interesting when the channel can instead be the latest results of a user-defined search using specific meta-data fields. So if you have user accounts in your LOR, a user could perform a search, be they an instructor wanting to know when any new objects are posted that might help in teaching fluid dynamics to 2nd year engineering students, or a student wanting to see new objects that could help with their term paper on mass production and the Civil War, and then be able to create a persistent URL that was the RSS feed for additional results for this search that could then be aggregated in their 'news reader' or whatever their personal learning object aggregator might be called.

Like I said, still early days in puzzling this through, but wanted to put something down. Off to bed (unlike Brian, I need some sleep before I die ;-)  - SWL

11:10:21 AM    

Macromedia Central

Macromedia announced Macromedia Central and their future plans for Flash! on March 27. Read it here. [Macromedia PR]

10:05:22 PM    

"Learning objects and e-learning standardization bear the imprint of the ideology and culture of the American military-industrial complex--of ways of thinking that are related either marginally or antithetically to the interests and values of education generally and public education in particular."

Wow, I'm glad somebody said it! But then in reading this informative paper by Norm Friesen, it looks like somebody already had in a major way - he cites a reference to a work that sounds really interesting in this regard, the The Classroom Arsenal: Military Research, Information Technology, and Public Education  by Douglas D. Noble.

I'm not sure I actually hold out that much hope of the educational community's voice being heard in the larger arenas where commercial developers and industrial training agendas seem to dominate. But it is great that these kinds of objections are being aired openly, especially by someone as knowledgeable in the field as this paper's author. - SWL

[EdTechPost]

I guess I need to understand what it is that Norm and Douglas object to so strenuously. Maybe they don't need to re-use content (yeah, right), but why should they object so strongly to *my* re-using content.

6:01:38 PM    

Jon Zittrain on The Google Death Penalty

[Scripting News]

Ways to get into trouble that you never dreamed existed.

5:55:09 PM    

eLearn Magazine

Keep coming up with all these online newsletters for e-Learning ...

10:40:24 PM    

Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law School) posts on digital rights and on public domain

Digital rights expression (DRE) vs. Digital rights management (DRM) [Lawrence Lessig]

Weblogs and the public domain [Lawrence Lessig]

The Creative Commons License ("expressing freedom beyond fair use") [Lawrence Lessig]

"What politicians need to remember is that Congress has always adjusted the rules by which creators get paid as a response to new technology. That’s just what they should be doing today. Never before has the law been used to force new technology into old way of doing business. Every time before this, it was the law that adjusted to assure artists got paid given the new technology." [Lawrence Lessig]

9:50:45 PM    

Creative Commons, RSS, and Manila

Further to earlier posts today about open source and Doc Searls.

"This document shows you how to use a Creative Commons license in the RSS feed generated from a Manila weblog.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization run by several universities that makes it easy for creative people and organizations to share their work with more options than are provided by copyright.

Aggregators and feed readers should consider the presence of the element, but it should also be understood that, at this writing, this is a new feature in the RSS world. We must allow software designers time to think and discuss to see how the presence of a CC license will be utilized by their software.

We will of course also do an equivalent feature for Radio UserLand. According to Larry Lessig, Moveable Type already supports Creative Commons in RSS. " [Manila]

This, in my opinion, is a good (no, great) example fo figuring out a fair balance between technology and intellectual property rights, and thereby avoiding endless litigation, cease-and-desist orders, etc.

1:21:48 PM    

What is "trackback" about?

Trackback has been mentioned a lot lately in blogs, and I didn't know what it was. Here is the explanation.

12:55:29 PM    

The Whatever License

Good thoughts from Doc Searls.

11:01:41 AM    

More issues on DMCA and access [Blogs and Education]

This one bears some thinking about. On the one hand, there is no doubt that there are conflicts between intellectual property rights and the ability of people to communicate via technology on the Web and internet. On the other hand, there is also no doubt that a lot of "hiss-"trionics and polemics are being launched by both sides instead of trying to figure out the answer.

The fight seems to get nastiest when it involves companies in a fight for market share with only one or two major competitors, and academics who seem to feel there is no justification for private ownership of intellectual property, period. (My opinion, ok?)

I like open source more all the time.

10:55:09 AM    

1. Vision and theoretical perspectives
2. Design perspectives
3. Resource perspectives
4. Strategic perspectives

2:19:29 PM    

"Open source software communities are one of the most successful -and least understood- examples of high-performance collaboration and community-building on the Internet today. Other types of communities could benefit enormously ..."

Interesting report with some data on the nature of open source software development communities, including both demographics and the results of a survey that asked the "Reasons to Join an Open Source Community" (top answer: "Learn and develop new skills") and the "Most Important Benefits of Participation" (top answer: "Increased personal knowledge base").

Written by Eugene Eric Kim at Blue Oxen Associates,  the report also presents some interesting metrics on collaboration in two largish projects (through the analysis of discussion forums and email) and offers these three guidelines to building collaboration learned from the open source community:

- Evolve the Community
-  Lead by Example
- Let Users Talk to Developers

- via [carvingCode]

7:06:19 PM    

This links to a page I've built which aggregates RSS feeds from all of the LORs that I know of that produce them.

There's been a lot flying around recently concerning the use of RSS to syndicate RLOs. I've been trying to wrap my head around the implications but haven't fully managed to. This list, rather than being an attempt to create some sort of authoritative resource on the subject, is instead a way for me to see with my own eyes, all in one place, the results of current efforts to match RSS technology with LORs/RLOs. I need to do this because when the topics get this complex, my brain seems to need to work at the problem from both ends - both by trying to construct a theoretical model of the problem based on my understanding of the issues, the technologies and concepts at play, and also by literally looking at examples of what exists or what a solution could look like and then trying to bring these two together into some fit. In any case, that's my motivation for throwing this together. - SWL

7:04:50 PM    

The Lab That Fell to Earth. Once the center of the technology research universe, the storied MIT Media Lab is teetering on the brink of breakup -- or worse, irrelevance. By Brendan I. Koerner from Wired magazine. [Wired News]

Wow, does this make me feel old!

8:41:00 AM    

This looks great. A conference about the proliferation and use of Wi-Fi in the academic world. They are streaming some of the sessions. The only problem is that their website is confusing and I can't figure out how to watch archived videos. Maybe they haven't put the videos up yet. I'm definitely planning to return to this conference website. I think that the use of wireless networks in an academic setting points to how wireless networks will be deployed at meetings, conferences and tradeshows.

Academic Wi-Fi Conference. Conference looks at wireless and academia: If you had any question about how much money is being spent at college campuses and elsewhere to install wireless networks (cell and 802.11), just look at the list of sponors on the conference's home page. They're streaming video from the event, which runs through Friday. The topic list is fascinating, as it deals with the social, technical, and security implications of overlaying ubiquitous networks on a campus. [via TechDirt]... [Wi-Fi Networking News]

8:35:25 AM    

Excellent article, "Teaching in the Wireless Cloud: Students with mobile devices are slowly redefining some fundamental campus rules," by Bryan Alexander in TheFeature.

Teaching in the Wireless Cloud. Students equipped with mobile and wireless devices are reshaping the classroom environment. Spaces structured by static rows of computer desks, with screens or bulky monitors blocking views, are increasingly obsolete. Instead students can sit where they like, depending on the instructor's flexibility. A class can change quickly from a lecture to a small group discussion or lab format, while retaining the full powers of computer-mediated communication. Instructors project notes on a wall, talking through a sequence of points, then break the class up to pursue team projects or discussions. In my experience, learners quickly arrange themselves in ways conducive to their comfortable conversation and writing, rather than following the dictates of pre-arranged furniture (which is often hostile to the best learning).

As educational spaces change, so does learning time. The traditional class works on a two-step information access schedule, alternating between an isolated classroom and an out-of-class connection to the full world of information via libraries and the internet. Always-on connectivity allows learners to blur those two modes, hitting the internet on demand or in mid-discussion, texting classmates (and instructors) at any time. [Smart Mobs]

8:33:50 AM    

Webby Award nominees announced. The 7th annual Webby Award nominees were announced late Tuesday. Here's the list of nominees. You can vote in the People's Choice Awards through May 23. Lots of good, obscure sites here. The ceremony -- which has lost much of... [JD's New Media Musings]

[Marc's Voice]

8:32:00 AM    

Smart Mobs blogger Bryan Alexander -- an educational practitioner as well as a commentator on what is being called "m-learning" -- has written an article for TheFeature on the subject of Teaching in the Wireless Cloud

10:37:33 PM    

Learning Circuits piece on e-Learning ROI

Paul Harris writes: "As companies look to e-learning to help meet their strategic goals, they’re seeking ROI analysis. Some of the most valuable measurements can be hard to capture, but we’re closing in. In most departments within a corporation, determining the return on a given investment is a straightforward accounting exercise that produces a factual and typically uncontested result. But when it comes to e-learning, computing ROI suddenly becomes a complicated procedure requiring thoughtful chinstroking, serious seminar time, and earnest input from consultants and vendors. Why is that?" [Learning Circuits]

From February 18 of this year. Supports the idea of ROI, tosses in the formula for ARR (calls it "the standard" - it's not), cites vendor white papers, gives a couple of examples from real companies. Glad mine is done. Will post a summary version here after publication on Monday the 14th of April. Those who want the whole thing (including the parts nobody else covers -- HOW) will have to join the Guild (which they should be doing anyway).

6:49:58 PM    

e-Learning ROI

What a day! and what a night! But the article on e-Learning ROI is finished and on its way to the Journal. Now to get to work on the examples and on the taxes.

3:47:17 PM    

This web analysis and mapping software is interesting to me for 2 reasons:

- it's one of the best values for money (when combined with its companion product FunnelWeb Analyzer) in the web log analysis and site management tools field that I have seen. IMHO it blows products like WebTrends out of the water (note it needs to be used in conjunction with its companion product Analyzer to really be a true comparison). The part of the application that I particularly like is the Webmap - it produces a webmap of your site by crawling it (like many do) but then allows you to overlay your traffic statistics visually on this map - all of a sudden the main paths that people take through you site, where they enter and exit, jump out at you. Extremely powerful for visualizing how people actually use your site. I haven't seen a lot of software in it's price range (we payed under $1000) that does this.

- from a learning perspective, the tutorial that accompanies the 'info map' part of the software is for me a great example of how to communicate abstract concepts using relevant (to that individual user) content. The infomaps present keyword and traffic analyses of your site displayed as contour maps. Instead of using some abstract example that has no meaning to the user, the tutorial helps you understand how to interpret the info map by using the map you just produced on your own site, so that when it  points to the highest peaks and explains these are the most used terms on the site, they are in fact the most used terms on your own site. This is not unimpressive - the tutorial software is intelligent enough to present concepts linked to a dynamic analysis of the map - produce a new map and run the tutorial again, and the examples it uses are from the new map.

Well worth a look - a 30 day free trial is available from there site. - SWL

3:44:20 PM    

From the good folks at Half-Baked Software Inc. (based in my hometown at the University of Victoria, B.C., Canada), the people who brought you the semi-famous quiz software 'Hot Potatoes' comes Quandry. It is "an application for creating Web-based Action Mazes. An Action Maze is a kind of interactive case-study; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it. On choosing one of the options, the resulting situation is then presented, again with a set of options. Working through this branching tree is like negotiating a maze, hence the name 'Action Maze'"

Version 2 is in beta and should be in full release later this month. In essense, one each page the software prompts you to create a set of questions or actions that result in different branches, allowing you to easily create simple HTML-based role playing simulations.  - SWL

[EdTechPost]

I could never get Hot Potatoes to work acceptably, but the idea was a good one. In the 70's we built lots of Action Mazes for various Navy training programs and I have used them occasionally since. I'm glad to see someone thinking about them again. What next? Programmed Instruction makes a comeback? Oh, wait, that's what e-Learning is supposed to be ...

4:46:36 PM    

Macromedia - Flash Player for Pocket PC. This seemed not insignificant when it comes to delivering rich media educational objects to handhelds. Somewhat quietly (at least to my ears) the folks at Macromedia have been assembling their own elearning strategy and tools. One to watch, if there past results are any indication. - SWL  [EdTechPost]

I want to figure out how to add the Macromedia site to this weblog - if they don't offer an RSS feed, I will put them in the navigation links.

4:42:59 PM    

Via a seemingly small reference in David Wiley's blog, Autounfocus, comes mention of this application being developed by David and others in the Department of Instructional Technology at Utah State, that hints at where learning object repositories and object browsers need to go and seem to be going - towards more direct integration with authoring tools and tools that help instructors apply instructional design principles in (re)assembling objects.

(But isn't this already the promise in large part of LCMSes within the scope of the training industry? I wonder what will end up being the difference between existing authoring tools aimed at industry [either ones like IBM's Knowledge Producer, DazzlerMax, Avaltus Jupiter Studio or Cisco's Virtuoso, or else any of the ones being bundled or built directly in enterprise LCMSes] and the ones being built in post-secondary institutions and for that market? I can guess but I expect some analysis of this would be useful for a continuing elucidation of the need for a CMS product-type separate from LMS/LCMS offerings and why LORs are evolving the way they are.) - SWL

1:46:39 PM    

A powerpoint presentation by Jean Adams and Gareth Morgan (from the elearning content comapny NewMindsets- it's Canadian!) that describes the shift to learning object just-in-time training as being '2nd generation elearning, for what it''s worth. - SWL 

- via [carvingCode]

1:06:08 PM    

At some point in the not-so-distant-future I may well have to start looking for work again (funding and other circumstances are currently uncertain at best.) So I have been doing some thinking and some searching about what is it I can do, what I have done before and what is it I want to do.

Which lead me to this helpful little document by the folks at Sage Learning Systems. While I've worked more in higher ed and its focus is more on industry training, much of the job types and skills seemed relevant. I'm sure there are lots more of these types of documents out there (anyone have other references) but this at least seemed like a place to start. - SWL

1:04:03 PM    

"SciQ just went live. It's a K-12 theme for CAREO that is being used to push learning objects into the classroom in Alberta."

Go see the one of the products of D'Arcy's (and many others at U of Calgary) long hours of work and an actual implementation of learning object respository software! Exciting stuff! - SWL

- from [D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog]

1:01:56 PM    

"Kevin Kruse writes an open letter to Click2learn CEO Kevin Oakes in response to the latter's contention that enterprise software providers (such as, say, SAP or PeopleSoft) will not make major inroads into the learning management system market. With a few telling points, Kruse outlines some probable scenarios where this could be exactly what happens. His main advice to LMS vendors? Well, not in so many words, but: bail." - comment and link reposted from [OLDaily]

I think the truth lies somewhere between these two positions, and one would certainly be naive not to be paying attention to a few of these behemoth enterprise players.

12:58:53 PM    

Everybody is writing about e-Learning ROI all of a sudden. Bryan Chapman is the latest. My article in the next eLearning Developers' Journal (April 14) will add to the glut. I can't go along with Jay Cross on this one, and I think most of what I see online is either superficial or misses the point entirely. Forget about the online calculators, too.

ROI is a serious topic. It isn't the be-all and end-all, but it isn't irrelevant either. Join the Guild to see my point of view, and to find out how to *really* handle ROI.

10:16:07 AM    

War, disease drive up conferencing. Anecdotal evidence shows that multinational companies are turning more frequently to phone and video conferencing in light of the war in Iraq and the flulike disease in Asia. [CNET News.com]

I think this is just one more pair of forces driving us toward more synchronous (and eventually toward more asynchronous) e-Learning. It is also moving us toward more professional conferences taking place on line rather than at remote locations. I would look to see solutions such as blogging and peer-to-peer (eg, Groove) substituting for the social interactions that take place at conferences.

This still isn't an ideal or direct one-to-one substitution, though. Issues that will have to be resolved: payment for events, structure for participants, intellectual property and drm, vendor participation, bandwidth requirements (lots of people are going to be attending on dialup connections from home).

11:03:27 AM    

Messaging key to Web services, CTOs say. Reliable messaging considered at least as important as security [InfoWorld: Top News]

Another huge area of need limiting online learning. If learning is offered online by vendors as a web service, in many cases there will be a need for messaging between the online learning application and an LMS or LCMS running on the employer's system. All of these applications and services need to be talking to each other, and SCORM ain't the answer (imho) due to firewall restrictions and other security concerns.

11:02:43 AM    

Holes found in RealPlayer, QuickTime. Just as streaming video and audio are hitting the mainstream, researchers sound the alarm about serious security holes in the two popular digital media players. [CNET News.com]

More issues to think about in selecting technology to support e-Learning.

10:44:45 AM    

eLearning is dead
Quote: "Two weeks ago at the eLearning 2003 Conference in Manchester, UK, I announced that eLearning was dead." [Internet Time blog]
Comment: Very short post...but makes the point well: elearning as it was envisioned over the last several years is dead...it's not viable, and it's not practical. My bet: over the next year/two, organizations will fall over themselves promoting the "business value" of elearning - terms like metrics, ROI, strategies, solutions, innovations will abound. Sad thing is - they'll all still be missing the mark. Elearning (or whatever people will start calling it soon) is needed because the undercurrent of what drives society has changed - it's a digital world...and original elearning initiatives sought to place a template over traditional education and call it "new". In reality, the industrial model is largely out of date...and anything built on it is outdated before it begins...   [eLearnspace Blog]

Comment on the Comment (and the Quote): I guess this is typical of the kind of confusion that results when disruptive technology collides with vested interests. We don't even know what to call what we do (any more than we knew what to call it when "it" was just "training"). I think Jay is unhappy about the hype that has been introduced by people trying to sell products that have turnd out to be only partly baked. Some objections to use of the term are really only branding disputes. The "handle" we use to describe the use of online technology to shape offline human performance may very well change, but it will still be important to measure and demonstrate the business value of that technology use.

Look at it this way: a name, such as "e-Learning", is really a kind of brand. A brand is a promise. What promise are we making? Isn't it time we kept the promise?

More on this later. It's important.

10:32:10 PM    

Grabbable Objects Grab Attention

A Dartmouth research group has found a new and unexpected way our attention can be grabbed - by grabbable objects. Their study, which appears in the March 17 advance online issue of Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates that objects we typically associate with grasping, such as screwdrivers, forks or pens, automatically attract our visual attention, especially if these items are on a person's right-hand side. [Science a GoGo]

9:53:40 PM    

Microsoft puts its spin on office chat. The proposed SIP standard is key to IM interoperability and to merging voice, data, video and messaging into a single system, says a Microsoft executive. [CNET News.com]

Wow. What does this do to conferencing, synchronous e-Learning, e-mentoring, and epss?

5:00:13 PM    

ATT to offer prepaid Web surfing cards. The telecom giant dips its toe into the Net micropayment by putting prepaid Web content cards, which let people buy access to Disney, Shockwave.com and other sites, into retail stores. [CNET News.com]

(Hmmmm - could work for public access to e-Learning, too ...)

4:57:02 PM    

AOL announced it's new BYOA (bring your own access) service called AOL Broadband on Monday, March 31. Here's their press release: http://media.aoltimewarner.com/media/press_view.cfm?release_num=55253107 and an article in USA today about the announcement. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2003-03-31-aol-broadband_x.htm

1:00:07 PM    

Various news sources are pointing to a possible announcement by Microsoft this week to incorporate Rights Management Services into Windows servers, at least initially to control the information in Office files over a corporate Intranet.

Microsoft devs Windows Rights Management Services. Tool to plug corporate leaks [The Register]

Here's some other things Microsoft has to say about DRM:

http://www.microsoft.com/issues/essays/2002/06-03digitalrights.asp

12:59:29 PM    

Adobe Gets Ready To Rumble With Microsoft

Acrobat 6 is more accessible to users, Adobe says, including those outside firewalls. [Information Week, March 31, 2003]

Most of the features to be added to Acrobat 6 will be of interest for Content Management purposes, but if you are creating e-Learning-related PDF documents with multiple editors, or doing heavyweight project management involving partners outside your firewall, you will want to look at the article. At some point (in a few months), you will probably find yourself weighing the benefits of Office 2003 and InfoPath. It isn't too early to start looking at the differences between the products and deciding which makes more sense for your e-Learning development team.

12:26:05 PM    

Outsourcing e-Learning Development? Heads up!

According to the research firm Gartner, half of this year's outsourcing projects in IT will fail to deliver on their bottom-line promises. The biggest reason cited is breakdown of communication between outsourcing providers and clients. The vast majority (over 70%) of companies do not have formal plans for managing relationships with their outsourcing providers. Although the report from Gartner applies specifically to IT, eLearning managers who are outsourcing development efforts should also commit to planning for renewing and modifying contracts. Schedule formal meetings with outsourcing providers in order to keep up with changes in technology and business needs. [Gartner report cited in Information Week, March 31, 2003]

12:11:53 PM    

Talking with Jim Moore yesterday, he said that more people see themselves as citizens of the world not of any specific country. It certainly is easier to do that now, and that's the argument for globalization, or the observation of globalization. Of course we're all citizens of the solar system, galaxy and universe. Carl Sagan and all that. (Douglas Adams.)

10:43:47 AM