Learning Object Repositories Presentation.

"I've posted it online here (pdf) and here (mov). The PDF version needs some tweaking (lines are white on a white background. It looks awesome on screen, but I switched the background to white for PDF and print, and lines don't show up. Use your imagination for now...)"

[Update]

Presentation Updated

I've updated the presentation (again). I haven't updated the QuickTime version yet, but the PDF is up to date.

I'll likely update again after the presentation is over.

Here's the PDF link.

[D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog]

47 slides! Addresses CAREO and other topics of interest to the RLO community. Basic approach that can be understood by practitioners who are just starting out with learning objects. Highly recommended.

10:37:05 AM    

Publishing as Teachers: What's Stopping Us?

Laura Gibbs writes: "I think that much of the confusion that university faculty members feel about developing online content for their courses derives from this confusion between the outspoken expectations of scholarship on the one hand, and the quiet diligence of teachership on the other. When you publish content on the web, you are doing just that: you are publishing. And for most professional academics, publishing is an activity that belongs to the sphere of scholarship. It is fraught with anxiety, usually rather solipsistic, not prone to take risks, hedging its bets, articulated in response to other works of scholarship in an artificially impersonal and abstract sphere of discourse. "

[Xplana]

Great article. If you'd like to be published in a dedicated e-learning Journal that is more open than most academic venues, and more structured than blogging, see The eLearning Developers' Journal and contact me. I'm the editor, and I can always use a good story from the field.

10:28:06 AM    

Free Learning Management Systems.

Free White Paper Explores Open Source Learning Management Systems

Five free learning management systems that have evolved in university settings are examined for commercial use

The white paper examines five LMSs from Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, and the US. They have several things in common: They evolved in the university environment, and they all use the same middleware and database for functionality. They differ greatly in features and pedagogical approach. Some are more suitable for a corporate setting than others, but even their usefulness will depend on what a company is hoping to get out of an LMS.

[PRWeb]

Note: The white paper is published by a consulting firm. To obtain it, you must register and provide contact information. We have addressed one "enterprise-ready" open source LMS in The eLearning Developers' Journal and will cover others in the future. Open-source LMS do not require payment of license fees, per-seat fees, etc., but their use is not without its associated expense. Users still must tailor the installation to their organization's needs. Typically this is a faster process with open source software than it would be to develop your own LMS from the ground up.

I still maintain that many organizations, especially smaller ones, do not need an LMS, and many others can craft their own from database applications they already own.

10:16:55 AM    

ISKME: Knowledge Management in Education: Defining the Landscape
"This monograph describes the opportunities and challenges faced by those working to improve the use and sharing of information in education through practices that have come to be known as knowledge management." [elearningpost]

Big .pdf but initially looks like it's worth a read!

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]

I still have a lot of questions about knowledge management in any field, let alone education. It seems to me we don't do very much about USING the knowledge that we so carefully gather up. How long have we known about learning objectives, yet how seldom do we see any meaningful ones? (end of rant, before I get carried away)

9:21:04 AM