New digital usage dashboard for WebCT.

http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/michelle/
archives/000593.html

ATTENTION WEBCT ADMINISTRATORS!

I've been waiting a few weeks to tell people about this one since I saw it demo'd at the BC Ed Tech Users Group meetings, but promised Michelle that I wouldn't post on it before her (since she's the one that works at UBC, and not me.)

The folks at UBC (the original home of WebCT) have developed a set of scripts that mine the usage data and a few other variables in the WebCT database and give a system-wide picture of how the system is being used, and more importantly, allows you to anticipate the kind of usage coming down the pipe by looking at the scheduled tests and quizzes across the board. This is invaluable - for the first time within this system one can get a heads-up if 5,000 users are about to crash your server at the same time to take their Chem 101 test, while another 3,000 happen to be scheduled to take a Biology exam the same morning. And as you'd expect from a place that's obviously in the know, there's an RSS feed for this data!

Don't be put off by the Flintbox site Michelle points to - the scripts are being offered for free, even though there appears to be a small registration process (and ominous talk of 'patents' and 'licensing') to wade through before you can grab it. - SWL

3:43:26 PM    

A few 'new' edublogs.

Last week Alan was lamenting the seeming dissappearance of a number of formerly prolific edubloggers. I too had wondered where many people had disappeared to, though I seem to recall from my days 'inside' the institution that November and December can be particularly hectic times.

In the spirit of widening the circle, here's a few other educational bloggers I have stumbled on to recently, and that I haven't seen mentioned widely yet:

• "eLearning Eclectic" http://gordmackenzie.com/eclectic/ e-Learning News site from Gord Mackenzie (formerly "Enlightened e-Learning Blog")

• "Inside Learning Weblog" http://www.brianalger.net/
  Brian Alger

• "Weblogs in Higher Education" http://www.mchron.net/site/edublog.php
  Ken Smith in the English Department at Indiana University South Bend.

• "Rick's Cafe" http://www.omegageek.net/rickscafe/
  Blog for the graduate studies program in Educational Communications and Technology at the University of Saskatchewan

• "Technica" http://omegageek.typepad.com/technica/
  Robert J. Wall, North Battleford Comprehensive High School, Saskatchewan

In particular I would highlight the first two, Brian Alger's and Gord McKenzie's, as so far containing lots of thought provoking material.

And as has been pointed out a number of times, one of the beauties of RSS is the ability to be notified of activity on a blog that has otherwise been inactive simply by keeping a subscription to their feed in your aggregator. The way I manage that in bloglines is to create a folder titled 'Dormant' so that I can keep track of blogs that do not seem to be posting regularly anymore. - SWL

3:41:23 PM    

Blackboard going Public?.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A33240-2003Dec3.html

Via Ray Schroeder's Online Learning Update comes a link to this article speculating on the possibility that Blackboard will go public sometime in the near future. I remember being disappointed before the bubble burst that they hadn't IPO'd, as they seemed a good candidate at the time. In retrospect they are looking like geniuses now - missed having their market capitalization decimated and grew the company to where it has real profits. - SWL

3:39:39 PM    

Open Access Journals in the Field of Education.

http://aera-cr.asu.edu/links.html

Just in case you missed it in the editor's introduction to the recently launched Pitch journal, David Wiley and Brent Lambert point to this very extensive list of 'open access journals on education' put together by the Communication of Research SIG of the American Educational Research Association. - SWL

3:38:03 PM    

New Book - Online Education and Learning Management Systems.

http://www.studymentor.com/studymentor/

From eLearning Eclectic comes mention of this new book by Morten Flate Paulsen which brings the Scadanavian perspective on "Online Education and Learning Management Systems." This is of particular interest because, in addition to being the original home of possibly the largest open source iniative, Linux, Scandanavian countries have also produced a number of very good elearning environments (MimerDesk and FLE3 to name two) that very much challenge the more content-focused paradigm that seems to predominate in many of the systems that have originated from North America. Short snippets of the work are available online but one must pay to get either the hard copy or an electronic version. - SWL

3:36:36 PM    

New open source CMS.

Logicampus - new open source CMS.

http://www.logicampus.com/

New open source CMS that was the result of a joint project between Tap Internet and Tarrant County College in Texas. The PHP-based system is quite full featured and will be quickly comprehensible by anyone who has used any of the more 'content-focused' style CMS.

Note I have added this to the ongoing list of open source course management systems, which has moved from its previous location. It can now be found as a wiki page at http://www.edtechpost.ca/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/
EdTechPost/OpenSourceCourseManagementSystems

3:33:23 PM    

eLearning Jargon defined in glossaries.

Pointers to Elearning Glossaries.

http://www.edtechpost.ca/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/
EdTechPost/ELearningGlossaries

As part of the background research for the Edutools project I am constantly on the lookout for new elearning glossaries with which to compare definitions of terms. Here is a list of the ones I know about (in a wiki, so feel free to add if you want) - most of them are generic 'elearning' glossaries though there are a few specific to 'metadata' and 'learning objects' here too. - SWL

3:31:32 PM