Tuesday, May 20, 2003

Reflections on WebCT. Interesting reflections by Emily at Filament on using WebCT: "My big complaint about WebCT is that it cuts students off from the real internet. I especially hate that the messaging system is not real email and doesn't allow you to email outside of the program. It creates these little communities and then abruptly disbands them at the end of the semester instead of allowing the continued networking of real internet communities." [Filament] Absolutely! Knock down the walls says I! [James Farmer's Radio Weblog] 11:14:59 AM

Latest Draft: 'Educational Weblogs: Whats & Whys'. OK, here's the latest draft. Basically I've added a bit on 'what's special about weblogs', why they can be better than other tools (CMSs, discussion boards etc.) a very quick bit where you could start one (basically Blogger or Radio), acknowledged that newstickers are actually rss aggregators (not weblogs) and put in some links... annoying that it's tricky to find how to activate weblinks that are not plain addresses in Adobe, nevermind. Again, any comments would be great! And if anyone wants to use it for anything else, please feel free (a link would be nice :o)! I figure with this, faculty interest (which is certainly brewing) and a few other uses (as a knowledge sharing tool, the 'top-end' of a weblog VLE, online presence for a conference) I could certainly get Manila up & running & then we're talking... [James Farmer's Radio Weblog] 11:13:49 AM

Developing a knowledge capture system based on sharable and self documenting learning objects. Developing a knowledge capture system based on sharable and self documenting learning objects via Stephen Quote: "Today’s organizations have well developed systems for capturing financial data and producing reliable and accurate information. An area that is often overlooked is the importance of knowledge held by individuals associated with the organization. This is also true in an educational setting, where learners can often contribute real-world and personal experiences." Comment: I agree with the main premise of this article - learners should have the ability to add (or annotate) existing course content. When dealing with adult learners, an instructor is usually not the authoritative dispenser of knowledge...but rather a facilitator for discussion and learning. Often, in this model, the work/discussion of learners can improve future offerings of the course. One concern - making the learner-created resources useful for other learners involves: a) a time consuming editorial process to determine what goes into the system or b) some form of valuation of the content, and c) a search engine (more information alone won't help learners). [elearnspace blog] 11:11:22 AM

Making instructional content more accessible. "EASI, (Equal Access to Software and Information), is offering a new series, cosponsored by WCET, of synchronous 60-90-minute online events on how to make online instructional content more accessible for learners with disabilities. The series is free to WCET members." A post from my colleagues at WCET - if you are in the States there is a fair chance you are a WCET member, and I recommend the courses offered by the EASI folks. - SWL - via [Edutools News: Course Management Systems] [EdTechPost] 11:10:11 AM

WebCT releases Vista 2.0. "May 7, 2003 - WebCT today introduced WebCT Vista 2.0, the latest release of e-learning's premier academic enterprise system, with new features that simplify course development for faculty of all experience levels and accelerate campus and system-wide e-learning deployment. WebCT Vista 2.0 also includes an expanded set of Web services interfaces..." This may have already done the rounds as the news release came out May 7th, but I've been offline since May 1 so thought I would post it anyways. I am interested to get my hands on this new release to see if they in fact have made any major changes since the initial release. Since the 1.X release only went through 1.1 and 1.2 in less than a year, my sense is that the version leap to 2.x was driven more by the marketing department. - SWL  - via [Edutools News: Course Management Systems] [EdTechPost] 11:09:19 AM