RELOAD editor adds Content Packaging and SCORM authoring. Following a comprehensive rewrite, the 1.1 version of the RELOAD e-learning content authoring tool can now be used to edit both plain IMS as well as SCORM content packages. [CETIS: Standards in Education Technology]
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Collaborative learning environments sourcebook.

This is a sourcebook for academics and students who want to develop collaborative learning environments (or communities of practice) in which lecturers, students and others can work together to create new knowledge while learning new skills. Click on the links on the left to browse through the book. The book is currently in the process of being (collaboratively) developed, but already contains quite a lot of useful material. Below are details of the larger project that the book is a part of... [critical methods society]

This project was started in late 2002 by lecturers in the psychology department at the University of South Africa. It seems like these folks have collected some interesting resources and hey, they have included a page about Blogs and learning... [Sebastian Fiedler]

Blogs (aka weblogs) take many forms, but a blog typically resembles an online diary - except that entries need not be of a personal nature and that there are usually many links to other online content (e.g. other blogs). Collaboration happens through blogs in at least five ways:

• Many blogs have a facility for readers to post comments.
• Some blogs are co-authored.
• Many blogs have a prominent list of links to 'like-minded' blogs (also called blog-rolls).
• Many blogs have a facility for syndicating their content to other blogs through automated systems such as RSS.
• Perhaps most importantly, there is a strong culture of blogs commenting on (or re-circulating) material from other blogs.

Different blogging tools (see the section on blogging services) differ in how well they support these different forms of collaboration - e.g., LiveJournal is (apparently) good at encouraging the creation of small circles of friendly blogs. There is also a generic tool (Trackback) that facilitates such connections.

Where to start reading

There is no shortage of background material on blogging. Probably the best starting points are Sébastien Paquet's article on Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research followed by Sebastian Fiedler's Personal Webpublishing as a reflective conversational tool for self-organized learning. Both these articles discuss not only the technology of blogging, but how it relates to philosophical and political issues around web publishing and learning more generally.

There is another useful intro article by James Branum. It gives a fairly comprehensive background to blogging from a journalism perspective, together with an overview of how various mass communication theories might apply to blogging.

Another intro to blogs. An interesting 7-step process for getting grassroots knowledge management going via blogs. More grassroots knowledge management via blogs and storytelling. And another article on knowledge logging aka k-logging.

There is a blog on Weblogs in Education plus the Educational Blogger Network.

Portfolios

Portfolios are not usually thought of as collaboration tools, but when they are posted on an intranet or the internet as electronic portfolios they open up spaces for collaborative work. A good intro article on electronic portfolios (including a large listing of portfolio tools) here.

Learning journals

Similarly, learning journals, are usually seen as individual learning tools, but can equally be used in a collaborative online environment. An article on Journal writing as an adult learning tool by Sandra Kerka discusses issues such as privacy and evaluation, leaning towards saying students should feel free to write about private issues and to criticise the course/lecturer without fear of lecturer evaluation. In an online journal privacy is of course not possible, but the constraining effects of evaluation may be reduced by having it occur in the context of a community of learners who read and comment on each others' journals - rather than one-sided lecturer evaluation. Kerka also discusses various dimensions on which journals could be evaluated. [critical methods society]

By Sebastian Fiedler. [Seblogging News]
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