Want to add an RSS feed to your WebCT course? This April 16, 2003 entry from Brian Lamb's Object Learning blog with links shows you how to do it. [David Mattison: Distance Education]

Another way to get the job done in WebCT. This is two (or three?) ways that have come up in the past week. RSS for e-Learning applications is the Next Big Thing. You read it here first.

10:56:41 AM    

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    

As I worked on my review of open source courseware this week, it became clear that the success or failure of all these wonderful projects hinged on community and collaboration - Rob Reynolds - xplana

Interesting!

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]

The Next Big Thing?

8:59:28 AM    

Apologies.

If you have been getting a lot of apparently "contentless" changes to this weblog this morning, it's because I realized (after looking at my posts being quoted in other weblogs) that my posts don't show up as having titles. I think it's because I've not been using a heading style on the first line. Didn't know you needed to do that. Hope I got it right. Please forgive me.

10:22:22 AM    

Apologies.

If you have been getting a lot of apparently "contentless" changes to this weblog this morning, it's because I realized (after looking at my posts being quoted in other weblogs) that my posts don't show up as having titles. I think it's because I've not been using a heading style on the first line. Didn't know you needed to do that. Hope I got it right. Please forgive me.

10:22:04 AM    

Microsoft adding support for weblogging.

It was just a passing mention. But Chairman Bill noted at yesterday's Newspaper Association of America Annual Convention that Microsoft is very interested in making sure blogging tools are there to support folks doing "bottom-up publishing." Microsoft has been sticking its toes in the blogging tools waters, as of late, with everything from a Windows Media 9 blogging plug-in, to its Community Starter Kit, to other goodies under development by some of Microsoft's best bloggers. [Microsoft Watch, April 30, 2003]

Worth watching. Will they extend to "k-blogging" (using weblogs for knowledge management)? Maybe by connecting to Access? Stay tuned.

9:35:54 AM    

Best Newsreaders, help with rolling your own RSS.

Sam is heavily into RSS news aggregators and notes the best Windows software is Wildgrape NewsDesk.

I use OS X and am still very happy with NetNewsWire Pro.

Try one of these and see if it doesn't change your way of using the Web.

___

On the production end one has to worry about making the RSS feed. Most blogging tools handle this automatically, but enabling a website may be an issue. This link, should you choose to roll your own, may be useful. [Crandall Surf Report]

Wildgrape NewsDesk is begware - they ask for a donation via PayPal. NetNewsWire Pro is $39.95; the Lite version is free. Download 30 free trial here -- the link above takes you to the download site for the new beta version (NOT recommended - bugs).

8:14:47 AM    

Open Source Courseware.

The cost of doing business is going up for colleges and universities, particularly when it comes to course management systems. Proprietary enterprise solutions for course management -- BlackBoard, WebCT, eCollege -- are beginning to cost the same as other enterprise solutions. Translation -- they're getting very expensive. This rise in cost, along with the traditionally closed architecture of such systems has lead some universities and organizations to develop in-house programs tailored to their specific pedagogical needs and development resources.

Some of these home-grown solutions have been heavily influenced by the aggressive open source movement and have adopted both development and licensing strategies that allow other to adopt the software for free, or participate in the development process. The purpose of this paper is to outline the major open source courseware projects and to rate their usefulness. This is not intended as a definitive ranking but rather as a point of departure for those interested in investigating these systems and who are considering an open source courseware implementation. [Xplana]

(comments added 5/5/03, after posting) I am looking for an active backlash aimed at "very expensive" enterprise solutions. In one sense this is already happening (just look at sales figures and stock prices for some of these companies). An "active backlash" would be in the form of more organizations going to open source solutions (and they do exist, you just don't hear about them) or to collaborative use of XML (e.g., Canada's eduSource).

8:04:22 AM