David Mattison: Distance Education

Future Learning Environment software from Finland

Tue, 27 May 2003 05:19:45 GMT

Future Learning Environment is a Zope-based e-learning tool developed by UIAH Media Lab, University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland. It's open source and freeware. A demo version is available.

IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc.

Fri, 23 May 2003 04:46:34 GMT

IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. sets standards for e-learning; its Digital Repositories Interoperability version 1.0 specification (released 30 January 02003), although specifically designed for learning objects repositories, sounds promising for digital libraries and electronic records keeping purposes. The specification is publicly available as a Web or Adobe Acrobat PDF document.

ELearnChina Conference 2003

Tue, 20 May 2003 00:04:32 GMT

Got an invitation to attend the ELearnChina Conference 2003 which is being held in Edinburgh (yes, the one in Scotland, not China) between 21 and 23 July 02003, Beijing (November 2003), and Shanghai. Nice slick Web site, and first time I've had to agree to enter a site that should be open to begin with! Something to do with allowing the conference organizers to continue to send me e-mail promoting this event.

SimQuest 5.1 available for download

Mon, 19 May 2003 21:06:56 GMT

We are very pleased to announce: SimQuest 5.1

You can download SimQuest 5.1 for free from our website: www.simquest.nl

New features of SimQuest 5.1 are:

improved installation procedure
long directory name problem solved
auto store option for graphs
new library icons
updated demo simulation
improved SimQuest meeting
improved hypothesis scratchpad
improved hypothesis list

[Distribution list notice from Jan van der Meij, member of the SimQuest Team at the University of Twente, Netherlands, 15 May 02003]

Sat, 10 May 2003 05:30:01 GMT

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.

Open-Education.org goes public domain, sort of

Fri, 18 Apr 2003 04:31:55 GMT

Check out Open-Education.org, which seems to be promoting the exciting old concept of public domain digital content resources for educational resources.

Thanks to Scott Leslie's EdTechPost, 04/15/02003

EduTools.info, reviews of e-learning and computer-assisted learning tools for higher education

Wed, 16 Apr 2003 02:24:50 GMT

Quoting from EduTools.info,

EduTools is a resource for higher education that is designed to assist users in making a decision about their course management system. EduTools is designed specifically for higher education. If you are new to the website, it is similar to other web-based resources for consumers to choose cars, pets, or other products.

This site, originally developed by British Columbia's Centre for Curriculum, Transfer & Technology and Bruce Landon, provides the most complete independently-reviewed analyses of selected course management software tools. WCET has partnered with C2T2 as well as the creator of the Web site, Bruce Landon, a psychology faculty member at Douglas College in British Columbia.

If you are familiar with the predecessor site, Landonline, this project redesigned and expanded that site.

Thanks to Scott Leslie's EdTechPost blog where you'll find a link to EduTools.info in the About Scott Leslie section, 15 April 02003.

IMS Learning Design a full specification

Tue, 11 Mar 2003 02:09:06 GMT

After a fairly smooth period as a public draft, IMS Learning Design has now been accepted as a full specification by a 94% majority of IMS members. In a sense, the real deal starts now, as the specification is now stable enough for the vendors to develop.

[via CETIS: Standards in Education Technology, 25 Feb 02003]

Canadian Core Learning Object Metadata Application Profile (CanCore)

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 04:13:54 GMT

CanCore (Canadian Core Learning Object Metadata Application Profile) "is intended to facilitate the interchange of records describing educational resources and the discovery of these resources both in Canada and beyond its borders. CanCore is based on and fully compatible with the IEEE Learning Object Metadata [LOM] standard and the IMS Learning Resource Meta-data specification. The CanCore Initiative has been funded through the CANARIE-sponsored BELLE and POOL projects, the Netera Alliance, Industry Canada, and through Alberta Learning, TeleEducation NB and the Electronic Text Centre of the University of New Brunswick. The primary participants in the CanCore initiative are currently Norm Friesen (norm.friesen@ualberta.ca), and Anthony Roberts (toni@teleeducation.nb.ca)."

UVic Guide to Metadata Standards for e-Learning Projects

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 04:12:59 GMT

The UVic Guide to Metadata Standards is referenced by CanCore and contains more links to other e-learning metadata projects.

dotLRN Project of MIT and University of Heidelberg

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 04:07:50 GMT

dotLRN is an extraordinarily ambitious project of MIT, with collaboration Heidelberg University and others, to develop an open source course management application using OpenACS/AOLserver.

The main MIT site is at http://dotlrn.mit.edu/

Additional information on dotLRN can be found at OpenACS at http://openacs.org/projects/dotlrn/

Collaboraid, which is managing the software development process, also contains additional information on dotLRN, including a demo.

Version 1.0 of dotLRN is set for release on April 1, 02003. An afternoon seminar on dotLRN is scheduled for the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, on April 10, 02003.