Literally? Nah, just that I have a photo that fits.
I am excited, honoured (note = spelling, lived time in Canada has left Fahrenheit behind and extra u’s are now slippin’ in) to have been asked by founder Yasin Dahi to be on the Advisory Board for his nifty open source startup called Learnful that should be of interest to open educators.
I’ve never done such a thing.
As I understand it, as a person on the advisory board you get to toss out ideas that can be taken up or ignored. One of my favorite types of settings are just an open space to riff ideas with other smart people– which happened a few clicks ago (weeks, months, pandemic time gof effect) in our first meeting.
The path here goes back to the H5P work had the pleasure to do with Clint Lalonde and BCcampus via the H5P Kitchen. I always felt that before you toss people new into something like H5P with some 48 tools that the list of tools is not the best entry point. Or…
I prefer to give folks new to H5P some ways to find existing content of interest, with via entry points to see what can be done in a specific discipline or what kinds of things have been done with a single tool (hence How to Scout For H5P Examples).
And one of the most useful places to do this has been the eCampusOntario H5P Studio.
While it is open for Ontario educators to add content, everything there is open for exploring, downloading, remixing. Yasin was behind the original version developed at Wilfrid Laurier University that was then adapted by eCampusOntario.
H5P has been at work at something like a mega studio described as an OER Hub that was something the BCcampus project would have made excellent use of to create collections of H5P content, but at the launch of the project the hub was “coming soon”. One year ago when we saw a demo by H5P founder Svein-Tore Griff With the hub was at 85% completion.
And at the end of the project, like now it is at 98%, available for H5P in drupal and Moodle platforms. In our H5P Kitchen Mattermost, I shared this announcement. I did not even know Yasin was in there, but he quickly offered everyone a chance to see it in action in the first generation of Learnful, the service at learnful.ca.
Anyone can do what I did at Learnful–,create an account, and use the H5P environment there to both explore the content in the H5P OER hub and also share any H5P content created/imported into Learnful into the hub.
I’m eager for the time the meter hits 100% because this will mean every place you see that H5P editing interface, you will be able to explore a vast collection of H5P content (like what the studio offers) but it can be downloaded directly into the H5P tool as a starting point to remix.
There is more to Learnful.ca than being an H5P authoring ground- there are additional tools to combine H5P and other content into lessons and then even larger collections into modules. Yasin has developed there collaborative workspaces for teams as well as community hubs.
And these tools, including the Studio platform that we have made use of via eCampusOntario will eventually be made available as open source. You can get a sense of this in action as Yasin has been working with LIbreTexts to power their version of this as an H5P Library. where you can see the same functional elements. I first came across this via a “collection” of the OpenRN branching scenarios. The ability to create collections is a new element.
Anyhow, things are just getting started at Learnful.io but keep an eye on them.
Yasin told me that nothing will disappear or change with the initial platform at Learnful.ca — and it is open to anyone to create an account and explore. My board “stand” (if I can have one) is that anything ever offered as a free and open service to educators should never be yanked away, downsized in functionality, or converted to a fee-based service.
Oh, I get nothing compensatory for standing on this piece of wood, so don’t think I am just trying to drum up business. I am just about the opportunity what open source software and open content can provide as a refreshing alternative to all the heavy edu plays by for-profit corporate players.
Yep, Hippy on Board.
Featured Image: That’s my foot! My photo! Accurate Measuring flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license modified by adding the learnful.io logo.
Congratulations, and may your bare foot not encounter any rusty nails!