Gerry Hanely, head MERLOT “wine steward”- said a theme was “connecting learning repositories”. Interesting, eh? Can you think of an acronym that fits there? It begins with an R….
Keynote: “Leading from Both Ends”- Doug MacLeod from Netcetera to talk about eduSourceCanada. Introduced “Donut Object Repositories” Tim Horton’s- a chain of thousands of franchises across Canada.
Tim Horton’s: Unit cost ($0.75). Business Model- “Cheap stuff, come back often”.
Donut meta-tags- interchangable bins with pre-printed labels!
Belle project- predecessor to eduSource. Unit COst $1257, business model: “pricey Stuff. Don’t Come back again.”
Finally a speaker that chided the failure of the conference format (speaker in front of room reading slides).
Another comparison- strategy card games traded by kids and banned from schools. “When we have children figthing over learning objects, we have succeeeded.”
Learning Objects as bricks. St Mary’s Church in Red Deer. Unit cost, 55 cents. Business model “cheap stuff. Buy a lot of them.” Communities of Practice “long-lived and robust.” Workflow: “moron proof”. 329,000 Bricks/day. Firmness (24/7), Commodity (good user interface), Delight.
eduSource Suite of Tools. Search tools, tagging tools, packaging tools, rights management tools built onm eduSource Communications Layer. Based on IMS standards, open-source, we are giving it away so anyone can play. For this to succeed, we need buy-in. Need to create a market that does not really exist.
Interface- will be shown Friday 8:30.
Learning Object Repository. National Assembly, Quebec City (bad knock of lo Le Louvre). The architect Tachˆà “themed” the building. Color used as keys. All elements are symbolic (columns, bricks) all to talk about Quebec history.
Learining Environments, “Uru: Ages Beyond Myst”. Community, Chat, Open Source
Learning Objects should be
Unit Cost: $1. Communities of Practice: “Rabid”. Info Archictecture: simple.
Not only last mile to deal with but last inch (the user’s mind). Suggested solution “A grid of interoperable resources” including not only repositories but human resources as well.
Suggests it can be an International Network.
David Porter, BCCampus, :Linking systemic initiatives with individuals and communities”
New opportunities based on learner: e.g. Blogger. “new form of cave painting”.
Flat online person-centered online social hiererchies such as P2P. Trends from job-centered world to a portfolio of work.
“Wisdom Sits in Places” book about ethnography about place, naming of the world.
Lack of local initiatives that carry on the proces of systemic initiatives. Willingness to share resources. Need to focus more on here.
Shaping Learning Object Theory to meet personal needs. Many deifnitions, but need to make it your own to create “elevator pitch” about LOs. Value proposition not stated well, not clearly demonstarted to foster the local communities. “it’s more like DNA then Lego”
How do we make it work? Capturing, structuring and sharing work is noble work for faculty.
Lessons from Web Generation. (Naptster) Try before buy. Buy by the piece. Mix and Match. Reshape and re-purpose materials. Share. Publish mixes.
P2P computing- making repositoroes into self-mamaged environments.
Need Kazaa like interfaces.
Emerging examples: eduSplash (P2P LO tool). Recombo Converter. Possibility Network.
P2P Network Tools: e.g. Groove.
eduSplash turns computer into a network-savvy P2P repository. Part of eduSource Canada. Free download, open-source.
Recombo Converter: works in MS Office to make it easy to create SCORM compilant content. Manages and shares metadata files (“rubber stamps” meta-data.
Learning Possibility Network Personal Learning Assistant Personal Learning Strategy Designer.
Repositories R Us – linking local and systemic initiatives.
