MERLOT: ECollaborative Online (Aussie View)

Getting ready to start the Thursday 8:00am general session, another presenation by Garry Putland from EdNA (Education Network Australia). There will be other bloggers in the room madly typing the notes, so I plan to lean back and observe…

Too bad the room is looking pretty sparse- Garry is brilliant and EdNA Online is worth seeing. Maybe too many late nights whooping it up at the Celebration of Lights fireworks last night… I could hear from outside the throngs lined up for the SkyTrain after the show were chanting “Oh Canada” endlessly.

Now it the room is filling, and on with the show.

(Comment- most of this was high level overview of Australia Education initiatives, and the details of EdNA online that he presented yesterday)

Although he refers to it as “the company” (Comment- not to be confused with spy novel references to the CIA ;-), EdNA is fully funded by the government. Not-for-profit agency.

Cartoon: “If it wasn’t for federation 100 years ago we’d still be a collection of feuding colonies motivated by self-interest.” (Comment-Sounds like any country or better yet, any educational institution with feuding departments).

Parts of education.au
– EdNA Online- more than learning objects includes arms for tech standards, ICT research, ICT policy, more.
– Government Education Portal
– myfuture- a career planning tool, aspects of portfolio
– learning federation (school sector) for developing online curriculum content
-register for edu.au domain names

“Collaboration sets us up for competitive advantage and positioning” Trust is a key component. Formal (MERLOT, GEM, SMETE, EUN) and informal networks (Communities of Practice, NetDays, networks of experts, electronic newsletters).

Networks, importance of standards- metaphor in Australia railroad system which until the 1960s had different gauge tracks (different widths, incompatible) in different states, so a cross-country trip required getting physically off the train at the border of say New South Wales and Victoria. Not very practical.

EdNA online- more than learning objects, but learning materials.

In a quick demo of the personalized portal of EdNA online, Garry again referred to the potential (still have yet to be seen) to add “MERLOT RSS feed of newest items” to a portal. (Comment- again allusions to an RSS Feed form MERLOT.. is it real? Did Nessie eat the feed? Sasquatch? Why the mystery?)

Uh- he just showed a feed of MERLOT Peer Reviews. Then he showed just cutting pasting a MERLOT RSS Feed (too small to read).

Okay, I believe in feeds. Still cannot fnd them on MERLOT. Well, in the meantime, I just created an account in http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/search?qt=humanities%20literature&start=1&count=10&format=rss

Learning Object Exchange (LEX) Workflow, life cycle management, distributed management across states, digital rights management (Comment- oops, we missed copyrighting the name) Part of Learning Federation (comment-need to come back and click through)