There is a bit of work happening out there with IMS content packages and ebooks. The Moodle books feature allows books to be exported in this format so it too has the built in capacity for creating durable learning resources and publishing them widely on the web via conversion to ebooks. See more of this at Canberra's Moodleposium11 in late October this year.

Toolbox learning objects could become even more widely portable as e-books. The mind boggles!

Tom Worthington, ACt is doing some work too - check out the blog at

Bookmark this item

Working with open educational resources (OER):  Discovering, reusing and customising learning objects from the Toolbox national learning object collection

 Delivered online live via Elluminate through e-Works on Wednesday 31^st August 12.30 to 1.30pm. 

Bookmark this item

Open Educational Resources is a bit of a buzz term in the higher education sector. There is a current research project out of UNE to find out how OER's are being dealt with in Universities in Australia which hopefully will come up with something to guide policy and infrastructure investment in the future.

Bookmark this item

I am so excited that the new Vetadata Tool has been finally released! Does this mean that the new VET Reload will soon follow?

Creating vetadata for the learning objects/ learning resources you create is one of the most tedious, headache making and unrewarding activities you will ever have to undertake. The Vetadata Tool is designed to take some of the pain out of the process and it now caters for Mac users as well as Windows 7 - Fantastic work from the developers with eWorks in Melbourne.

Bookmark this item

I gave an online Webinar las week to the Aus eLearning community about VET Reload through the Framework's eGems Webinar program. Responses from those attending have suggested that there may be some problems with learning objects created in VetReload and compatibility with Moodle. Is the Vetadata schema at fault? Please Read Tom worthington's blog at http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/05/reload-tool-for-creating-learning.html

Bookmark this item

Here is another free elearning content creation program from the UK. It comes as a downloadable program or as an online toolkit and makes learning objects much as eXe and Glowmaker do. However you do do need a little scripting knowledge for this one.

Take a look : http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/

Bookmark this item

Apple Mac internet browsers such as Safari are often set to automatically unzip (or decompress) zipped files as they are downloaded. This applies when you are downloading a learning object from LORN or the Toolbox Learning Object Repository (TLOR)  - since these are .zip files - and can cause problems for those of us who then want to upload them to our LMS. The problem is that the Apple Mac unzipping process seems to make the learning object currupt in some way affecting the manifest.xml file - which tells the LMS how to display the learning object.

Bookmark this item

There is an interesting UK learning object project funded by the higher Education Council for England to help university academic staff design, develop and use of learning objects. Partner institutions involved in the project are London Metropolitan University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Nottingham.  The project is conducted by RLO-CETL (Reusable Learning Objects, Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning) and partners have developed a repository of learning objects in a range of subject ares that can be utilised by non partner institutions.

Bookmark this item

Is anyone out there trying to use VET Reload on a Mac? We in the ACT have been having trouble getting it to work on a Macintosh computer. BUT... Marita Mahoney, who is working on a Framework Innovations project came to my Reload session today. She had taken the time to install the original UK Reload Editor on her Macbook and got it working well. If you try this just remember once you have unzipped the file click on the .jar file to make the software work.

Bookmark this item

There are a few points to consider when discussing the who, what, when, how and why of learning objects. Impressions are that teachers need the following in order to confidently use LO...

1. Technical skills in ICT...this might mean being familiar with web pages and their institutions OLE/VLE for example.

Bookmark this item

eLearning tips for managers and team leaders about how to engage their teaching staff in ICT for teaching and learning are few and far between. However there are some learned folk out there in academic land who are thinking about the issue and proposing some strategies that should offer the support needed to develop attractive processional learning experiences for trainers/teachers who need to use ICT to enhance student learning.

Bookmark this item

Is anyone out there using eXe for authoring elearning content? If not then I'd urge you to have another look at this free software from New Zealand. Funded by the New Zealand Government and developed within the University of Auckland and others it is a pretty slick and versatile product. However it is not without some flaws. The limitations are in the user support area not with the software itself. at least.

Bookmark this item

Sue McShane the ACT E-Learning Co-ordinator has created a neat ARED learning object using the decision tree design to help teachers and trainers discover the many resources on the Framework site addressing getting started in elearning.

Check it out at http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/file.php/75/Webventure/default.htm

Bookmark this item

Those clever CETL folk (Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning - UK) in partnership with London Metropolitan University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Nottingham have software called GLO Maker which uses the concept of reusable learning design to create learning objects. Calling this the "Bookmark this item

Incorporating web 2 into web based learning objects is extremely easy using a combination of embeding, iframing, linking or rssing (Yes, one knows that iframing is EVIL!@!!).  Ipadio is an  interesting web2 tool to whack in your LO. It is podcasting to the web via phone.... what fun...Here is what Crunchbase has to say about it..."

Bookmark this item

If you have noticed any problems working with learning objects and the VET Reload Tool when you moved to Windows 7 - your were right! It was not your imagination but the fact that Microsoft got the jump on everyone with the new windows OS and now everything has to be tweeked so it is compatable. Compatabiity is a goal, it WILL happen - the folks from e-standards won't let us early adoptors languish without Reload for too long...

cheers

Helen

Bookmark this item

Peter Shanks' post about a course on ARED that he has built in Moodle reminds me that ARED can be used to create neat little learning objects that work very well in online learning environments (LMS, OLE, SMS...whatever). Please check out Peter's ARED course on: http://moodle.trainingo2.net/course/view.php?id=16 log in as a guest.

Bookmark this item

I'm giving some ARED training down here in Tassie and having some difficulty getting participants all together in one spot at any one time. To make things a bit easier I put together a little moodle course.

Bookmark this item

See other users who bookmarked this item [1]

If this is happening to you  it might be that you are a victim of  a combined Windows security/winzip and IE7 security  problem. Im discussing this with our  IT folk ASAP but in the meantime here are a few ways around the problem worked out with Simon from e-works (THANKS SIMON!!! YEAH!!!):

Bookmark this item

There is a lot of interest in interprofessional education and e-learning around the place at the moment OS. Toolbox Learning objects especially in the health field of study (taken from the Infection Control Toolbox, for example) model an approach to building learning object resources in order to facilitate shared learning experiences across professions in the health area.

Bookmark this item

Changed text in a learning object page can make the page unreadable for the content player if the changes have been made using a wysiwyg editing software such as Dreamweaver. To make the changes readable you have to repackage the object using the VET Reload Tool.  I hope we get this fixed soon  but in the meantime - make your changes using Notepad as your web editor and you wont have to repackage the object.

Bookmark this item

A chapter that might (or might not) appear in:

Interprofessional E-learning and Collaborative Work: Practices and Technologies