Free Content for Educators

I was putting together the finishing touches to my new training notes on producing eLearning content today and came to the section on content repositories. If you have read this blog of recent then you will have seen that I am intending seizing the opportunity to push the use of our DSpace repository with a quick how-to guide. Working on the idea of a supplement to this, I set about compiling a list of similar repositories and teaching resources by way of showing the value of this very open approach to course materials; and not least to help strengthen my own view of, 'should we not start getting into the practice of assembling material instead keep creating'.

To demonstrate the value of adopting this more open approach, I decided to compile a list of free repositories and resources available on the Internet for teachers to use. I started by including those that I have known about for some time and often browse for myself such as Merlot, OpenSpace and Jorum, and then decided to trawl around for anything new, and as it had been a while since my last search, felt sure that I would turn something up. I was pleasantly surprised to very quickly stumble upon 12-dozen-places-to-self-educate-yourself-online. At first glance I thought it was 12, but no it was 12 dozen, though I confess to having not actually counted, but the list is very long. The collection of resource topics should prove to have something for just about everyone:-

Science and Health
Business and Money
History and World Culture
Law
Computer Science and Engineering
Mathematics
English and Communications
Foreign and Sign Languages
Multiple Subjects and Miscellaneous
Free Books and Reading Recommendations
Educational Mainstream Broadcast Media
Online Archives
Directories of Open Education

As I am sure you can imagine, the materials vary enormously from collections of MP3 podcasts and video’s to standard web pages. There was one particular site, and I did forget to tag it, that will allow you to convert the text into web content that you can copy and paste into your own site, interesting. If you have not come across this collection before, I would certainly recommend taking a look and tag.

Comments welcome, regards Barry

Training and Workshops

Apart from all the very predictable events and chores of a post enrolment week, I have managed to get a good amount of time both in college and out for the production of new phase 3 vle training notes. If you have read any my earlier posts on this then you will recall that I am using Wimba Create as the tool to leverage Word skills in the production of eLearning content. One initiative that I do intend driving forward in this new approach to our production and delivery of materials though is to recruit student feedback. After all lets face it, we are all in one way or another going to be learning here, and I feel this would seem a reasonable way forward for us all, so next step, use the vle to produce standard feedback, and there will be more on this in a later post.

Looking into the longer, maybe medium term, during the course of this week, and I am happy with the way things are going, I really am, but also aware that there is a bigger picture here. The ambition for sustainable eLearning in reality is actually going to require the adoption of wider application and practice. These new efforts some may say amount to little more than e-Delivery, a reasonable point maybe. For my own part I anticipate the inclusion of a collaborative delivery framework and new assessment strategies are essential, do feel free to comment.

So more training sessions? My own initial reaction was yes, but the list begins to grow, and I thought why not produce a set of small eLearning modules, for instance:-

An appreciation of what we understand by the term eLearning
Developing - adopting a delivery and assessment framework
Considerations for eLearning content design
Integrating Moodle web 2.0 tools
Using content repositories

Much of this does actually exist in the form of case studies anyway, thinking particularly of JISC here and hopefully the whole process will attract a realistic amount of cpd hours, once again more in later posts.




I am not sure, but would like to know so please comment, if others find a fare frequency of re-booking takes place on their courses. My own guideline for course notes presentation has been in the style of click-n-go, basically a sequenced approach with screen shots, while keeping text to a reasonably informative minimum. And yet, we do have repeat bookings, even though in the vast majority of cases the information that is required is clearly in the handout. So in an endeavour to resolve the issue, this week I have launched one-2-one and small group 30-minute workshops. Naturally I am still available for any ad-hoc requests and meetings that come along, but feel a more formal workshop is going to be of value, we shall see.

Well that’s my week, please stay in touch for future posts

As virtual environments merge

The arrival of shared media in Second Life, has meant among other things, that I can now give access to our vle and all its facilities to students from inside the virtual world. The effect of this is producing not only a merging of the two virtual environments, but also my two blogs it would seem, and so I post a link to this latest article on Shimmer-Island from here.

I am also pleased to inform everyone that the fan for a downed server is on order and will hopefully arrive soon, and so restore our full range of blog features.


regards Barry (Skipper)