Nouts Education News

Paul Andrew's E-Learning Resources Guide

12.01.09

This is another useful compilation of e-learning resources, well-organized and thoughtfully selected. ____JH (Thanks to OL Daily for the citation.)

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• Free
• Easy to use
• Produce high quality resources that can be used on any web enabled platform

Sites & services are arranged into the categories that you can see in the navigation menu the on the left, please click on one to get started.

Short Course on Structured Course Development, LOs, and Standards

12.01.09

This excellent online course is available for free from CAREO (a Wiki version of the course is also provided for readers who might like to contribute to the presentation). The course was developed by the Resource Pool Project. The topics covered should be of especial value to developers of educational resources and resource repositories.
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Course Overview

This short course is intended to provide a basic overview of structured course development, learning objects, and e-learning standards and specifications. This course is meant to be non-technical in nature, although it is hard to make it so.

Course Goal

A Short Course on Structured Course Development, Learning Objects, and E-Learning standards will provide an introduction to using a structured language such as Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) or eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as a basis for producing a learning design and describing course content, activities, and assignments. The course will tell you what SGML and XML are and distinguish them from HyperText Markup Language. You will understand the concept of learning objects and the issues related to their use in e-learning, and you will learn about the standards and specifications initiatives that are shaping the e-learning world.

Key Concepts

• Semantic markup languages
• Instructional design using a structured approach
• Characteristics of learning objects
• Learning objects and metadata
• The difference between a standard and a specification
• Why standards and specifications are important
• E-learning standards and specifications initiatives

Open Education Search Project

22.08.09

The O'Reilly Radar blog reports that ccLearn, Google, and the Hewlett Foundation are working together to build a search portal focused on open educational resources. Everyone interested in the OER field will certainly be following this new OE Search project closely. ____JH

"ccLearn is working with the Hewlett Foundation and Google to build an 'open education web-scale search,' part of a larger effort to offer web users simple, overarching mechanisms for discovering OERs. This tool aims to direct search engine traffic to the incredible diversity of OER repositories and communities. While such a tool would not replace the more specialized and sophisticated search sites and portals that the community already uses, we believe it would expose a much wider public to our community’s materials. This is also an opportunity to encourage OER adoption and specify legal and technical conditions for making educational resources openly available. We see this project as an important step for achieving large-scale access to and use of open educational resources. "

 

Open Education Search [del.icio.us/tag/oer]

You Tube Edu

22.08.09

This site address at You Tube provides links to video courses and lectures from large universities. It's a useful one-stop starting point.  __JH

Openness and the Future of Higher Education

15.01.10

This issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) contains a number worthwhile articles about the significance of open resources for academics. (Thanks to Russell Poulin of WCET for this link.) ___JH
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"We are pleased to present this very topical issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) on openness. Notions of open scholarship, open access publication, open educational resources, tuition-free institutions, and open source software continue to gain popular, research, and commercial interest. Thus, I was very pleased to receive an email 18 months ago from David Wiley offering to guest edit a special issue of IRRODL on openness.

He and his colleague John Hilton III coordinated a call for proposals and had over 25 responses. From these, 12 were selected for full paper development, and 8 survived peer review and appear as the contents of this issue. Brigette and I would like to thank David and John for their considerable efforts in very actively managing the editorial work involved. I am sure you will join me in congratulating David and John as well as the authors for contributing to this very important and timely special issue. Finally, links are provided to the archived recordings of 5 sessions presented by Athabasca University as part of our Open Access Week celebrations. Enjoy!
Terry Anderson, Editor, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning"

OER Handbook for Educators

12.01.09

The OER Handbook is an excellent resource and will undoubtedly continue to be revised and updated beyond this version one. Coverage includes everything from Finding and Adapting resources to Composing, Sharing, and Licensing resources. ____JH

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"Welcome to the world of Open Educational Resources (OER). This handbook is designed to help educators find, use, develop and share OER to enhance their effectiveness online and in the classroom.

Although no prior knowledge of OER^[1] is required, some experience using a computer and browsing the Internet will be helpful. For example, it is preferable that you have experience using a word processor (e.g. Open Office^[2] or Microsoft Word) and basic media production software, such as an image editor (e.g. Gimp^[3], Inkscape^[4] or Photoshop).

The handbook works best when there is some sort of OER you would like to create or make available to others, but it is also useful for the curious reader."

Free Search Tools for Science Information

22.08.09

This guideline information was cited in Open Access News. These tools will be useful to students and instructors in both science and technology. ____JH

"ResourceShelf has put together A Quick Look at a Few Free Science Search Tools.  Among the tools and resources it covers are BioMed Central, CiteSeer, DOAJ, Global Science Gateway, Google Scholar, Highwire Press, Microsoft Live Search Academic, National Science Digital Library, OAIster, PubMed Central, Science.gov, Scirus, and Scitopia." [Open Access News]