Saturday, January 26, 2008

Richard Baraniuk: Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning

Here is a very interesting TED Talks from Richard Baraniuk who gives us his vision of the future of textbooks, and open-source learning.

It is 19 minutes long but worth a view and thinking about. Go to http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/25 to see it.

Rod

Get a First Life

If you haven't seen this before, you need to check this site out. It is simply and parody on Second Life, which is getting a lot attention from the e-learning community lately. Go to http://www.getafirstlife.com/ to check it out.

It is kind of like the www.dhmo.org that is a parody of many sites about toxic substances. BTW, if you can't see the humour in this site, ask a chemistry student.

Rod

Saturday, January 12, 2008

bFree - Blackboard Export Extractor

Here is a very interesting and useful tool if you are working with Blackboard version 6.3 and higher. This tool is freely available from the UNC website. Essentially, this tool will allow you or your students to view and extract any content for a Blackboard Archive or Export zip file. It also can be used to do the following:
  • If you need to extract a document from an old course that you have an archive file, you can use bFree an avoid having to mount the file back into a Blackboard course shell.
  • You can convert your course into a web site with the same structure, that can be shared outside of Blackboard either on a disk or website.
  • This would be a very useful tool if you needed to move your course from Blackboard to a different LMS.
Rod Corbett

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Jane Hart's E-Learning Handbook

Here is an very useful online handbook all about E-Learning from Jane Hart. This e-book is free and will serve as an excellent PD source and reference. Jane promises to keep the handbook current with continuous revisions.

Useful topics covered include:
  • Virtual worlds like Second Life
  • Blogs and wikis
  • Podcasts, videocasts and screencasts
  • What is Web 2.0 and E-Learning 2.0?
  • RSS Feeds
  • Mobile E-Learning
  • Social Bookmarking
  • And many more

Click here to check it out.