April rains in e-learning resources

Hi everyone
this month has a few goodies for you to peruse and as Easter is just around the corner you’ll have plenty of time to investigate and glean some useful information and get your hands on some e-learning tools .
It is always good to anticipate the completion of a JISC funded project. This month there are two well worth downloading. Once again JiscInfonet comes to the fore with the release of their newest infoKit ‘Planning and Designing Technology-Rich Learning Spaces’ and from JISC itself ‘Effective Practice with e-assesssment’.
Also include are links to a Firefox plugin which is described as the next generation research tool’, an open source application ‘Joomla’, the usual list of conferences,a rival to Wikipedia,an interesting Web 2.0 application from Penn Sate, USA and Oxford, UK . For those of you in the health sector,a look at the revamped ‘Biome’ site in the UK now called ‘Intute’.
Library 2.0 seems to be on the rise and the Blog is worth a visit as well as the Wiki for the LearningTechnolgies centre in Manitoba.
Have fun and enjoy anything uneggspected during the Easter break.
1. Another excellent publication/resource from JiscInfonet. Their newest infoKit ‘Planning and Designing Technology-Rich Learning Spaces’ is now available for download.This is a .pdf file.

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/learning-space-design

2. If you use Firefox as your browser and you do a lot of searching/researching then this plugin-in is well worth downloading.
Extract from site:
“Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work, in the web browser itself”.

http://www.zotero.org/

3. Joomla is described as ‘cutting edge content management’ and it is open source.
Extract from the site
“Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable”.
Read all about it at:

http://www.joomla.org/

4. Conferences
4.1. JISC Online Conference: Innovating e-Learning 2007
June 11- 14th
Extract from site:
‘This conference will bring together a selection of key innovators in e-learning to present and discuss the current and future impact of e-learning. The two themes are designed to look at the impact of e-learning from an internal institutional perspective and from the more personalised view of the lifelong learner.
The conference programme will be of interest to practitioners, managers and e-learning coordinators in further and higher education, researchers, staff developers, learning technologists and key stakeholders supporting lifelong learning’.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning_pedagogy/elp_conference07.aspx

4.2
LEARNX ASIA PACIFIC 2007 eLearning and training solutions
International Conference & Expo
26-27 July 2007 Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre.
Some well known presenters at this one.

http://www.learnx.net/learnx/

Abstracts from lead session can be accessed from

http://www.learnx.net/learnx/leadsessions.html#702

4.3 ASCILITE 2007: Providing Choices for Learners and Learning.
For the first time ASCILITE is to be held at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
This is one of Singapore’s largest educational institutes and has a very impressive campus. The campus has excellent resources and personnel and I am sure they will be great hosts. Don’t miss it.
From 2- 5 December 2007.

http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/

4.4 ICOOL 2007
3rd International Conference on Open and Online Learning
Pedagogical Scripting for Open and Online Learning (OOL)
11-14 June 2007
Hotel Equatorial, Penang, Malaysia

http://icool.uom.ac.mu/2007/user/index.php

4.5 ALT-C 2007: Beyond control
Learning technology for the social network generation
4-6 September 2007, Nottingham, UK.

http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007

Latest news: 269 abstracts and 38 research papers were submitted.
All submitters will be informed by mid-May of the status of their
submission.
You can now register to attend at:

http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007/registering.html

Fees for attendance are at:

http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007/delegate_information.html

Presenters’ registration deadline: 8 June 2007
Earlybird registration deadline: 29 June 2007
Pre- and post-conference workshops: information for organisers.

http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007/pre_and_post.html

Information derived from:
“[the] ALT Digest, a fortnightly publication from the Association for
Learning Technology (ALT) –

http://www.alt.ac.uk/

5. An excellent ‘portal’ to a huge range of resources and links to the disciplines of health and life sciences. Must be something here for you.

http://www.intute.ac.uk/healthandlifesciences/

6 Another of those very useful booklets from the JISC stable, well worth downloading to obtain some well informed material on:
‘Effective Practice with e-Assessment:An overview of technologies, policies and practice in further and higher education’. This is a .pdf file.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/themes/elearning/effprac_eassess.pdf

7. Is this the new rival to Wikipedia ? Have a look and decide for yourself. Maybe even contribute.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page

8. Lionshare is the result of a project called “SPIRE” run as a joint development between Penn State University and the University of Oxford TALL (Technology Assisted Lifelong Learning) team.
Extract from the site:
“a secure P2P file sharing application for higher education, enabling legal file sharing for Penn State university and beyond.. Find and share legal academic content in a secure P2P environment. LionShare 1.1 is available for download now”.
Might have a place in your Institution
http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/

http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/

SPIRE site.

http://spire.conted.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

TALL site:

http://www.tall.ox.ac.uk/

9. Learning Technologies centre Wiki (Manitoba Uni).
This is a Canadian site with some useful notes from a series of workshops on
‘New Technolgies for Teaching and Learning’. I had a quick peruse of the
‘Blogs’ notes , some good stuff here.

http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

10. Designed for Librairians and others interested in Library 2.0 This is a Blog that invites participation in a community evaluating/recommending the adoption and use of WeB 2.0 technologies in the Library.

http://library20.ning.com/

11.eLearnopedia.com – Your Site to keep Pace with eLearning Technology!

http://www.elearnopedia.com/

12. It’s often useful to get your hands on some tips on how to do things or to do them better.
This site has an interesting selection. Worth exploring.
‘Technical Training – Design and Development On Line Resource For Technical Training Designers and Developers’.

http://www.peteblair.com/

13. If you haven’t seen this it is worth viewing:Digital ethnography video on You tube, very cleverly done and some interesting messages for the Web 2.0 wave.
view ‘Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

14.. The odd one out: A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 19 20’s.
Although it is very heavily text based it is a fascinating account with a wealth of information. If you want to se some interesting stuff on ‘Magic lanterns’ click on ‘links’.
Extract:
‘This is not designed to be a course on the history of photography such as a resource to dip into. In addition to pen-portraits of many of the most important photographers of the period, it contains information on some of the most significant processes used during the early days of photography.

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/

That’s it until May
Regards
Richard
Auckland
New Zealand

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