(photo by Sugar FOSS Manual)
I'm going to try to post more about our progress as we get Sugar on a Stick ready for prime time. I'm going to try a sweet and sour formula
Record - http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4081
I played with Record on my iMac today.
The Sweet:
- Video worked on my iMac
The Sour:
- Audio doesn't work yet
- Video quality isn't great - but alsroot thinks he knows how to fix that!
Why should we care?
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 22 /PRNewswire/ --
Sugar Labs(TM) announces the availability for testing of Sugar on a Stick Beta-1. This version of the free open-source Sugar Learning Platform, available at http://www.sugarlabs.org for loading on any 1 Gb or greater USB stick, is designed to facilitate exploration of the award-winning Sugar interface beyond its original platform, the One Laptop per Child XO-1, to such varied hardware as aging PCs and recent Macs to the latest netbooks.
Teachers and parents interested in trying Sugar with children can download the Sugar on a Stick beta-1 file from the Sugar Labs website and load it onto a USB stick by following the instructions at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick.
In the May issue of Innovate magazine Marie Sontag proposes "A Learning Theory for 21st-Century Students." I especially like her "Link, Lurk and Lunge" alliteration for describing 21st Century learning.
I'm going to define the stages slightly differently then she does.
Link - Learners look at links, collect them as bookmarks and find both the digital people and on-line places that have the knowledge they are studying. Indeed its interesting how people and online places blur. Is finding a good blog finding a place or a person? What about a mailing list where experts are conversing on the subject?
On Friday, Walter Bender, Pablo Flores from Uruguay, and I went to FOSSVT - Vermont's Open Source and Education Conference. We handed out Sugar on a Stick and it worked!
It worked on the eeePCs, it worked on the Dells big and small, it worked on the think pads, it worked on the classmate. It worked on the HP tablet, including the touchscreen! It didn't work on one of the little HP netbooks but that was our only complete fail. We had problems with accessing wireless on a few models. One laptop needed the boot helper CD.
We had a room full of people doing Turtle Art! It was wonderful.
XO laptops in Uruguay [www.americasquarterly.org]
Project CEIBAL is Uruguay's one laptop per child initiative.
Here are some details:
"This makes CEIBAL different from previous efforts to bridge the digital divide in Uruguay. It combines the distribution of computers with a program to train teachers in the cognitive skills needed to use IT for maximum benefit. It is not oriented toward creating an IT-friendly environment merely inside the classroom, but also outside: students are expected to take laptops home so that the computer can then be shared among family members."
"To date, we have delivered 151,918 XO computers—low-power laptops that operate with flash memory and a Linux operating system—to students in public schools in Uruguay. By the end of 2009 one laptop will be delivered to each of the 301,143 students and 12,879 teachers in Uruguay’s 2,064 public schools. Students with mental, visual, hearing, or motor disabilities—as well as their schools—will also receive computers specifically tailored to meet their needs. CEIBAL’s total initial cost, financed entirely by the Uruguayan state, is $100 million (each computer costs $220). In addition to that, the government will spend $15 million annually for the program’s maintenance and continuity. "
Is Ning the new poster child for why you should go Open Source? [www.chartingstocks.net]
Charting Stocks Reports: "Clients of Ning are outraged over a decision that Ning made public last week. The software maker sent out an email to all of its clients, those who have created a social network on Ning, stating that they would email all members of all websites who use the Ning software to promote the newly designed Ning.com."
The email from Ning says:
"The new Ning.com will be accessible via www.ning.com as well as at the top of your social network on Ning. If you have purchased the premium service to remove Ning promotional links, the links to the new Ning.com will not be visible to your members directly from your social network. Your members will still be able to access these new features via www.ning.com To purchase the premium service to make these links invisible to your members, simply go to your social network's Manage page and choose Premium Services.
Because of these changes to the Ning member services, we will be sending an administrative email to everyone registered with a Ning ID over the next two weeks. We wanted to let you know about this communication in advance."
The article goes on to point out this is not the first time Ning has changed the rules on thier customers. These Web 2.0 companies can hold your data and user base hostage. With Open Source you are free to use the code, change the code and you own your data.
ELGG used at Harvard [news.elgg.org]
Elgg is starting to gain popularity and with ELGG 1.5 out we expect that to continue and expand. Solution Grove plans to be increasing our ELGG offerings soon.
Here is a case study on ELGG use in a program at Harvard: http://news.elgg.org/pg/blog/Dave/read/66/elgg-at-harvard-an-interview
Elgg follows the Facebook metaphor more then traditional LMS systems. However, its still a closed system where only your classmates can access your work if you wish. This gives students the physiological safety they need to explore their ideas.
The portfolio capabilities are appealing to students who need to show off their work during their job hunt.
Fair Use and Copywrite law are effecting us all, especially teens. This is a project to help people understand the law.
I previously posted on Fair Use for Educators, also useful but not as much fun. A Fair Analysis of Fair Use
LAMS has always been focused on improving online pedagogy. The new LAMS lesson planner takes this one step farther and scaffolds teachers while they create rich collaborative lesson plans.
Lesson templates include:
- Exploring Alternative Perspectives
- Problem Based Learning
- Role Play
- Case Study Focus
LAMS International announces US partnership with e-learning experts Solution Grove [www.lamsinternational.com]
21 July 2008, Sydney, Australia & Boston, USA
LAMS International Pty Ltd is pleased to announce that Solution
Grove, Inc has become the first USA partner for LAMS. The partnership
will see LAMS being actively promoted in United States, both as a
standalone solution and as an integrated module with other learning
platforms.
Solution Grove provides hosting, support and
services for open source learning solutions in the United States.
Solution Grove's existing customers include MIT Sloan, Harvard Kennedy
School of Government, Massachusetts General Hospital and many
educational organisations. Solution Grove will actively promote LAMS to
the e-learning community in United States including governments,
schools and universities.
Idealware is a nonprofit that does consumer reports type evaluations for the non profit industry. This article is intended to help nonprofits that might be considering Open Source options.
I was pleased to see a good description of the Open and Freedom part of Open Source.
First, you are free to run these software packages for any purpose--you generally don’t pay anything to acquire them. Second, the source code is free--you can see the code and understand how it works. Third, you are free to copy and redistribute the package to anyone you want. And finally, you are free to modify the software however you like, and to release those modifications.
Write up of the Open Minds Conference [www.infinitethinking.org]
(photo by Dolly)
LAMS was very well recieved at the K-12 Open Minds conference in Indiana. I think its hard to understand what LAMS does until a person has some experience with Moodle without LAMS. There were lots of Moodle users at this conference. My audiance was mostly Tech Directors and they felt that the teachers they were supporting were trying to do LAMS like sequences using Moodle alone and would really appreciate LAMS.
The State of Indiana is officially moving K-12 Education to Open Source so there was a lot of interest in LAMS as a mechanism for sharing lessons plan and helping to administration monitor where in the curriculum teachers were.
Ernie over at LAMS has been working on LAMS "Tool Adaptors". These allow you to use the LMS, e.g. Moodle, .LRN, tools such as Forum, inside of LAMS with far more integration.
Main page on Tool Adaptors: http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Tool+Adapters
The secret to understanding this is to go into the .LRN and Moodle pages and watch the vidoes of the Forums integration.
But the real power and promise isn't in using Forums, its the concept of being able to integrate tools from the LMS in rich ways with LAMS. That opens up a wide world of possiblities for creating customized solutions for learning.
Our customers, and thier students, are often using a wiki for the first time on one of our sites. I saw a great video on YouTube explaining the whys and hows of Wikis.
I also made a quick demo to show the features they go over in our wiki. Try out the basics and then when you are ready to learn more check out this documentation: http://www.solutiongrove.com/docwiki/howtoxowiki
One of my friends who is also a Linked In Contact wrote me this email in response to Linked In's automated updates :)
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Greg wrote:
LinkedIn
------------
GROUP UPDATES:
...
* Caroline Meeks has joined Women 2.0
...
Geez. I had no idea. I won't ask about the new features.
(Sorry, but it couldn't be left alone...)
Lots of things suck about the Wii Fit game. You can’t string together activities so you waste a minute or two between each activity. You can’t share your data on the internet so you can’t compete with your friends. But I assume they will fix these problems and charge me another $39.95 to get a new version.
The board itself works remarkably well. It's amazing how it can tell where my body is and it's cool to have visual feedback on my balance as I do the yoga poses.
I will be presenting a workshop on Collaborative eLearning at this year's Grassroots Use of the Internet Conference. It's always a great conference. Here is the description of our specific workshop:
The internet is a great source of information, but how do you move from putting your information out there to really supporting learning online? In the past people have moved from static web pages, to multi-media presentations that use the “listen-and-read, then answer questions model”. However, learning is a social activity. People learn best together. As the web becomes more social and collaborative so can online learning.
In this workshop you will get hands-on experience using an open source learning tool (LAMS) to support collaborative learning. We will explore a bit of the theory behind learning and try out some collaborative activities.
LAMS is a tool that allows the creation and sharing of online sequences of activities. Using easy drag and drop tools to facilitate the online equivalent of lesson planning it encourages a real focus on the structure and theory of learning (pedagogy).
The goal of the workshop is not to focus on the how-to of any particular technology but to inspire new ideas for making online learning effective, engaging and collaborative.
Does Sugar coating Linux make kids like it more? [bits.blogs.nytimes.com]
The New York Times wrote an article on Walter Blender's split with OLPC. What bothers me is the black and white mentality about Linux.
Sugar is based on Linux - but that does not make it the same as most Linux desktops.
Sugar was made to support constructivist learning in small children. That's great, but does anyone know if it works? It's a great thing to try to do, but personally I find it hard to use. Now I'm not a non-literate small child, whereas a co-worker's 4-year old pre-reader can navigate the system intuitively. Does anyone know what research they have done on the effectiveness of Sugar vs. a more traditionally laid out operating system for different age groups? One of the unique things about OLCP is they are focusing on 1st graders.
Open - Standards, Source, Content, Services and Culture - Do you know the difference? [www.archimuse.com]
We have an open source product for museum class registration we developed for the Museum of Science so I followed a link to an article on What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community? What I found was a very clear discussion of different forms of openness:
- Open Standards
- Open Source
- Open Content
- Open Services
- Open Culture
LAMS on the XO [wiki.lamsfoundation.org]
LAMS - The Learning Activity Management System is one of the open source eLearning systms we support. They recently met with One Laptop per Child people (OLCP). LAMS learner runs fine on the XO laptop (pictures here) and they are developing a version to go on the servers that will be at each school.
LoveThreads - OpenACS Eccomerce site [lovethreads.com.au]
Mark Aufflick, a friend in the OpenACS community, just launched a new openACS based e-commerce site for environmentally friendly fashion. Love Threads, Rethead the Planet
Nice site design and nice clothes. Good work, Mark!
Google Summer of Code pays college students to spend their summers writing open source code.
This summer has 3 projects that are related to OpenACS.
A Business Rule Management System based on the high-level object oriented scripting language XOTcl
Student: Franz Wirl
Mentor: Gustaf NeumannVienna
University of Economics and Business Administration
Business Rule Engines (BRE) are gaining popularity in complex
situations where a high degree of flexibility and declarative problem
formulation are important. In particular, BREs enable the use of
declarative programming---"What to do" rather than "How to do
it"---which will allow people with limited or no traditional
programming experience develop web-based applications.
(photo by Elgg Social Networking)
The highlight of Chapter 1 of Elgg Social Neworking is a concise features list - What can Elgg Do?
- Blogging
- File repositories for individauls and communities
- Podcast support
- Full access controls
- Supports tagging
- User Profiles
- Full RSS support
- RSS aggregator
- Create Communities
- Collaborative community blogs
- Create friends' networks
- Import content
- Publish to blog
- Thorough pricacy controls
- Multilingual
- Branding/Customization
- OpenID
- Import/export friends with FOAF
In addition to introducting the features, Chapter 1 covers the basics of social networking as a foundation for understanding Elgg. However, this is probably not how most of our educational users come to Elgg. My observation of educational users is that Elgg's first role is as a simple ePortfolio, then to support blogging for reflection.
Elgg has a new book!
We are currently using Elgg as the ePortfolio and social networking tool of our Personal Learning Environment. My plan is to review the book and highlight the sections in each chaper that are most useful for people using our integrated system.
Preface:
I am writing a lot of marketing material these days as we launch our PLE product. Thus I have a huge respect for how hard it is to describe these rich complicated systems simply. Here is a quote:
Elgg provides each user with a personal weblog, file repository (with podcasting capabilities), an online profile, and an RSS reader. Additionally, all of the user's content can be tagged with keywords - so they can connect with other users with similar interests and create their own personal learning network. However, where Elgg differs from regular weblog or commercial social network (such as MySpace) is the degree of control each user is given over who can access their content. Each profile item, blog post, or uploaded file can be assigned its own access restrictions - from fully public to readable only by a praticular group or individual.
Cesar Brea, who is also on the Board of the .LRN Consortium posted an annoucement on the next OpenACS/.LRN Usergroup.
Following the recent global user group meeting in Guatemala, o resurgence de OpenACS/.LRN will next pop up in Brazil. Here's Eduardo Santos' summary:
I'm happy to announce the first (or the second, if you consider this) OpenACS Brazilian users group meeting. The event will take place at the 9th International Free Software Forum (FISL 9.0) in Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil, from April 17th to 19th.
The article is entitled, "Analysis: How multimedia can improve learning - New research sheds light on students' ability to process multiple modes of learning" and provides a nice, easy summary of the research in this area.
Highlights include a quick summary of the learning theory:
Student preconceptions of a curriculum must be engaged in learning process. Only when the student has the opportunity to correct misconceptions, build on prior knowledge, and create schemas of understanding a topic will learning be optimized.
I attended the National Science Teachers Association conference here in Boston and saw many wonderful things. One thing that puzzled me was a multitude of vendors selling "clickers" for students to key in a multiple choice response to a question. I asked all those vendors if they had competition from people using mobile phones to do the same thing. They all claimed to have never heard of it.
It struck me as pretty easy to build so when I returned home I, of course, checked the wonderful blog From Toy to Tool and sure enough there is a post about a free (for less then 100 responses) service. Liz, you rock!
We love to use pictures in our blogs. My personal favorite is Flickr creative commons search, but thanks to TechSoup we now have a dozen more places we can look for free images.
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page5977.cfm
I know lots of people saw the interactive white board from the Immersive Education post and wanted one. Here are instructions on how to make your own from Johnny Lee at Carnegie Mellon University
Detailed how to:
(photo by by Davb)
This weeks reading in The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen includes the concept of the Buying Hierarchy. Products are bought based on four factors in order: functionality, reliability, convenience and price.
I want to apply this to online teaching content. Material that could potentially replace the text book.
Functionality – There is a lot of wonderful content out there and more being produced for free all the time. In addition we know how to get groups of users to collaborate to create content and there are a lot of people in the world who know the basic K-12 curriculum.
Planning an online community [www.idealware.org]
Online communities take planning, care and feeding. If you want one, be sure to read this Idealware article first. Here are some quotes:
do your homework to clarify your community's purpose and composition. If you were building a new residential community, you'd certainly think hard about what sort of people might choose to live there and why.
and
Finally, be sure that you intend to be in it for the long haul. Online communities take time to catch fire. A member's connection with your community grows with each individual small interaction, even those that have no obvious immediate organizational benefit. If you interact with your community members only when you want a favor from them, you may drive people away. Like a friendship, relationships that are only about favors do not stand the test of time.
This is a double learning experience for me. It is a reflective on the reading for this week's class, Chapters 1-3 of The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, and how it relates to my project, which is a business plan for our MEL product. It is also my first video of this type as I continue to try to keep up with the average high school student level of video production!
Brandon Hall Research recently reported average LMS prices. The trend towards hosted LMS systems becoming cheaper than installed ones is new but is very consistent with our experience here at Solution Grove. Hardware is getting cheaper and replication systems are getting more sophisticated. If you control all the hardware and every part of the software stack then it's very easy to create a new instance of the LMS system. However, setting up systems inside another organization's data center remains complex. We do set up systems on-site on the customer's preference of operating system, but each operating system, each firewall, mail server, etc. has its own peculiarities and settings and, of course, new sysadmins to get to know.
As an open source fan I had to share this video that so accurately conveys the everyday culture of Italy. ;)
Recently I attended a conference "Enabling the Age of Immersive Education".
The best presentation was by Daniel Laughlin Research Scientist, NASA Learning Technologies. He was able to use Learning Thoery to give a very clear presentation that reinforced commone sense, but helped to organize understanding of the topic. This is definitely a goal for me.
A definite highlight of the conference was the hallway conversation with a photographer, writer and oral historian from Roxbury. She helped me really understand what I'd like to see done with Immersive Environments. As Daniel from NASA explained, our beliefs are burnt into our synapses. If we want to challenge those beliefs, especialy about emotional issue like racism and identity we have to invoke emotions while we teach. Thus, to deeply understand history, in a way that allows us to change our current beliefs, we have to have empahty with the people and cultures we study. I think emersive technologies, in the hands of artists like this woman could have the potential to do this.
Tom Werner of Brandon Hall Research posted a blog featuring an example by Karl Kapp that featured learning about and setting up displays for a hardware store. We have a client in this business so I loved the example.
Positives
- It's a great example of how a 3D environment would provide a better learning experience
- Better detail on the drill
- More authenitc hands on experience learning about the features
- More authentic practice where the learners actually set up the display and have it checked!
However, I really doubt this would work for our client
(photo by Moodle Teaching Techniques by William Rice)
I love the preface to William Rice's book "Moodle Teaching Techniques".
Rice says,
"While most [software manuals] do a good job of telling you how to perform tasks, that is, what buttons to push and menus to choose, they often leave the two most important questions unanswered:
What effect will doing this have on your audience's experience?
When would you want to do this?"
We are getting very close to having an integrated Moodle+ELGG+LAMS product and I'm realizing that we will need to write exactly this type of manual and/or training. As Rice puts it, "we need to combine 'keystroke-and-click' directions with advice on how to make the best use of the solutions and what effects it will have on student's experiences."
Cesar Brea pointed out Bill Ives' post, "Serena has Adopted Facebook as their Intranet."
We've created corporate intranets (demo site showing off what we did for Cesar's company) and Facebook apps so we've thought about this. I think the key to what Serena has done is using Facebook as a front end but having the intranet itself on a private and secure system. Then, you have the best of both worlds. Facebook becomes the watercooler, an open place for employees and friends to interact, while corporate documents and work discussions take place on a private system with controlled access.
Happy New Year!!
If you are reading this on an RSS reader, then you might not have noticed our new look!
After you admire the attractive new graphics and layout, you may find yourself wondering why we have ads. If I were to give an advice to a small company, I would not recommend a corporate blog with ads as the ads will likely lead off your site to a competitor's.
So why don't we take our own advice? For us, our blog is more than a marketing tool, it's our playground to learn about all things on the web. Our space for hands on learning. Ads can be important to a web site and so we're experimenting with different ways to incorporate them.
Yet another interesting article in the latest issue of Innovate on an online tool to evaluate Fair Use in copyright law: Fair Use Education for the Twenty-First Century: A Comparative Study of Students' Use of an Interactive Tool to Guide Decision Making. Greenhow, Walker, Donnelly and Cohen (2008) evaluated a Fair Use Analysis (FUA) tool developed by the University of Minnesota Libraries intended to scaffold working educators who wanted make a good decision as to whether they were within Fair Use guidelines.
The Learning Circuits Blog has a monthly Big Question. For December the question is: What did you learn about learning in 2007?
This year I started a Master's program at Harvard Graduate School for Education with a course on "Learning Technologies Across the Content Areas" by Prof. Barry Fishman. However, what was valuable was not being exposed to the various learning technologies but to the basics of the Learning Theory. Uninspired pedagogy in the classroom, translation onto the Web is not going to be any better.
by Robert Herrick
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me !
Tonight is my play with new Web 2.0 sites night. So how do you go from Web 2 to Renaissance Poetry?
It all starts when Jott spams me with an announcement of their new jott-links that let me add events to my google calendar by dialing their number and speaking into my cell phone. This seems cool and when I get to the signup page there is a list of other web sites that have jott-links. One of them is Mosio, which is a service that promises you human answers to any message you text them.
DAMN! Why didn't I read about Zotero 2 months ago? I just finished my first research paper in 20 years and, let me tell you, it was not a pleasant experience. Thanks to Innovate, the Journal of Online Education, I now know about Zotero, an open source firefox plug-in. If you have a paper due soon check out the video tour.
Version 1.0 looks useful for an individual student, but what I am really watching is the server support in Version 2.0 that will let people share resources, urls, notes, etc. Many K-12 schools have issues with student information being shared on the open internet. Because Zotero is open source it could potentially be set up for a single school, creating a private version of a top rate research tool. I will be watching to see how well it could be integrated into a Personal Learning Solution (PLS). My wish list includes:
One of our clients, The Center for 21st Century Skills, is a leader in this arena and we are supporting the ELGG–Moodle Personal Learning Solution they are using in high schools in Connecticut.
Putting on my learning technology geek hat instead, I wondered how this idea could help teachers keep track of what content their students were using on the web. In .LRN, as well as other LMS systems, teachers can load in content from a course pack, IMS, SCRORM package, etc., and make it available to their class. They can then review reports of students, pages viewed, time on page, scores in exercises, etc. However, more and more content is out on the web, not in a course package. The National Science Foundations (NSF) National Science Digital Library (NSDL) project is just one example of the many.
What to do when faced with a 40+ page RFP that has been clearly written with proprietary vendors in mind? Have other open source vendors faced this? Usually, we are just too busy to play a very time consuming lottery ticket. Is there education we can do for procurement people that will make it easier for them to find an open source solution that might be a significantly better deal?
I have found one excellent blog post on the web: http://service-architecture.blogspot.com/2006/07/when-open-source-meets-procurement.html
I recently had to decline to bid on a project that was trying to confederate a large number of state schools that could quite likely save a significant amount of money by using open source. Here is an excerpt from the letter I wrote declining to bid:
So much to say so little time to blog...
I have a lot to report from the .LRN Conference, but if you don't want to wait for me to have time to blog take a look at the videos of the whole conference!
Meanwhile I'm just going to reblog a few interesting articles from Tech Soup:
Ever the source of practical advice: How to Record, Edit, and Promote a Podcast
Podcasting is a useful, affordable way for nonprofits to expand their reach and further their missions. We'll walk you through the process of creating and posting your own podcasts. http://ga0.org/ct/n7a7i2917EIy
Stop Cyber Bullying Day [www.pbs.org]
I am posting in support of Kathy Sierra. I have the privilege to hear her speak at the .LRN conference in Boston last fall. She gave wonderful, inspirational, insightful and educational talk I feel she is acting with great courage to post about what is happening to her.
It is frustrating to have no ability help beyond a post in support. Working in a male-dominated field such as open source is challenging. As a woman working closely with highly male dominated open source project I've been very pleased to see growing number of strong new female contributors to the project. I definitely notice the ratio and I do feel that when working within the setting of my open source project, whether online or a face-to-face, I am very conscious of how I act, dress, what kind of jokes I make, compared to contexts that have a more balanced gender ratio. However, I never would have dreamed of this level of harassment of an IT blogger.
Cesar Brea has written a wiki page on OpenACS.org that explains the "what" and the "why" surrounding the recent announcement that OpenACS/.LRN is the first to support the IMS LD specification for designing open-ended, collaborative learning experiences online. Currently this is a univesity research project but as Solution Grove works to find the synery between online games, communities, and learning we expect this sort of functionality to be extremely useful.
Olga C. Santos is presenting at FLOSS International Conference (Jerez, Spain - March 7-9, 2007) two papers regarding the usage of .LRN at UNED. The first one presents the two different use cases taking place in this University, Exploitation (Innova Section) and Research (aDeNu Group), and the second one the on-going works of aDeNu group in ALPE research project where .LRN is used.
Martin Kloos' "Comm.unities.of.prac.tice 2.0" examines how three different collaborative tools; blogs, wikis and social bookmarking, support learning in communities of practice.
http://www.martinkloos.nl/thesis-M.Kloos.pdf
Solution Grove implements all three (plus forums) and I often struggle with how to explain to people which will work for their situation. Here is Kloos' take.
Social bookmarking focuses on informal information sharing and the creation of
a shared repertoire, blogs focus on meaning making, and wikis focus on knowledge
creation and collaboration. In other words: social bookmarking focuses on
informal information sharing, weblogs focus on informal socializing (e.g. interaction
and discussion), and wikis focus on formal knowledge creation and
collaboration.
One of the interesting rewards working in an open source community provides is the opportunity to learn about work being done in other countries.
FAA (Open and Accessible Training) is based on *.LRN* to support accessible standard-based (IMS, SCORM) collaborative and adaptive courses along the full life cycle of eLearning.
In turn, EU4ALL (European Unified Approach for Accessible Lifelong Learning) aims to build an open and accessible service architecture for all to cope with the accessibility requirements in higher education institutions in Europe. *OpenACS* toolkit (using the web services support developed by Wien) is going to be used.
Links: