Brian mentioned something over lunch, and I think it’s a great idea. It seems like there is a Metric Busload of EduTech bloggers here at Merlot. Why not have some kind of get-together?
Thursday at lunch? After sessions? Any better time? Any takers?
build on strengths of each partner (individuals and institutions)
used online collaboration to make f2f more effective (get memorization of names out of the way… ;-)
Mike
Presentation is important
has a personal hate for current state of LMS - presentation isn’t flexible, not rich.
interface innovation not as common now as in the “early days of multimedia”
we’re stuck with “weapons of mass instruction” now
must be a better way
Pachyderm, tied in with standard tools (like EduSource is building) may be a solution
Larry
Partners, roles, etc… Big project. Big. BIG.
15 people on steering team
several hundred participants in total
Open to Q & A, Discussion
authoring tool info available at http://www.nmc.org –> search “Pachyderm” –> first link on top of page
How to modify software and templates?
Pachyderm 1.0 –> can’t do this. 2.0 will have this as a goal
Lou: an API or plugin system to allow addition of templates
probably not a built-in template building interface
Is there a way/templates for learning activities (as opposed to just media presentation?)
pedagogical templates, stuff for activities (how to engage students in an activity WITH the content - quiz templates, matching items templates…)
Target client? technology…
is it flash, or thin client
answer: flash, because of a few reasons
works on several platforms (web, kiosk, desktop)
high quality display
some rudimentary copy protection
rich environment
Timeline for people to start having access to Pachyderm 2.0?
problem is the project is rather open-ended, but we’re going as fast as we can.
End users?
Aimed at instructors AND students
way for everyone to create/aggregate sets of learning objects - VERY IMPORTANT to be able to push resources back into the system, not just a top-down dump of resources onto learners
analysis of search patterns used by students against their collection (google referrals)
Majority of searches are curriculum- or professional-development-related
Top search BY FAR was on “Classroom Management”
“Lesson Plans” also places high in search queries
Many queries were for items that were presented in the interface, but users habitually search for keywords (even when handy nav links are presented on the “main page”)
Science related topics are BY FAR the most popular curriculum-based searches
Mike and I just had a quick conversation with Dawn Mercer, and she was telling us of some of her needs for entering metadata for learning objects in CAREO.
They have a bunch of flash movies, and need to have several versions available online. A “Presentation” version, with a URL pointing to an .html file, a “download” version, with a URL pointing to a .swf file, and a “source” version, with a URL pointing to a .fla file.
It’s a little freaky. Everyone (and I mean everyone) is talking about RSS here. Merlot apparently even demoed RSS feeds from it’s collection (I guess that makes our presentation on Friday rather moot. oh, well…)
Garry flew in from Oz, and is going to be showing some cool stuff they’re doing with RSS to syndicate stuff all over the place. He’s going to be in Calgary on Monday, after the conference, and we’ll be talking more then.
I’m heading to UBC today (along with Alan) to get Brian and his folks up and running with their own copy of CAREO. Should be fun! They’ve got a spanky new XServe just waiting. Chomping at the bit, as it were. Judging from Brian’s recent post, we may need to stage an intervention for him. Sad, really.
We’ll be spending the day on campus, then heading back to the Hyatt for the Big Fancy Reception for the Merlot folks. Curious to see how many people are here.
I’ve just arrived in Vancouver for Merlot2003. Pretty painless flight (just over an hour - and the eTicket express checkin freakin’ ROCKS!)
I’m sitting in the Hyatt lobby right now, checking in with the rest of the world (going offline for a whole weekend left me with the shakes. ick). I’ll try checking in again after 4pm, when the rooms with internet access will be available.
Now, I’m going to Go Tourist, complete with digital camera. Want to head down to Canada Place and check out the cruise ship dock (sigh), and then maybe head over to Stanley Park.
I’m going to the Merlot conference next week, and am planning on being pretty unplugged this weekend. This means I may not be posting much until the middle of August. That may change - they apparently have wireless access in the Hyatt for Merlot, so I may be blogging the presentations live…
Turns out, I was a little stupid when I booked my flight to the conference.
Every conference I’ve ever heard of, and every conference I’ve been to (WWDC, CADE, …) has actual sessions on the first day, so I assumed it was a Good Idea to get there the day before (i.e., on Monday) so I’d be able to catch it all. Turns out that no, in fact, the Merlot conference has pay-only semi-private sessions on the first day (Tuesday).
I grew up with Commodore computers, starting with the Vic20, graduating through C-64, C-128, and finally, a smoking Amiga 1000. One of the best things I remember from the Amiga was a game called Marble Madness. A truly great game, but it’s been basically lost since those days.
I got a nice little announcement from Apple today. As a bonus for .Mac subscribers, they are throwing in a license for the game Marble Blast. It had “Marble” in the title, so I had to check it out.
I’ve been playing around with Macromedia Contribute 2, which is now available for MacOSX. It seems like an extremely useful utility for editing existing websites, but falls short for creating them. That’s a reflection of the market they’re looking at - newbies editing content (change a phone number on an intranet, update an image…).
For that, it rocks quite nicely. I’m curious to see how/if it mangles a modern web page, since it seems to have some heavy table editing tools, but nothing for divs or css…