Desire2Blog

This is a 17-minute podcast about using the Desire2Learn Learning Object Repository (LOR).  This DOES NOT look at the  definition of learning objects,  creation of learning,  the sharing of learning objects, or  the tagging of learning objects with meta data.  SO! What does it cover? Listen to the podcast to find out.       Thanks to Kenneth Chapman of D2L for lending his expertise to this podcast.

A few recent posts about Blackboard. One of the coolest things I seen in quite some time is Educause's call for Blackboard to drop the lawsuit against D2L. Brian L. Hawkins, the president of Educause, and the group’s Board of Directors said “We have never sent this type of a letter to one of our corporate members before.” Apparently that is because there has never been such an egregious abuse of patent law by one Educause partner against another. Another choice piece from the Educause letter: "EDUCAUSE engaged the services of a highly reputable, independent law firm to review the patent. The preliminary conclusion is that the patent was very broadly defined and was inappropriately approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office." (scroll to the bottom of the minutes to see attachment A) Michael Feldstein posted his thoughts about the economic impact of the Blackboard suit. This is something that I have also been thinking about a lot lately. I agree with Michael that ...

Extra, extra!! Read all about it (or listen)!  This morning, October 24, Desire2Learn is announcing that the 2007 D2L User Conference will be held in Duluth, Minnesota. Lake Superior College (LSC, that's my school) will be co-hosting the event with the University of Wisconsin Superior (UWS). I've created a short podcast telling all listeners why they want to come to the Duluth/Superior area for this conference on July 8-11, 2007.  Links to info about the area:  The Minnesota Connection:   LSC website: www.lsc.edu   Visit Duluth: http://www.visitduluth.com   Northern Images Photo Galleries: http://www.northernimages.com/webgallery/   Duluth Canal Park and Harbor: http://www.superiortrails.com/duluth_lake-2.html   Duluth Canal Park: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Park_(Duluth)   Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_Lift_Bridge   Minnesota North Shore Info: http://www.northshoreinfo.com/ ...

Day One of the League of Innovation Conference on Information Technology in Charlotte is in the books. The best session I attended today was titled "The State of Open Source in Higher Education" by Rob Adel, CIO of the IMS Global Learning Consortium . Here is a link to some PPT slides that are very similar to what was used today (Sunday), although he tailored the slides and comments to the community college audience that he was addressing. Here are a few takeaways from his session: 60% of higher ed institutions have some open source infrastructure software in use such as Linux, Apache, or MySQL. 42% of institutions have implemented or chosen open source applications software such as Kuali Project , Sakai CMS , uPortal , Moodle CMS , or Open Office . 56% of survey respondents who have implemented open source software said that they experienced a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) . Average priority for I.T. initiatives, not at top of list (slide 24) which indicates that I....

Richard MacManus publishes a popular tech weblog focused on Next Generation Web Technology called the Read/Write Web . Richard posted two useful entires this past week reviewing Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0 . These articles don’t help us ascertain potential problems to be encountered when using the new browsers with D2L, but they are very useful in learning about the new features of the browsers.

First, this message is sent out by our system office: “As you may know, Microsoft has released IE7, and plans to release it as part of its automatic updates as early as November 1st. Since our current version of D2L, 7.4.3 MR1, does not support the use of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), D2L has recommended that you DO NOT take the upgrade to IE7 at this time.” Next, this email is received from a D2L user: “At what point can we tell D2L to step up to the plate? IE7 is kinda like a 10 ton truck, it hasn't exactly snuck up on the IT community. Rolling out measures to prevent end users from installing IE 7 is as painful as the actual install.” To which I reply as follows: “... we need to remember that this has always been the case with the IMS packages, as well as many other academic software packages that we use. This is not unique to D2L in any way. Back in our WebCT days, the single biggest cause of user support issues related to browser incompatibility. People constantly were installin...

This is a 27-minute interview with Susan Bentley, Instructional Technologist at LSC, who is also experienced as an online teacher and online student. We talk about some of the challenges and solutions for training faculty members who are just getting started in e-learning.

This is the third podcast in this series. The focus this time is on web accessibility issues, although much of the discussion is general in nature and not just related to accessibility within D2L.  Why worry about web accessibility? D2L wish list for accessibility (approx. 6:45) Tips for course designers (approx. 11:15) MnSCU system accessibility concerns (approx. 21:30) This is a 33-minute recording with James Falkofske of Metropolitan State University in St. Paul.  Some of the resources referred to include:  W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)  Access e-learning website (Site used by LSC faculty and staff)  MnSCU Web Accessibility Guidelines   CSS Zen Garden   Firefox Extensions for Accessibility (scroll down for list)  D2L Consortium: Importance of LMS Accessibility (10/04/06 article)  Once again I need to apologize for somewhat less than wonderful sound quality. This time I recorded a Skype call using Pretty May , which ap...

Below is a compilation of selected slides from various presentations about LSC Online that I have made during the past year or so. None of the topic areas are covered in complete detail, but there is probably more there than most people would want to view. One reason I am doing this is to test out the embed feature in a new service called SlideShare . It looks like a very good way of posting and sharing PowerPoint slides on the Web. It doesn't provide ways of creating slides such as Zoho Show , but this looks like a good choice for posting those already created slides. Even though I am trying to wean myself off of PowerPoint, it is hard to walk away from all the content that I have previously created in those presentations. Embedding in a blog or other webpage is just one of the ways you can use SlideShare. You can also send a viewer to the SlideShare site and they can view your slideshow full screen. You can't try that yet, but it should be available for public consumption any...

Planned podcasts (Desire2Pod) over the next few weeks include 1) New Faculty Training for Using D2L, 2) Using the Desire2Learn Learning Object Repository, 3) Web Accessibility for D2L Users. This fall marked a large increase in the number of virtual/online schools in the K-12 educational space. Here is one list that looks at the state-level school, but there are many other single schools that don't have statewide support. They have seen surprising enrollments in Washington state . Since I hail from Wyoming, I've been following their efforts to start their first online school, the Wyoming Virtual School . Homeschoolers there are balking. Regarding the Blackboard patent debacle against Desire2Learn, John Mayer of Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) interviews Professor Mary LaFrance who teaches at the Law School at the UNLV. One little quote I found illustrative when they were talking about the patent dependent claims and the independent claims: "Th...

This is the second podcast about Desire2Learn. I am starting a new podcast series called Desire2Pod. These podcasts will look at various things related to D2L, including the tools in the system, interviews with users of the system, and other news about D2L that have an impact on the community of stakeholders.  This is a 23-minute recording with Kenneth Chapman of D2L regarding the new email tool in version 8 of the Desire2Learn Learning Environment.  NOTE: please accept my apologies for the less than stellar audio quality. Due to the recording configuration I used, Kenneth sounds like he is speaking through a tin can and string. I was in a hotel room and didn't have all the equipment with me that I would have preferred. It actually sounded worse before I changed several parameters in Audacity before converting to mp3.

Day Two (Friday) of the Beyond Boundaries Conference in Grand Forks. Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt provided a keynote titled “Online Learning Communities Revisited.” I missed the start of the session but I’ve seen them present several times so I’m not so sure that I missed anything new or fresh. They talked about developing a sense of community through five major elements: 1) Interaction/ Communication, 2) Reflection/ Transformative Learning, 3) Technology, 4) Social/ Constructivist Context, and 5) Presence. So here’s the problem: educators talk about this issue quite a bit and believe that developing a sense of community for online learners is super important. Apparently they’re not listening to the students, because the students DON’T CARE!! If they are listening to the students, then they must be assuming that the STUDENTS ARE WRONG! They (the students) must be wrong, right? Because we can’t be wrong; we’re the teachers, we’re the smart ones, and therefore we know what’s best for t...