hi everybody, even though it already seems like AGES ago that Karen and
I were at MERLOT, it was actually just last week! and I wanted to send
around a note to you all with information about some of the great stuff
I learned about. it was a SUPER conference. so here are some notes:
 
Karen's and my presentation is here:
http://casweb.ou.edu/olr/merlot/merlot.htm
 
MERLOT itself is a collection of links that people have put up to their
online learning materials. all kinds of materials are represented here,
so, for example, I put a link in MERLOT to our online readiness
assessment:
http://www.merlot.org/artifact/ArtifactDetail.po?oid=1010000000000192710
if you have not poked around in MERLOT, it's worth a look - some areas
are much better developed than others, and it's definitely worth
browsing around to see what you can find.
 
Federated Search. MERLOT now participates in a "federated search" with
some other major online repositories. federated searching was one of the
main topics that people were talking about at the conference! (and Debra
Engel had mentioned to us last week that the OU Library website should
hopefully have a federated search page for many of our online databases
coming in spring). here is a link to the MERLOT Federated Search page:
http://fedsearch.merlot.org/main/search.jsp
 
ARIADNE: the best presentation I heard at the conference was by Erik
Duval, a Belgian computer science professor who is the director of
ARIADNE, the European equivalent of MERLOT. I don't have a link to the
specific presentation he did for us last week, but here is a link to a
similar presentation he did recently at another conference.
text:
http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~hmdb/publications/files/pdfversion/41316.p
df
<http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~hmdb/publications/files/pdfversion/41316.
pdf> 
Powerpoint:
http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~hmdb/publications/files/slides/41316.ppt
<http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~hmdb/publications/files/slides/41316.ppt>

 
Carnegie KEEP Toolkit for Eportfolios: the guys at the Carnegie
Knowledge Media Lab have built a simple very flexible web publishing
system so that instructors and students can publish materials online
with literally no html skills at all. it is the simplicity of blog
publishing, but their system is instead geared to the created of
EPORTFOLIOS rather than blogging journals. anyone - instructor, student,
whoever - can get a Toolkit account for free at Carnegie and pubish
materials on the Carnegie server.
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/kml/keep/
<http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/kml/keep/> 
 
SafariU: the guys at O'Reilly (very very big computer publishing house,
excellent folks - these are the books with the animals on the covers, if
you have ever seen those - hence "safari") are going into the textbook
business by releasing all their content from their publishing line for
instructors to "mix and match" in creating a unique textbook, along with
including their own content - and you can share your original content
with other instructors doing the same thing via the SafariU site. I
personally think this is going to turn textbook publishing upside down,
and the guys at O'Reilly are the exact right folks to do it, since they
have always had a great culture of sharing and support in relation to
their audience. incredibly exciting!
http://academic.oreilly.com/safariu-more.csp
 
Visible Knowledge Project: I saw a beautiful presentation on student
multimedia authoring by a very nice instructor who is part of the
Visible Knowledge Project. here is a link to their wonderful site where
you can read "posters" about the many projects they have sponsored:
http://crossroads.georgetown.edu/vkp/
<http://crossroads.georgetown.edu/vkp/> 
(I should note that these folks are using the Carnegie KEEP Toolkit to
document their projects online, so this page is an example of how the
Toolkit can be used to create research project "posters" online)
 
MIT Open Courseware: I'm sure you all have heard about the project at
MIT to put course materials for all MIT courses online. I got to hear a
presentation by Steve Carson, their evaluation director, about how all
of that happened at MIT. it was very inspiring. they are still adding
hundreds of courses until they reach the full complement of MIT courses;
you can sign up for a newsletter to find out about materials as they are
added (and if you have not browsed around the MIT website, it is
definitely worth a look!)
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/ocw-mail
<http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/ocw-mail> 
 
ComPADRE: this is a project run by Bruce Mason in the Physics dept. here
at OU. it is a digital library of learning materials for physics and
astronomy students and they have made ENORMOUS progress over the past
year. you can see their four websites starting from their main homepage
here:
http://www.compadre.org/portal/index.cfm
 
I also went to some presentations on more administrative topics (amazing
stuff about the community college system in the state of Virginia, for
example), along with a lot of vendor presentations (including WebCT,
which is struggling to find a way to catch up with all these advances in
online digital libraries) - as some of you probably know, I am not
really big on conferences since I usually find them to be much less
productive than just visiting websites and reading online materials, but
the MERLOT Conference is something I find extremely valuable. if you are
interested in the kinds of materials I've listed here, you might want to
join MERLOT (it's free), and keep an eye on their upcoming conference
for next year, which will be in Tennessee (Nashville or Memphis, they
are not sure yet). here's where you can find their conference
information as it emerges: http://conference.merlot.org/conference/
 
smiles,
Laura