Message
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:
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
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/
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/(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
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