lodeStar Learning Web Journal

Educational content produced with the LodeStar eLearning authoring tool now has a new home. We're pleased to announce the integration between LodeStar and the EQUELLA Digital Repository from The Learning Edge North America.

Educational institutions who use the EQUELLA Digital Repository to house learning objects and manage learning content can now offer a seamless integration with content authoring. Instructors use LodeStar to build interactive learning content that includes games, problem solving scenarios, webquests, assessments, timelines, podcasts, eBooks, and more. They can now choose EQUELLA as their export target. LodeStar communicates directly to EQUELLA and makes it effortless to upload directly to a digital collection.

Users of LodeStar pre-configure the authoring tool with their EQUELLA institution (learning object repository) and credentials. Once they have completed creating a learning object, the export wizard displays all of the collections that that they have rights to, and supports one click upload to the collection. The learning object supports SCORM 2004 and can be accessed by a student from any of the major learning management systems.

A key advantage to educators is that the content lives in the repository where it can be properly managed. The repository supports metadata, search and retrieval and integration with leading learning management systems. The content isn't trapped in an LMS, giving institutions full control over their digital assets. The key advantage of using LodeStar is that instructors can not only create highly interactive learning activities that engage students but can also attach information to their work that relates to SCORM conformance, intellectual property, ADA compliance and more.

The next generation of LodeStar software will continue to leverage the EQUELLA APIs and raise the level of integration to a new standard.

LodeStar's connection to EQUELLA builds on its vision for educational technology. Using LodeStar, teachers can create a wide variety of interactive learning activities. The learning activities can be published directly to Desire2Learn, Moodle, Blackboard and other learning management systems. They can also be published to the EQUELLA learning object repository and accessed from any of the major learning management systems with single sign on, or accessed from the world wide web.

By Robert N. Bilyk

The 2009-2010 flu season officially gets underway on October 4, 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No school principal will be surprised that the number of 'pre-seasonal' H1N1 flu cases already amounts to the tens of thousands. In our region alone (region 5, which includes Minnesota and five other states), CDC reports 8,632* cases and, tragically, 18 pediatric deaths as of September 12. A colleague of mine reported that on the third week of September, 30% of his child's school went absent.

The story unfolds in the news, in personal stories and not surprisingly in a very urgent discussion that touches on instructional technology. This week we've heard from several school leaders. The question resurfaces. "How do we continue schooling our students after our buildings are closed?" We heard the same question shortly after 9/11. In fact, after 9/11 our school (Cyber Village Academy) hosted the first meetings between the Minnesota Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health.

We founded Cyber Village Academy in 1997 to solve a similar problem with a different twist. "How do we continue schooling our students when they can't come into a building?" The issue we wrestled with was serious and chronic illness. That's how Cyber Village Academy, an elementary charter school, got its start. Our mission at first was to serve serious and chronically ill children. (Today, Cyber Village Academy is something quite different: an International Baccalaureate Organization school that serves all students with a blend of online and on-campus learning.)

In the early days of 1997, however, special electrical contacts were built into the pupils' seats, which foiled our efforts. To our interminable vexation, student funding came as a direct result of the number of hours a child's posterior was in the seat. A child's seated backside completed the electrical connection, kept the meter running and kept the money flowing. We didn't have the technology at the time to put the same electrical contacts into hospital beds or the homes of agoraphobic children or wherever they were needed.

But times have indeed changed. In Minnesota many folks worked endlessly to support legislation that placed online learning in the statutes and displaced this notion of 'seat time', which I'm told was never in statute in the first place.

So, politics and outmoded schooling aside, at Cyber Village Academy we learned many things about educating children outside of the building walls. These are simply my observations. To be brief, I'll list them but look forward to expanding these ideas with you in person - at conferences, in our technology workshops or at your request.

Here they are:

A need for online learning must be identified
The need can range from a high number of homeschoolers in a district, to students disadvantaged by unavailable classes and unavailable teachers, to chronically ill children. In our hometown, my eldest son who loved to program computers could not take a single programming class. None was available in the district -- an affluent district -- and none was available online at the time. In his senior year, he became the first student to make up a missing credit in an online class but didn't start taking computer classes until college.

In reference to identifying a need for online learning, I contend that we can use blended classrooms to live up to the potential that Clayton Christensen holds for technology in his book 'Disrupting Class'. Today's instructional technology enables us to differentiate or customize education for students like never before - but alas the old models prevail.

A few faculty, at least, must be onboard with the idea of online learning
These are the early adopters. Without them as trail blazers, mentors, change agents and advocates, very little progress is made. When you can build a small cohort of professionals, amazing things get accomplished. I would much rather work with a small but smart team in effecting change than press into service an entire teaching body.

The administration and faculty must think in shades and not in stark black and white
It doesn't have to be online or nothing, on-campus or nothing. Blended online and on-campus classes offer the opportunity to make a deeper connection between teacher and student. The student who is muted by the class of thirty suddenly finds expression in a discussion thread. The student who is bored to tears in class is given a challenging 'asynchronous' assignment for him to complete on his own terms, outside of class.

In my composition classes, I broke the students into groups. Some students worked at the computers around the perimeter of the classroom. They worked on sentence combining at a level that matched their experience. Other students worked at tables in middle of the room, editing, peer critiquing, brainstorming. They could then continue their studies and their work online and at home. This was a blended environment.

A learning management system/course management system is today's new infrastructure
A learning management system like Moodle, Blackboard, Desire2Learn or eCollege is critical to a school's ability to function outside of the school walls. A popular learning management system brings flexibility and freedom to the school. It offers the school the opportunity to purchase packaged content from publishers and it offers teachers the opportunity to create their own resources and combine them with publisher's content. It is the new text book, but with the flexibility to insert teacher inspired content.

Schools won't be able to make the shift overnight from text books to learning objects. Schools still buy textbooks and subscribe to integrated learning systems to the tune of millions of dollars each year. But at the same time, a few traditional book sellers have gone bankrupt and many are rethinking their business.

A learning object repository is today's modern library
Few schools of sufficient size can imagine being without that magical, mystical, and sometimes musty place we call the library. The technologies of the past - from the Gutenberg Press and the bindery to the Dewey Decimal System -- have conspired to enable this wonderful melding of mind and material.

But now we have learning objects and images and podcasts and digital documents of every kind. They are not suited for the library shelf. A new place is needed, and that is the learning object repository. Every school must have access to one.

In Minnesota, a significant effort is underway to enable one-stop shopping for online courses, careers, college information, digital library information and on and on. It also includes a statewide learning object repository that enables teachers to share their work. The effort, called the Minnesota Learning Commons is a collaboration of the University of Minnesota, Minnesota State College and University System (MNSCU) and the Minnesota Department of Education.

http://www.mnlearningcommons.org

I'm very proud of Minnesota's achievement and have been loosely connected to a number of the services under the Minnesota Learning Commons umbrella. Years and years ago when I was a college teacher I wrote the first prototype that got key decision makers interested in online course searches. Before I left Cyber Village Academy, I assisted Karen Johnson (Minnesota Department of Education) in the initial organization of the K12 Online Clearinghouse. Our school was one of the first members of the Minnesota Online Learning Association, along with Trio Wolf Creek, Northern Star Online, Spring Lake Park Online Learning, Minneapolis Public Schools Online, and a couple others.

We also have other connections to the Minnesota Learning Commons. Our LodeStar authoring tool is used in all 37 colleges of the Minnesota State College and University System. eFolio (another major initiative) supports direct upload of LodeStar objects and LodeStar can upload directly to the underlying learning object repository.

Students must publish or perish
Student publication comes in many forms -- art shows, journals, plays, history displays, science fairs, showcases of every kind. When students reconstruct meaning from teacher-led presentations and represent them in the form of animations, movies, newspaper articles, plays, history day and science fair exhibits or whatever, the ephemeral nature of knowledge is replaced with something much more rooted in our brains.

In our school, we began adopting the electronic portfolio system (specifically Minnesota's eFolio) as a means for students to publish the artifacts of their school experience. We were becoming an International Baccalaureate Organization school and the personal portfolios documented the students' progress through the program.

http://www.efoliominnesota.com/

A best-of-class Electronic Portfolio can be interwoven with the fabric of the school like no social networking site can.

An authoring tool turns teachers into participants.
Everything mentioned so far requires some form of content. Content gets published in a learning management system, a learning object repository, and an electronic portfolio. The learning management systems and the electronic portfolios have their own editors and methods for creating content. Authoring tools expand those possibilities. Authoring tools enable teachers to contribute and to participate in this digital revolution above and beyond the native capability of the learning management system, the learning object repository and the electronic portfolio.

Participation means not substituting a textbook's table of contents for a curriculum and not substituting a purchased online course for a curriculum. It means teachers building things of instructional value and exercising their choice of content, strategy, and assessment. Participating means sharing something of the teacher, rather than the teacher proctoring someone else's content.

Conclusion
We don't welcome H1N1 and all the misery that it brings to people. The only silver lining to this very dark cloud is that it gives our leadership pause -- to imagine schooling beyond the walls of the building. I look forward to an engagement much more profound than replacing school seat time with home seat time. I imagine schooling beyond the constraints of one size fits all, where the needs of every individual child can be attended. We now have some of the tools to accomplish that vision.

*http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

By Robert N. Bilyk

As we announced at the 2009 Efolio Summit, the source of LodeStar Learning's energy in the upcoming year will be in activities that represent opportunities for synergy. In the eLearning/digital story-telling industry, synergy comes in a variety of forms: partnerships and alliances, adoption of new standards, integration with new products and a few surprises!

Alliances

Last October, LodeStar Learning announced its alliance with EfolioWorld. LodeStar Learning Corporation’s eLearning authoring tool(LodeStar™ ) has been configured so that it can be fully integrated with the eFolioWorld portfolio systems. This month, EfolioWorld has released eFolio Version 2, with built-in upload support for LodeStar Objects.

eFolio is a wonderful tool for teachers and students alike. It is a must-have for every school district, college and university. It enables teachers, students and institutions to tell their story, including goals and accomplishments, personal and institutional history, and much more. And now, with the easy upload of LodeStar objects, individuals and institutions can tell their story as never before, with multimedia-rich presentations, timelines, podcasts, slideshows, eBooks and the rest of LodeStar's many templates.

Continuing along the vein of new partnerships, in November LodeStar Learning hopes to announce its alliance with one of the world's premiere Digital Repository companies. Of course, in the meantime, our company will strengthen its existing connection with Curriki, Merlot, Digital Library for Earth Science Education and the Merlot Africa Network projects.

New Standards

LodeStar Learning has already integrated support for the International Digital Publishing Forum's eBook standard into its present product. Sony and Adobe have announced support for EPUB in their respective releases of the Sony Reader Digital Book and Adobe Digital Editions. LodeStar Learning is currently testing its implementations of the EPUB eBook in these new releases and making adjustments as needed. Any issues with these technologies -- and there are some -- will be resolved before LodeStar's next major release.

New Products

Just underneath the surface of the internet, made visible by the browser, is a world of data accessible through web services, RSS feeds and other web technologies that are seemingly just beyond the reach of the instructor with average technical skill. The data represents earthquakes, volcanoes, forest fires, weather patterns, pandemics, automobile traffic, satellite images, topographical images -- all available in real time. Our goal within the next year is to put that data within the reach of both teachers and students, so that learning objects can come alive with up-to-the-minute datacasts or historical data snapshots. So stay tuned. This is an exciting area, and a pet project of mine.

Surprises

LodeStar Learning has been seeking partnerships with colleges and universities with programming talent. That's no surprise. The goal is to continue accomplishing what we've done in the past. In a few cases, we've partnered with both institutions and companies to produce templates that all of our subscribers can use. We're hoping to continue that practice. If your university or college has in-house Flash or Flex programmers, consider underwriting a project that the entire LodeStar Academic Community can use. In exchange for sharing your talent, LodeStar Learning will provide access to its authoring tool, its templates and the work of other colleges who make a similar commitment. Flash/Flex programmers need to know nothing about LodeStar or its data models. LodeStar can be adapted to any project that separates the presentation layer (rendered in Flash or Flex) from the data layer (XML, JSON, flat files, and other formats). Contact bob.bilyk@LodeStarLearning.com for more details.

The surprise comes in how we are expanding our goal. In the past, LodeStar Learning has stayed committed to Flash and Flex technologies because of the ubiquity of the Flash Player - over 90% saturation on the PC, MAC, Linux and Unix platforms. But in its most recent project, LodeStar Learning has wrapped a template around the work of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Simile Project. The Simile project is based in large part on the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML methodology known widely as AJAX. This is a proof-of-concept project that demonstrates that LodeStar templates can assist instructors in configuring AJAX applications as well as Flash and Flex.

AJAX became popularized after its adoption by Google in its Gmail and Google Maps applications. Today, AJAX is the underlying technology for scores of business applications so the likelihood that colleges and universities will have faculty, IT personnel and students schooled in its use is perhaps higher than the same schooled in Flash and Flex. In any case, LodeStar supports AJAX, Flash and Flex.

I'll conclude with a screenshot of LodeStar SimTimeline template based on MIT's Simile project. Keep us in mind for more partnership opportunities. The resulting synergy benefits everyone in our academic community.

By Robert N. Bilyk

The two words replay in my mind. They came from two teachers who attended the Associação da Comunidade Educativa de Aveiro (ACEAV) conference in Aveiro, Portugal. I was a guest presenter and I asked the audience to respond to a prediction that Clayton Christenson makes in his book "Disrupting Class". I'm paraphrasing, but the prediction goes something like this: In 10 years, computer-based, student-centric learning will account for 50 percent of schooling in U.S. Schools. If you haven't read, Clayton Christenson's book, please read it. For me, it was insightful as Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat", but focused on education. I asked the audience in Aveiro that if they were to become more active in eLearning or, as they called it, bLearning (a blend of computer based and classroom based education), what would they need. The answer was time and tools.

I thought back to 1997 when I founded Cyber Village Academy. Cyber Village Academy was intended to reach out to seriously ill children and provide them with a portal to learning during times when they felt well enough to learn. It was intended to provide sick kids with a learning experience that was ready when they were and could adapt to their needs. As it turned out, we served some sick kids, but we served national competition skaters as well and dozens upon dozens of homeschoolers who didn't want traditional public school and couldn't afford private school.

For teachers, we addressed the issue of time by providing at least two days per week when teachers could support students online, and develop curriculum and activities. To reiterate, we provided at least two full days per week with each teacher equipped with her own office and computer. Our first choice of tools, however, Authorware and, later, Flash was too difficult for teachers to master and integrate into our first learning management systems. Something needed to be invented - and that was the LodeStar authoring tool.

Prior to my most pleasant time with ACEAV in Portugal, I had the great fortune to represent LodeStar Learning at the 2nd Pan African Forum organized by Merlot Africa Network (MAN) in Dakar, Senegal. I asked post-secondary teachers the same question that I posed to teachers in Portugal. Interestingly, instructors from all over Africa began to spell out their need for professional development in the design of open education resources (learning objects). I was struck by their eloquence and the sophistication they brought to the discussion.

I was also struck by my own shortcomings. In Dakar, I needed a French-English translator. For the most part, participants understood my English, but I couldn't understand their French. In Portugal, teachers could understand my English, but I know less than five words in Portuguese. I studied French and German in school, but that learning has all but evaporated. I was embarrassed. When I conducted a workshop in Luxenbourg, the same feelings came over me. Every participating instructor spoke multiple languages. I spoke one.

I make these admissions because visiting with teachers in Dakar and Aveiro has caused me to be reflective about my own educational experiences and the role that eLearning or blended learning can play in improving the educational experience. In that reflection, I hear a number of voices. I hear the voice of Cherie at Cyber Village Academy who helped students learn history first hand through prima facia diaries and records and accounts that weren't filtered through someone else's perspective. I hear the voices of Tillman Ragan and Patricia Smith who have listed instructional strategies that are effective for each type of learning or the voice of Dr. Michael Allen who writes, "Forget what you've learned about instructional design and do something interesting", or John Taylor Gatto who writes about the harmful effect of schooling (versus education) in his "Weapons of Mass Instruction". Certainly my French language classes in high school were weapons of mass instruction. I can still hear the annoying voice of the French teacher, "écouter et à imiter". We followed with mindless recitations of French sentences. If we can't have truly immersive experiences in language instruction, surely we have computer-assisted instruction that is much more effective.

From all of the voices that seem to conflict and confuse, I hear a chorus. It's true that we should forget about instructional design and do something interesting -- but only if we treat instructional design as a recipe book. Effective education can't be created from a recipe book. It's true that computer-based, student centric learning can be a large part of a student's diet, but not as computer-based education is today, but as it is envisioned by Clayton Christenson in his book.

I do believe that teachers need time and tools. I believe that if teachers are not part of the process of creation and given time by their administration, they will become subscribers to static content -- a new form of the textbook -- with a table of contents that dictates the curriculum and aligns to academic standards and shallow tests.

I believe that the LodeStar authoring tool has a role to play, as it exists today and even more so as an open system that enables organizations like ACEAV in Portugal and the University of Cheikh Anti Diop in Dakar to build upon its architecture and help to create dozens of templates that embody dozens of strategies that help teachers in their respective disciplines.

eLearning or bLearning are wonderous processes fraught with multiple challenges. To meet these challenges, teachers need time and tools. We are now planning updates to LodeStar to make it a better tool and buy the instructor more time. Stay tuned to this web journal to learn more.

As educators, we are hopeful that technology can help make meaningful connections between the subjects that we teach and the relevance to students' lives. We look for students to be inspired and to inquire into the historical, political, geographical, scientific, literary, technological, artful, physical world around them. We look for students to be motivated, civic minded and connected and on and on.

Lately, in that pursuit, we are the beneficiaries of a frenzy of development around the concept of Web 2.0. On a daily basis we redefine what is possible based on a new tool that has popped up on the web and that has a different take on collaborating, cataloguing, referencing, presenting, and storing. Web 2.0 tools are often free or inexpensive, easy to use and what they produce can be publicly accessible and can help our students.

The bonanza of Web 2.0 tools is like the Wild Wild West, a rapidly changing and expanding frontier. We look onto these tools from the relative comfort of our 'East Coast' establishments -- our learning management and content management systems, our authoring tools …our pedagogy.

Of course, this is not an either-or proposition. Learning Management Systems serve a very powerful function. They afford privacy and protection. Faculty can submit their intellectual property and not fear having their rights vanish into the public domain (although, of course, there is Creative Commons). Faculty can use material copyrighted by others and be, to a greater degree, protected by an LMS that gives students a look at that material for a finite period of time and a passworded log in. Students are guided through material by design. The sequence of the material, how it is 'chunked', how the students are assessed -- are all part of that design.

But LMS and authoring systems that contribute to LMS's can be rather stagnant compared to the daily new opportunity that Web 2.0 affords. Moodle and Blackboard offer a handful of approaches to presenting and collaborating on content. The wild wild web 2.0 offers dozens.
LodeStar Learning has long had its eye on Web 2.0 technologies. A little background is helpful here to show that our commitment to harnessing the power of Web 2.0 didn't happen overnight. You may be interested in some of the milestones.

In May 2004, we first began using the Google Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enable instructors to query the Google databases from within our LodeStar eLearning authoring tool. We used a powerful technology called Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services to enable the LodeStar client to leverage the power of Google for the benefit of teachers and students. We still use Web Services, and it’s at the heart of a powerful new collaboration between LodeStar Learning and a major Learning Object Repository vendor. (But that's the subject of another article.)

In September 2005, we began using Representational State Transfer (REST) through services provided by companies such as Yahoo. From the teacher's point of view, he/she simply typed in a word and got a tray of images - whether we were using SOAP or REST was of no consequence to the teacher.
The point of introducing this alphabet soup is to make one point clear. Teachers were interested in efficiently finding resources across the web. We were interested in using available technologies to make that happen. In the very near future, we will once again implement a powerful new approach to making this happen more efficiently.

In the spring of 2008, we introduced Mapper, which enabled instructors to match their instructional content to points on a Google Map using latitude, longitude and zoom level. Students could navigate a Google Map and see matching content in the form of images, text, animations, video, audio and quiz items or they could navigate through content and watch the Google Map pan, zoom and display the appropriate location markers.
In the summer of 2008, we introduced Syncher, which enabled instructors to synch up an audio podcast (streamed in from any source) with instructional content that either resides in a learning object or in external services such as Blip.TV and TeacherTube videos.

For the past year, LodeStar has had the capability of embedding Web 2.0 applications, but we have not built the needed easy-to-use interfaces for instructors to leverage these resources. Our plan for LodeStar 5.8 (summer 2009) is to make these interfaces available so that an instructor can easily embed a Web 2.0 application into a SCORM object using LodeStar and upload the object to a learning management system or learning object repository.

The following link displays a LodeStar object that walks the viewer through several embedded Web 2.0 resources. (This was made possible with LodeStar 5.7 - but the next iteration will be huge improvement.) We discuss the purpose of the resources and what we perceive as the value proposition for instructors and their students.

We'll then follow up with a discussion in our Creative Educators Using LodeStar group in Curriki. Our goal is to arrive at an interface that makes sense to instructors and that helps them to use Web 2.0 applications easily and effectively.

So here is the link to the learning object:

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Coll_bbilyk/Web20Apps/BrancherWeb20.zip/Web_2_0/index.htm

And, if you want to participate in our CEUL group discussion in Curriki, here is how to join:

Join the LodeStar Community

If you know of some terrific Web 2.0 apps, please share by adding your comments to this blog.