Tools to assist with Learning Design:

• Compendium
  OU mind-mapping tool
• LessonMapper
  Visual graph driven lesson planner

I guess we’ll be seeing this more and more - Commercial LMS starting to package, support and enhance various open source products. In this case Angel has enhanced TiddlyWiki and released the enhancements back to the community. This is a step in a great direction and one that is at odds with edu patents. Blackboard already has Wiki and Blog support via the Learning Objects building blocks. I do feel that there is merit in integrating Blackboard with something like XWiki or Confluence - both of which have excellent plugin architectures. Confluence is commercial but is just too good to be ignored. Anyway more on plugin architectures later…

This one is recommended by Celine: Beat up your pc.

Oh — I just love the add content anywhere feature. Backpack could so be the best eportfolio or LMS or CMS ever.

Classic Jim Carey with a rendition of Ice Ice Baby!

While on simple tutorials - an easy to follow JUnit 4 and Eclipse tutorial.’

Mmmmm — the above sentence contains the words simple and Eclipse. …. But its true now that I have more ram.

Useful tutorial to follow if you want to get into Spring — well just Spring, the mvc component and web form validation.

Scholar360 is a new LMS/CMS/NLE - Network Learning Environment. I have not reviewed Scholar360 as I can only request a personal tour. Seems to include blogging and eportfolio features. Competition is the LMS space is a good thing, so I am glad to see new products on offer.

Nitobi have just introduced a set of UI extensions for Dreamweaver. The most impressive is Spotlight which allows Dreamweaver users to create a step by step guide that loads, dims the page and uses callouts to highlight functional elements (defined by an id) on a page or application. A great way to introduce new users to an application and draw there attention to new functionality or functionality they may not be using! Check out the demo vid.

Just been reading the new Confluence 2.6 release notes. The Social Bookmarking plugin is a great addition and could be particularly useful in for edu applications - ie let students share links without needing a del.icio.us login.