WikiEducator can export a collection of Wiki pages to an IMS content package, which can then be imported into Blackboard (or any other LMS). This is a great feature! Learning content can be authored collaboratively and versioned prior to be loaded into an LMS. Ah but should the LMS not support this by default? Wondering whether this is a feature Confluence could also support?

A Sakai roadmap leading up to Version 3 (via mfeldstein.com), due in 2013. More specific V3 details are also available. A few questions come to mind. Can we wait till 2013? Will that be what we really need by 2013?

The beauty of this list is that no server side coding is needed.

6. Display Del.icio.us feeds with the aptly titled Del.icio.us Feeds Displayer.
5. Display RSS and ATOM feeds with jFeed.
4. Display an image gallery/slideshow with Galleria.
3. Add formatted tooltips to any link with clueTip.
2. Help visualise tabular data, by transforming the data to graph with graphTable.
1. Embed all types of multimedia files with jQuery Media.

I’m feeling passionate about "disruptive" technologies tonight, so I thought I’d share some GreaseMonkey scripts that could be used within a Learning Management System.

5. Check links with Link Checker

Link Checker crawls links on a page and uses color codes to indicate whether a link is valid or invalid.

4. Print the full path of links with Annotate Links

Adds a print stylesheet that annotates links and displays the full path at the bottom of the printed page.

3.  Search Wikipedia or a dictionary with LookItUp2.

Inline search and results display within any LMS page.

2. GreaseMonkey for Chemistry

Great for Chemistry courses.

1. Social Network Analysis Tool for Blackboard and Vista (WebCT)

Infers social structure from forum posts in a discussion forum and outputs to the NetDraw .vna format for further analysis and visualisation. In total non-biased fashion, I list my own script at No 1.

Edupunk - the anti ppt and blackboard movement, or rather the avoidance of ppt and blackboard. Start the revolution NOW! More info: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44760

I’ve finally got round to putting my presentation from the Blackboard Asia Pac 08 conference up on Google Docs.

Insightful post by Michael Feldstein on Blackboard NG. I am hoping to find out more at the BB Asiapac 08 conference.

"Designing for Change: Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments", is the best paper I have read on Learning Design by far!

Essentially, Learning Environment Design is the missing link. I agree. Tools within the LMS are rudimentary and not generally exposed to Students as creators. The paper introduces the Mash-UP Personal Learning Environment (MUPPLE) system and a Learner Interaction Scripting Language (LISL) which works as a Domain Specific Language (DSL) behind the scenes. LISL is powerful, making it easy to combine content and activities which can then be deployed, shared and adapted (evolved). LISL just needs a GUI addon to be super intuitive and adaptable.

OK so now I think I have worked on something similar. A tool called Interactive Media Enhanced Teaching (IMET) that was available in QUT’s inhouse built OLT system. The M in IMET had a different meaning depending on who you spoke to - M for Media or Multimedia and now I’m thinking M could actually have stood for Mashup. A paper entitled “Putting the ‘me’ into media: Exploring different strategies to embed the integration of streaming media with cognitive tools, into learning activities” was presented at the OLT 2003 conference. I’m not an author of the paper, but I was the developer of IMET. I did present a Flex powered version at Ausweb 06.

"Empowering Online Learning - 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying and Doing" is set to be an amazing resource for Academics, Tutors, Teachers, Students and Learning Designers. I have not read this book yet, but really like the approach taken. The learning design model (reading, reflecting, displaying and doing) just makes sense at a very practical level and rather than just remaining theoretical sample activities are listed (100+ to be exact). The activities seem like ideas to me, ideas that could inspire….

…Now would it not be great if the LD model (reading, reflecting, displaying and doing) was available as an idea explorer within an LMS or something more social like Facebook, where activities could be selected, customized and then deployed.

May the force be with those who use it

Google trends graph is starting to look interesting in the LMS space. Has Moodle become more popular? Maybe the question is are people researching Moodle via Google as a viable alternative?