eLearning Ontario/ OKNL Chooses Province Wide LMS

I have just heard a rumor that the Ministry of Education through eLearning Ontario/ OKNL has chosen a province wide LMS – Desire2Learn. I have been speculating on this for a while. Desire2Learn is a local company from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. This is big news, since the school boards in Ontario, to maintain funding for their LMS’s, must switch over to this platform in the next few years.
We have been using Blackboard for at least five years at the TCDSD and have invested a lot of time and professional development in promoting fully online and blended learning models through the Blackboard LMS.  There is so much content in the Blackboard (rebranded eClass) system, and I really hope that there will be an easy way to shift over the content.

More to come …

January 18, 2006 | | Comments Closed

“The Aggregator”

I am really encouraged by all the feedback for the RSS Ideas for Educators document. I continue to prepare for the upcoming conferences and was trying to find an interesting way to explain aggregators. I came up with a comic book format-something different. I was experimenting with “Comic Book Creator” because I don’t have a Mac and can’t use “Comic Life.” I did a little remixing from Stock.xchng and now …. “The Aggregator”

The Aggregator – Issue 1 (4 pgs – PDF – 2.94 MB) Sorry about the file size
I got inspired and came up with the first issue of “The Aggregator.” Don’t hold your breath for a second issue though.

January 17, 2006 | | Comments Closed

Canadian Newspapers With RSS Feeds

I was glad to see that a few Canadian newspapers have started to offer RSS feeds. There seem to be so many more offered in the US. And RSS would seem to be the obvious medium for syndication or perhaps they might be afraid of losing a little control.

This is a large list of US newspapers which have an RSS feed.

http://www.themediadrop.com/archives/001588.php#more

And a few Canadian Newspaper websites.

The Toronto Star feeds page
The Globe and Mail feeds page

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50+ RSS Ideas for Educators

I am preparing for an RSS presentation for the Leading Learning 2006 and ECOO Conferences and ended up creating an ideas guide for educators. I thought it would only be only approriate to share it with the Edublogging community.
It is a work it progress – RSS Ideas For Educators 1.0 (32 pgs – PDF – 251 kb)

Darren and Daniel for their feedback.

Any suggestions or feedback is appreciated.

——UPDATE —-

Made spelling and grammar changes, as well as added a section on using Bloglines.

(35 pgs – PDF – 412 kb)

—————-UPDATE ————–
This guide has been updated and replaced with 100+ Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators: A Guide to RSS and More

January 15, 2006 | | 47 Comments »

Wikipedia Vs School Board Web Site


screencompare

Originally uploaded by qd.

I was looking up our school board entry on Wikipedia – “TCDSB� and I compared the data with what was on our school board website. I found that there was an inaccuracy on our board website in the listing of the schools that we have. It lists the number of schools as 201, 31 which are secondary, 2 which are combined secondary and elementary, and the rest strictly elementary.

Recently, we had another school which was converted to a grade seven to twelve school, and that was not reported on the board website. Wikipedia which had a similar entry to the board website, was easy to change. I simply went to the top of the page, selected “edit the page� and changed it to 30 secondary schools and 3 combined and then listed the three combined schools. I could easily edit the Wikipedia entry, but I couldn’t change the web page on the board website. So right now we have a Wikipedia entry that is more accurate than the school board website.

So because one or a few people have control of the board website, and everyone has control of Wikipedia, it seems as though Wikipedia becomes more accurate than the actual board website.

January 14, 2006 | | 1 Comment »

Why Not Use OPML To Share Feed Lists?

Use an OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) file to import complete RSS feed lists to a news aggregator. OPML is an XML markup language that was created for outlines.

Using an OPML file you can link to RSS feed lists, and import them into another news aggregator to share with students and collaborators. One great way to use OPML is to create a linked list of all of your students’ subscription lists and publish it in one central space so that all students can benefit from the work each is doing.

Another idea is to share a list of feeds around specific topics or on a subject area that includes search queries, blogs, research and other feeds. This is an OPML feed from a bloglines account that is based on my favourite Educational Technology Bloggers.

You can save this OPML file and import the feed list into your favourite aggregator.

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Shifted Learning 2006 – Online Blogging K-12 Conference

John Pederson has started this idea of a K-12 Online Blogger conference, and he will need help. You can find more information at: http://shiftedlearning.org/
“The 2006 Online Edublogger Conference is currently a “brainstorm in developmentâ€? (tip of the hat to Will Richardson for putting the idea on the table) among a handful of educational bloggers. The idea is modeled after the Higher Ed BlogCon happening in April of 2006.”

This looks really interesting!

January 13, 2006 | | Comments Closed

RSS to PDF Converter

This RSS to PDF conversion tool is just plain old handy – Rss2pdf.

You can take any rss feed and convert it to PDF on the fly. This includes OPML, RSS and even feeds that include images. A great way to archive the conversations in student, teacher, or school feeds and pull them offline for storage.

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