Forum LAMS Newsletter: Newsletter 3, Oct 9th, 05

By: James Dalziel

[ Forward ]

Launch Followup

Following the official LAMS Community launch last week (see Newsletter 2), the story has been picked up around the web, including various e-learning websites and blogs, and a story in one of the leading IT magazines, ComputerWorld (see http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;81806541;fp;16;fpid;0 )

In Al Essa's post about the LAMS Community (see http://tatler.typepad.com/nose/2005/09/lams_community_.html ), he draws a link between LAMS and MIT's OpenCourseWare intiative - LAMS could add a new dimension to OpenCourseWare by providing the opportunity to capture and share the *way* a course is taught, not just its content. This benefit applies not only to OpenCourseWare, but to all content-based e-learning (such as the UK's "NLN Online" project, Australia's "The Le@rning Federation project, the MERLOT repository, and many others throughout the world).

New Sequences

We've seen a significant number of new sequences added in the past week. There is an excellent group of sequences for teaching introductory university statistics provided by Oxford University - these can be found in the Higher Education & Training Community. In the same community is a sequence called "Beyond the VLE" by Kate Lindsay (also from Oxford), which uses the LAMS software to run a sequence about new directions in e-learning technology - how appropriate!

For those who wonder whether LAMS can be used with Primary-aged children, there is much to learn from the innovative work of Karen May, Debbie Evans and colleagues from Glenorie Public in Sydney, Australia. Karen, who has used LAMS successfully with even the youngest children (4-7!), has posted several sequences to the K-12 community.

There are various sequences across all communities from people associated with Macquarie University and LAMS International - Robyn Philip, Bronwen Dalziel, Karen Baskett and Angela Voerman. Thanks to everyone for a great start to our sequence repository!

Please keep sharing your sequences - the sequence repository works on the "network effect" - that is, the more that is contributed to it, the more valuable it becomes to everyone, leading more people to contribute, with even more people then benefiting, and so on....

For example, I wonder who will be first to share a sequence built around MIT OpenCourseWare content? Who will share the first Shakespeare sequence?

Coming Soon

Next week we hope to release a new version of LAMS (V1.0.2), which includes some bug fixes and the very handy new "HTML Noticeboard" tool. We're also hoping to release the final versions of our integration with both Moodle and Blackboard.

Posted by James Dalziel