Greetings from Nottingham to all of you!

It is the end of the first day of the conference that I am participating in - “Beyond control: Learning Technology for the social network generation”.

The main premise of the conference is not new, but very relevant: the learners and the way of learning have changed. Formal learning systems need to catch up with non-linear, multimedia, collaborative informal learning that happens spontaneously outside of a classroom.

Here some interesting initiatives that tend to address the issue:

1. Wikiversity: an educational Wiki. It is a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Its primary goals are to:
Create and host free content, multimedia learning materials, resources, and curricula for all age groups in all languages
Develop collaborative learning projects and communities around these materials

Here is the link to the web site http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page and to one of the course examples http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Filmmaking .

I don’t think that it’s something that can substitute “full time” VLE in the nearest future, but I find it useful for courses where participants are asked to develop their own learning event / materials (facilitator/coaches trainings, etc)

2. Sloodle http://www.sloodle.com/ – aimed to bridge 3D and Web-based virtual learning environments (Moodle).

It is being developed to overcome a number of limitations that Second Life has as an eLearning platform (e.g. poor support for text based material, asynchronous discussion and reflection on experience).

For a YouTube demo on Sloodle follow the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3qwu2nIKt4


3. Equella – a learning object repository developed by The Learning Edge Corporation, Australia http://www.thelearningedge.com.au/ . It allows for VLE integrations and migration of data from one to another. Is it something we might be interested in?