lodeStar Learning Web Journal

By Robert N. Bilyk

The two words replay in my mind. They came from two teachers who attended the Associação da Comunidade Educativa de Aveiro (ACEAV) conference in Aveiro, Portugal. I was a guest presenter and I asked the audience to respond to a prediction that Clayton Christenson makes in his book "Disrupting Class". I'm paraphrasing, but the prediction goes something like this: In 10 years, computer-based, student-centric learning will account for 50 percent of schooling in U.S. Schools. If you haven't read, Clayton Christenson's book, please read it. For me, it was insightful as Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat", but focused on education. I asked the audience in Aveiro that if they were to become more active in eLearning or, as they called it, bLearning (a blend of computer based and classroom based education), what would they need. The answer was time and tools.

I thought back to 1997 when I founded Cyber Village Academy. Cyber Village Academy was intended to reach out to seriously ill children and provide them with a portal to learning during times when they felt well enough to learn. It was intended to provide sick kids with a learning experience that was ready when they were and could adapt to their needs. As it turned out, we served some sick kids, but we served national competition skaters as well and dozens upon dozens of homeschoolers who didn't want traditional public school and couldn't afford private school.

For teachers, we addressed the issue of time by providing at least two days per week when teachers could support students online, and develop curriculum and activities. To reiterate, we provided at least two full days per week with each teacher equipped with her own office and computer. Our first choice of tools, however, Authorware and, later, Flash was too difficult for teachers to master and integrate into our first learning management systems. Something needed to be invented - and that was the LodeStar authoring tool.

Prior to my most pleasant time with ACEAV in Portugal, I had the great fortune to represent LodeStar Learning at the 2nd Pan African Forum organized by Merlot Africa Network (MAN) in Dakar, Senegal. I asked post-secondary teachers the same question that I posed to teachers in Portugal. Interestingly, instructors from all over Africa began to spell out their need for professional development in the design of open education resources (learning objects). I was struck by their eloquence and the sophistication they brought to the discussion.

I was also struck by my own shortcomings. In Dakar, I needed a French-English translator. For the most part, participants understood my English, but I couldn't understand their French. In Portugal, teachers could understand my English, but I know less than five words in Portuguese. I studied French and German in school, but that learning has all but evaporated. I was embarrassed. When I conducted a workshop in Luxenbourg, the same feelings came over me. Every participating instructor spoke multiple languages. I spoke one.

I make these admissions because visiting with teachers in Dakar and Aveiro has caused me to be reflective about my own educational experiences and the role that eLearning or blended learning can play in improving the educational experience. In that reflection, I hear a number of voices. I hear the voice of Cherie at Cyber Village Academy who helped students learn history first hand through prima facia diaries and records and accounts that weren't filtered through someone else's perspective. I hear the voices of Tillman Ragan and Patricia Smith who have listed instructional strategies that are effective for each type of learning or the voice of Dr. Michael Allen who writes, "Forget what you've learned about instructional design and do something interesting", or John Taylor Gatto who writes about the harmful effect of schooling (versus education) in his "Weapons of Mass Instruction". Certainly my French language classes in high school were weapons of mass instruction. I can still hear the annoying voice of the French teacher, "écouter et à imiter". We followed with mindless recitations of French sentences. If we can't have truly immersive experiences in language instruction, surely we have computer-assisted instruction that is much more effective.

From all of the voices that seem to conflict and confuse, I hear a chorus. It's true that we should forget about instructional design and do something interesting -- but only if we treat instructional design as a recipe book. Effective education can't be created from a recipe book. It's true that computer-based, student centric learning can be a large part of a student's diet, but not as computer-based education is today, but as it is envisioned by Clayton Christenson in his book.

I do believe that teachers need time and tools. I believe that if teachers are not part of the process of creation and given time by their administration, they will become subscribers to static content -- a new form of the textbook -- with a table of contents that dictates the curriculum and aligns to academic standards and shallow tests.

I believe that the LodeStar authoring tool has a role to play, as it exists today and even more so as an open system that enables organizations like ACEAV in Portugal and the University of Cheikh Anti Diop in Dakar to build upon its architecture and help to create dozens of templates that embody dozens of strategies that help teachers in their respective disciplines.

eLearning or bLearning are wonderous processes fraught with multiple challenges. To meet these challenges, teachers need time and tools. We are now planning updates to LodeStar to make it a better tool and buy the instructor more time. Stay tuned to this web journal to learn more.

As educators, we are hopeful that technology can help make meaningful connections between the subjects that we teach and the relevance to students' lives. We look for students to be inspired and to inquire into the historical, political, geographical, scientific, literary, technological, artful, physical world around them. We look for students to be motivated, civic minded and connected and on and on.

Lately, in that pursuit, we are the beneficiaries of a frenzy of development around the concept of Web 2.0. On a daily basis we redefine what is possible based on a new tool that has popped up on the web and that has a different take on collaborating, cataloguing, referencing, presenting, and storing. Web 2.0 tools are often free or inexpensive, easy to use and what they produce can be publicly accessible and can help our students.

The bonanza of Web 2.0 tools is like the Wild Wild West, a rapidly changing and expanding frontier. We look onto these tools from the relative comfort of our 'East Coast' establishments -- our learning management and content management systems, our authoring tools …our pedagogy.

Of course, this is not an either-or proposition. Learning Management Systems serve a very powerful function. They afford privacy and protection. Faculty can submit their intellectual property and not fear having their rights vanish into the public domain (although, of course, there is Creative Commons). Faculty can use material copyrighted by others and be, to a greater degree, protected by an LMS that gives students a look at that material for a finite period of time and a passworded log in. Students are guided through material by design. The sequence of the material, how it is 'chunked', how the students are assessed -- are all part of that design.

But LMS and authoring systems that contribute to LMS's can be rather stagnant compared to the daily new opportunity that Web 2.0 affords. Moodle and Blackboard offer a handful of approaches to presenting and collaborating on content. The wild wild web 2.0 offers dozens.
LodeStar Learning has long had its eye on Web 2.0 technologies. A little background is helpful here to show that our commitment to harnessing the power of Web 2.0 didn't happen overnight. You may be interested in some of the milestones.

In May 2004, we first began using the Google Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enable instructors to query the Google databases from within our LodeStar eLearning authoring tool. We used a powerful technology called Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services to enable the LodeStar client to leverage the power of Google for the benefit of teachers and students. We still use Web Services, and it’s at the heart of a powerful new collaboration between LodeStar Learning and a major Learning Object Repository vendor. (But that's the subject of another article.)

In September 2005, we began using Representational State Transfer (REST) through services provided by companies such as Yahoo. From the teacher's point of view, he/she simply typed in a word and got a tray of images - whether we were using SOAP or REST was of no consequence to the teacher.
The point of introducing this alphabet soup is to make one point clear. Teachers were interested in efficiently finding resources across the web. We were interested in using available technologies to make that happen. In the very near future, we will once again implement a powerful new approach to making this happen more efficiently.

In the spring of 2008, we introduced Mapper, which enabled instructors to match their instructional content to points on a Google Map using latitude, longitude and zoom level. Students could navigate a Google Map and see matching content in the form of images, text, animations, video, audio and quiz items or they could navigate through content and watch the Google Map pan, zoom and display the appropriate location markers.
In the summer of 2008, we introduced Syncher, which enabled instructors to synch up an audio podcast (streamed in from any source) with instructional content that either resides in a learning object or in external services such as Blip.TV and TeacherTube videos.

For the past year, LodeStar has had the capability of embedding Web 2.0 applications, but we have not built the needed easy-to-use interfaces for instructors to leverage these resources. Our plan for LodeStar 5.8 (summer 2009) is to make these interfaces available so that an instructor can easily embed a Web 2.0 application into a SCORM object using LodeStar and upload the object to a learning management system or learning object repository.

The following link displays a LodeStar object that walks the viewer through several embedded Web 2.0 resources. (This was made possible with LodeStar 5.7 - but the next iteration will be huge improvement.) We discuss the purpose of the resources and what we perceive as the value proposition for instructors and their students.

We'll then follow up with a discussion in our Creative Educators Using LodeStar group in Curriki. Our goal is to arrive at an interface that makes sense to instructors and that helps them to use Web 2.0 applications easily and effectively.

So here is the link to the learning object:

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Coll_bbilyk/Web20Apps/BrancherWeb20.zip/Web_2_0/index.htm

And, if you want to participate in our CEUL group discussion in Curriki, here is how to join:

Join the LodeStar Community

If you know of some terrific Web 2.0 apps, please share by adding your comments to this blog.

By Robert N. Bilyk

This article focuses on controlling the appearance of activities created with the LodeStar authoring tool. In short, the article focuses on the LodeStar concept of themes. I’ll examine how to apply themes to our first generation of templates and then to our new Reindeer templates – so called because they are titled Brancher, Panner, Syncher and Mapper… a little reminiscent of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen.

The second part of the article will briefly instruct users on how to generate their own themes and apply them to the LodeStar framework.

So let’s get started.

First generation templates
The LodeStar authoring tool allows an instructor to select a template that incorporates an instructional strategy useful in an eLearning course. ( Notice that I used the word template and not theme.)

Once an instructor has selected a template, turned it into a project and populated the project with content, s/he can select the appropriate colors for the project. The instructor can control the color of the header (the top strip), the footer (the bottom strip), and the background. A set of preselected colors and background texture is known as a theme. LodeStar comes with a number of themes that serve as a great starting point for the look and feel of your project.

I’ll choose the Presenter tempate to demonstrate how to apply themes to your projects. Like Presenter, the first generation templates that support the use of themes include:

Boardmaker
Challenger
Concentration
Crossword
Flashcards
PageTurner
Sequencer
SlideShow
Timeline
WebQuest

Once an instructor selects a template and turns it into a project with specific content, s/he can, in a sense, reskin the project by applying color choices and a background.

To apply a theme to a project, open the project and select Tools > Themes. You will see the Themes Editor displayed.

By default the look of the project will be derived from the -Default theme.

Let’s examine the screenshot below and identify the configurable parts.

First, there is the header and footer. This is the topmost strip of color and the bottommost strip of color. The header and footer are part of the –Default theme. The header for our first templates often included a title. In fact, this often confused LodeStar authors. We’ve received many emails asking how to change or erase the title that appeared in the header. The answer was always go to Tools > Themes, and change the title.

Secondly, there is a background color. Background colors are controlled by one or more of these properties:

Inner Background Color
Background Image
Background Alpha

Let’s understand each property, individually.

In the screenshot pictured above, the inner background color controls the color behind the text. The Background Image, however, overrides the background color. If the background color were white, and the background image were red, the background would be red. That would be true if the background alpha, the third element, were set to 100. Background alpha controls the opaqueness of the background image. A background alpha of 100 means that the background will be 100% background image regardless of the background color. As the background alpha gets lower in value (e.g. 50 or 0), the background color begins to shine through.

So let’s try an example. I’ll set the text color to white. (I did this through the text editor controls, not the Theme control). Next, I’ll set the Background Alpha of the Background Image to 100. Here is what I get.

Now let’s choose an entirely different theme. The choice I made is illustrated in the next screenshot of the LodeStar Theme editor.

I chose the Black theme. Now, I’ll review and, possibly, change each property and then show you the result.

Notice in the screenshot above that I chose the Black theme and that it is indicated in the label above the picture in the right column. Black.

Now let’s go down the list of properties:

Title: I type in Digital Photography.

HTML Background Color: This is the color of the web page that will host this learning object. I leave this one white, but could have easily chosen any color.

Width: This is the width of the learning object as it appears on theweb page. I’d highly recommend leaving this one alone.

Height: This is the height of the learning object as it appears on the web page. I’d highly recommend leaving this one alone.

Outer Background Color: For the first generation of templates, this controls the color of the rounded corners at the edge of the learning object (flash object). I’ll leave these black.

Inner Background Color: This is the color of background behind the text. I’ll change this to white. I can click on the little color square and use the color chooser dialog or I can type in the hexidecimal equivalent of white, which is #ffffff. (Why # ffffff means white is a long story.)

Background Image: This isn’t changeable. It comes packaged with the theme.

Background Alpha: I’ll change this to 0, which means that the background image won’t display at all.

I click on the OK button and show the results of my efforts. I get a very clean look. (I also changed the camera photo to one with a white background.)

Now let’s look at the second generation of templates: the Reindeer templates.

Second generation templates

The second generation templates include:
Brancher
Panner
Syncher
Mapper

Let’s examine the screenshot below and identify how the themes editor affects a project made from the Brancher template.

I’ll cover each property in the Theme Editor.

The choice of theme is a custom theme called eFolio_Blue. The last section of this article will show you how create your own themes like eFolio_Blue.

Title: I left this blank.

HTML Background Color: I set this to black. This controls the color of the hosting web page, which is not pictured here.

Width: I left this at 800.

Height: I left this at 470.

Outer Background Color: This controls the navigation strip of dark blue on the left side. In the first generation of templates, the outer background color played an almost inconsequential role. In the new templates, it will almost always control the navigation strip.

Inner Background Color: This controls the background color behind the text. I set this to light blue.

Background Image: This can’t be changed.

Background Alpha: I set this to 80, which means 80% opaque.

So, in summary, the key difference between the first and second generation of templates is the use of the Outer and Inner Background Color.

The next part of this article is on creating your own custom templates. It is rather technical.

Creating Custom Templates
For technically-oriented individuals

Let’s look at the files that make up a theme.

All of LodeStar’s projects are organized in the Projects Folder, wherever LodeStar is installed. Inside of each project is a folder titled Theme. Inside of the Theme folder, we have the list of files:

background.jpg
default.xml
header.jpg
footer.jpg
thumbnail.jpg

as well as others

The controlling file is the default.xml file. One of the jobs of default.xml is keep track of what files constitute the header, the footer and the background image. The default.xml also stores the properties of a theme.

Then we have the actual files that make up these parts. That is, footer.jpg, header.jpg, and background.jpg. (All of the jpgs can be replaced by swfs.) The footer does not have to be a file called footer.jpg. So what keeps track of which file is actually the footer, which file is the header, and which file is the background? The answer is the default.xml.

Inside the Default.xml, you will find an xml element that looks like this (Replace () with xml angle brackets):

(bgImage)bgImagebackground.jpg(/bgImage)

If you wanted a file called circus.jpg to be the background, you would replace the xml with:
(bgImage)circus.jpg(/bgImage)

You would also save circus.jpg to the theme folder.

You could also replace the background.jpg and background.swf with files of your own design.

Just be sure that they follow these dimensions:

background.jpg: 800 pixels wide by 470 high
background.swf: 800 pixels wide by 470 high
footer.jpg: 800 pixels wide by 20 high
footer.swf 800 pixels wide by 20 high

Finally, you will need to create a thumbnail.jpg that represents your custom theme. This should be 200 wide by 100 high.

Once you have changed the default.xml and swapped out all of those files listed above, its time to convert the contents of the theme folder into an archive.

You will need a tool that creates jar files. One of our favorites is Alzip from Altools, found at http://www.altools.com/Downloads.aspx.

In essence you are zipping up the folder. But instead of creating a zip file you are creating a jar file. A jar file is a JAVA archive. You use the same procedure as you would zipping up the contents of a folder. With the Altools archive maker, you would select an archive of type ‘Jar’. Set the compression ratio to be normal.

Once you have created a file, rename the extension as .startheme, then copy it into the [program directory]\LodeStar\Themes folder.

That’s it. With a little technical aptitude, You can create your own themes easily.

For our 29th anniversary, my wife and I spent the week end in Ely, Minnesota. Besides kayaking on the Kawishiwi River, and howling at wolves under a full moon, we had the wonderful experience of revisiting Jim Brandenburg’s collection of photographs in his shop on Sheridan Street.

Jim Brandenburg, an inspirational nature photographer who is widely known for his work, challenged himself in an extraordinary way. He would take one picture, and only one picture each day. From the autumnal equinox to the winter’s solstice, he would plan his shot, wait for the perfect moment – wait for that perfect harmony of color and form and texture and light or whatever—and click. 90 days. 90 clicks. The results are astounding.

So, when I arrived home from that perfect weekend, I thought I would try it. Only, my choice was to get started right away and capture the passing of summer into fall. So, I started on August 21. Each day, one click. On some days, I accomplished exactly that. I waited for the moment, and clicked. On other days, I over-exposed or under-exposed – and so I shot again. But I found myself, thinking a lot about light. The light helped me choose my subject each day. I remained faithful to that subject, if not to the ‘first’ click.

Here are my collection of photographs and thoughts – in progress. http://www.lodestarlearning.com/samples/90_Days/index.htm

Then I started thinking about the use of this activity in our schools. In his book, Brandenburg includes written reflections of the day’s photograph. He is quite open and honest about his emotion. And so, I imagined young students thinking about their shot, committing the ‘click’, and then journaling about the experience. Perhaps they would write about their feelings; perhaps tell a little about the subject of the photo. They might write about something environmental, social or historical. The possibilities are open.

Of course, this type of activity is easily supported by LodeStar software and its templates – but there are a variety of alternatives. Students can upload to Flickr, Facebook, PBWiki or wherever. The main ingredients of this experience are the same: Reflection, evaluation, commitment, expression and publication. The last ingredient may be something that school districts need to facilitate. In inquiry-based instruction, publication is essential. Students learn that what they communicate isn’t perfunctory and for the instructor’s eyes alone. They are putting something out to the world. They need to self-evaluate and be mindful of their use of language and its mechanics.

Publication in a school district can be accomplished through a variety of means. The school can give instructors access to a web server through web-based distributed authoring and versioning. Technical support people know this as WebDav. To an instructor, WebDav can mean a folder in their file explorer. Anything dragged into that folder is automatically published to the web. This approach opens the door to the creative use of LodeStar and other authoring tools that generate files that need to be uploaded to a web server.

Alternatively, the wild west of the web offers a free means of publication. Social networking sites and wikis support direct upload of images to the site as well as widgets to add text input.

In conclusion, there are a variety of tools that will support an online version of what Jim Brandenburg created in his 90 Day collection of photographs. There is also the importance of publication. Instructors should push for the ability to publish to the web and support their students’ efforts to do so. This sort of activity will engage students and help build their ability to communicate. Plus, do I dare say it? Students will have fun!

LodeStar Learning brings the power of Google maps to the learning object. LodeStar’s latest addition to its template family, Mapper, introduces instructors to yet another strategy to engage learners and let them have some fun in the process. Mapper further expands LodeStar’s capability to do mashups.

A mashup is an application that combines data from more than one source into a single, integrated presentation. First, we’ll describe Mapper’s functionality, and then we’ll discuss all of the data sources that LodeStar can mashup for the learner’s benefit.

An example of Mapper is found at http://www.lodestarlearning.com/samples/Demo_Mapper/page.htm In this example, the instructor chose a set of images that displays the diversity of the African landscape. Each image is tied to a location on the map through latitude and longitude and zoom level.

When using a learning object created with Mapper, the student can page through the instructional content. As each page displays, the Google Map re-centers to the coordinate that is linked to that page. Each page can display a mix of text, graphics, animation, video, audio and questions. Alternatively, the student can navigate through the page and click on markers that appear. The Google Map then calls up the page that is linked to that point on the map.

In the LodeStar authoring process, an instructor selects a template – in this case, Mapper. She then adds a page and decides what type of content should be displayed on that page and with what layout. In the example, the instructor chose full page image. The instructor imported an image and then filled out the top field with a latitude and longitude coordinate, following this format.

14.3423,-28.5674

The first coordinate is latitude; the second, longitude.
The next decision she made related to zoom level. An instructor can choose a zoom level between 0 and 17. Seventeen currently represents the closest, zoomed-in view. As a result LodeStar automatically adds a marker to the Google Map. When the learner turns to a specific page, the map zooms into the corresponding marker and turns it green. When the learner moves around in the map and clicks on a marker, it turns green and then causes the matching instructional content to display.

With the addition of Mapper, LodeStar’s mashup capability is expanded.
It is now possible to combine Google Mapping with streamed in video, streamed in podcasts, and the instructor’s own images, animation, text and questions.

One final note about Mapper. In order to use Mapper on a specific website or in an LMS, instructors must create a Google account (it’s free) and generate an API key (also free) for each web address. If for example, an instructor intended to publish to http://www.engageLearner.org and then to http://demo.moodle.org, the instructor would apply for two api keys. It only takes seconds, and it unleashes a wonderful new instructional strategy.