lodeStar Learning Web Journal

Robert N. Bilyk

Recently, as a result of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Academic Innovations Projects, the question has been asked by participating instructors: “How do we share learning objects created with LodeStar?”

LodeStar is typically used by instructors to create learning activities that are uploaded to Moodle, Desire2Learn, Blackboard, eCollege, Sharepoint Learning Kit and so forth. But what happens when one instructor wants to share the learning resource with another instructor without a Learning Management System?

One scenario is that an instructor creates a learning object or activity and wishes to share the activity with an evaluator. The evaluator may or may not have LodeStar. Let’s examine the possibilities. We’ll cover the options from simplest and most general to most sophisticated.

Option 1: Share a Zip File

Turn your LodeStar activity into a Zip File and then share it. A Zip file is a popular archive format. That means that a zip file contains one or more files. A LodeStar activity is made up of multiple files -- but when zipped, can be passed around as a single file.

Think of it as a suitcase. We think of a suitcase as being one object, but it may contain several articles of clothing. Similarly, a Zip may contain one or more files that have been compressed in order to reduce their file size. To create a zip file you need a tool. The following is a list of popular zip making tools:

Winzip, a free download from http://www.winzip.com

AlZip, a free download from http://www.altools.com

PKZip, a free download from http://www.pkware.com

LodeStar also has a built in zip archive capability. To create and email a zip file created in LodeStar, do the following:

1) Open your project in LodeStar by selecting File > Open. Browse to your specific project folder and double-click on the file that ends with .lxml. This file is also associated with the LodeStar icon.

2) With your project opened, select Tools >IMS Manifest Maker in order to create a manifest. You must have a manifest in order to use the export utility in LodeStar, which is responsible for making the zip file. In the IMS Manifest Maker, we recommend you filling in at least the top five items. Then click on the ‘Save Manifest’ button. Close the dialog box.

3) Select Export >Create Export File. The Export Wizard will take you through a series of screens. The first screen will tell you that you are about to create an export from the current project. Similarly, a later screen will tell you that a new folder will be created in the LodeStar Exports folder. Another screen will prompt you to create a new folder name. Another will prompt you to create a filename name for your zip file, etc.

The last screen gives you the recommended option of exporting the activity as SCORM 1.3. This is the default type and so you don't need to do anything but click on the 'Create Export' button.

By default the zip file will be saved as:
C:\Program Files\LodeStar\Exports\[Project Name]\[File Name.zip]

You can accept the defaults. The main concern is for you to pay attention to where the zip file will be saved. You will need to know this information later.

Regardless of how you created the zip file (through Winzip, PKZIP, ALzip or LodeStar), you will need to know the location of the zip file.

You can email the zip file as an attachment, provided that your institution or email service allows attachments of this type.

The recipient of the attachment can then save the file to his or her hard drive and then unzip it. Unzip means to decompress the file or, in other terms, un-archive the file. This would be like opening the suit case and spilling out the contents.

The deflate utility that is used to unzip a file is built into both the Windows (XP or better) and MAC operating systems. In Windows, a user would right-click on the file and select extract to [folder name]. This will create a folder with the appropriate name. Inside the folder, the user will find another folder with the project name. Inside that folder, the user will find an index.htm file. Launch the index.htm file and the user can view the LodeStar Activity. If the user has a licensed copy of LodeStar, the user can click on the .lxml file that sits inside the folder. That will launch LodeStar and open the file for editing. When the user returns to LodeStar in a later session, this file name will be listed in their Most Recently Used List under File > New.

Option 2: Share a StarBurst

The benchmark for ease of sharing comes, in part, from Microsoft PowerPoint and the .ppt file. Because PowerPoint is widely used, instructors can easily share PowerPoint files. In Office 2007, the default PowerPoint file extension is .pptx. The x in pptx means Open XML , an open, transparent file type that is basically an archive (in the Zip family) with a controlling document and assets. When one shares a PowerPoint pptx file, one is essentially sharing a zip file with numerous documents inside. So, why can’t LodeStar do that? In fact, it can and has been doing so long before Open XML. The format is called StarBurst and the extension is .lxm.

When an instructor sends a StarBurst via eMail to another instructor with LodeStar, these are the capabilities:

In many cases, if the recipient has LodeStar loaded, he or she can simply right-click on the attachment and select ‘View’. This experience does vary from email system to email system, but generally, the activities such as Crossword, FlashCards, etc. simply appear.

The second capability is for the recipient to save the attachment to the hard drive and use LodeStar’s File > Open to open the StarBurst .lxm. The important caveat here is that the recipient must select File > Open and change the ‘Files of Type’ to .lxm.

When reading an .lxm, LodeStar will prompt the recipient to create a new project based on the .lxm. The new project's content will now be editable, but the original project will be left intact.

New activity templates such as SimpleAudioPlayer, SimpleVideoPlayer, Brancher, Panner and Syncher don’t support the quick viewing aspect of the LXM (the first capability), but they certainly support the second, editing capability.

LXM files should only be used for sharing or collaborating on a project. Students who use LodeStar to create multimedia projects can use the LXM format to send their work to the instructor by email and allow for quick viewing on the part of the instructor.

Option 3: Sharing through a Repository

The last option is by far the most sophisticated option and only practical for those engaged in large projects. The learning curve is high, but once mastered can provide a whole new level of security, collaboration and opportunity to present day computing.

The third option involves a free hosted repository like that offered by www.assembla.com. Recently, LodeStar Learning has collaborated with other companies through Assembla. Assembla makes it possible for us to collaborate on complicated projects that require version control. The collaborators can be anywhere in the world.

Teaching one how to use Assembla is beyond the scope of this article; however, computer science instructors at a college or university would easily be able to guide an instructor through the basic steps.

Using a repository like Assembla involves, in general, the following steps.
An instructor registers at www.assembla.com. and then creates a project space. This is essentially a place that acts as a repository, a place to store files.

Secondly, the instructor downloads a versioning software that follows Subversion Control or SVN, for short. The SVN software that I use is called TortoiseSVN and is available for free at http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org.

The instructor then creates a subdirectory on the hard drive that in linked to the project space in the assembla repository. The instructions that come with the Tortoise help files provide a step by step guide on how to accomplish this last step. The subdirectory must be empty at first. The link is then established. Files that are subsequently added to the directory can be committed to the repository. The repository enables an instructor to commit changes and download the edits of others. The Assembla repository also supports numerous collaboration tools such as a project site Wiki.

As I had mentioned, using a repository like Assembla involves a learning curve. The payback is that files are backed up, version controlled and open to collaboration.

Conclusion

In conclusion, mechanisms exist both inside and outside of LodeStar to share files before they are committed to a Learning Management System. Using a zip tool is easy and straightforward; using LodeStar’s StarBurst .lxm filetype is easy and straight forward, although less commonly used; and finally, Assembla.com offers collaboration on steroids. LodeStar Learning is currently collaborating with Saint Paul College in Minnesota through Assembla.

Postscript

In the future, LodeStar Learning would like to partner with a host to enable one-click publishing of content to a learning object repository where projects are easily viewable without login. We would be open to working together with a host who would be interested in bringing this new capability to instructors and students.