lodeStar Learning Web Journal

By Robert N. Bilyk

As we announced at the 2009 Efolio Summit, the source of LodeStar Learning's energy in the upcoming year will be in activities that represent opportunities for synergy. In the eLearning/digital story-telling industry, synergy comes in a variety of forms: partnerships and alliances, adoption of new standards, integration with new products and a few surprises!

Alliances

Last October, LodeStar Learning announced its alliance with EfolioWorld. LodeStar Learning Corporation’s eLearning authoring tool(LodeStar™ ) has been configured so that it can be fully integrated with the eFolioWorld portfolio systems. This month, EfolioWorld has released eFolio Version 2, with built-in upload support for LodeStar Objects.

eFolio is a wonderful tool for teachers and students alike. It is a must-have for every school district, college and university. It enables teachers, students and institutions to tell their story, including goals and accomplishments, personal and institutional history, and much more. And now, with the easy upload of LodeStar objects, individuals and institutions can tell their story as never before, with multimedia-rich presentations, timelines, podcasts, slideshows, eBooks and the rest of LodeStar's many templates.

Continuing along the vein of new partnerships, in November LodeStar Learning hopes to announce its alliance with one of the world's premiere Digital Repository companies. Of course, in the meantime, our company will strengthen its existing connection with Curriki, Merlot, Digital Library for Earth Science Education and the Merlot Africa Network projects.

New Standards

LodeStar Learning has already integrated support for the International Digital Publishing Forum's eBook standard into its present product. Sony and Adobe have announced support for EPUB in their respective releases of the Sony Reader Digital Book and Adobe Digital Editions. LodeStar Learning is currently testing its implementations of the EPUB eBook in these new releases and making adjustments as needed. Any issues with these technologies -- and there are some -- will be resolved before LodeStar's next major release.

New Products

Just underneath the surface of the internet, made visible by the browser, is a world of data accessible through web services, RSS feeds and other web technologies that are seemingly just beyond the reach of the instructor with average technical skill. The data represents earthquakes, volcanoes, forest fires, weather patterns, pandemics, automobile traffic, satellite images, topographical images -- all available in real time. Our goal within the next year is to put that data within the reach of both teachers and students, so that learning objects can come alive with up-to-the-minute datacasts or historical data snapshots. So stay tuned. This is an exciting area, and a pet project of mine.

Surprises

LodeStar Learning has been seeking partnerships with colleges and universities with programming talent. That's no surprise. The goal is to continue accomplishing what we've done in the past. In a few cases, we've partnered with both institutions and companies to produce templates that all of our subscribers can use. We're hoping to continue that practice. If your university or college has in-house Flash or Flex programmers, consider underwriting a project that the entire LodeStar Academic Community can use. In exchange for sharing your talent, LodeStar Learning will provide access to its authoring tool, its templates and the work of other colleges who make a similar commitment. Flash/Flex programmers need to know nothing about LodeStar or its data models. LodeStar can be adapted to any project that separates the presentation layer (rendered in Flash or Flex) from the data layer (XML, JSON, flat files, and other formats). Contact bob.bilyk@LodeStarLearning.com for more details.

The surprise comes in how we are expanding our goal. In the past, LodeStar Learning has stayed committed to Flash and Flex technologies because of the ubiquity of the Flash Player - over 90% saturation on the PC, MAC, Linux and Unix platforms. But in its most recent project, LodeStar Learning has wrapped a template around the work of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Simile Project. The Simile project is based in large part on the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML methodology known widely as AJAX. This is a proof-of-concept project that demonstrates that LodeStar templates can assist instructors in configuring AJAX applications as well as Flash and Flex.

AJAX became popularized after its adoption by Google in its Gmail and Google Maps applications. Today, AJAX is the underlying technology for scores of business applications so the likelihood that colleges and universities will have faculty, IT personnel and students schooled in its use is perhaps higher than the same schooled in Flash and Flex. In any case, LodeStar supports AJAX, Flash and Flex.

I'll conclude with a screenshot of LodeStar SimTimeline template based on MIT's Simile project. Keep us in mind for more partnership opportunities. The resulting synergy benefits everyone in our academic community.