Learning content storage costs

Thinking about the e-learning content I decided to investigate the costs of "content storage". In other words I try to compare the costs of the instrument that carry all the knowledge to the learners. Below you will find out the costs of making:

• books - traditional paper textbook - costs include printing and paper costs of book in circulation of 10 000 copies
• CD - production costs of 10 000 CD
• web server costs - hosting costs of server with capacity of 10 GB and the annual traffic of 2400 GB (that should be enough to serve 10 000 clients)

All cost do not include costs of preparing the "content". (writing book,editing, programming etc.)

Costs of production of paper textbook are almost 14 times higher that being stored at www server....

e-learning content

Individual publishing

E-learning content, similarly to traditional books is one of the most important part of the whole product and have the highest influence to project/course success. Contrary to paper books, where only text and pictures (or images) are required in e-learning curses there is much more elements. I present below short list of most popular of them. (according to YDP)

• Pictures & Illustrations
• Photos
• Animations
• Simulations
• Film & Videos

All those elements require a lot of work to be prepared however, may be cataloged and re-used to many different courses.

Collaborative publishing

Wiki software (as part of Web 2.0) makes it possible to publish a website with very little technical knowledge but puts a greater emphasis on collaborative rather than personal publishing. Wiki technology may significantly increase the speed and spread of information and knowledge potential e-learning page may contain. Lets look at wikipedia that is in my opinion - just perfect!

Similar to Wikipedia - elearning courses my rise in enormous speed and size. Critics says that wiki-based-product because of the lack of "central editors" may have not good enough quality and accuracy of any entry. I do not see any problems with knowledge quality and totally agree with wiki community that points out that if a user spots a mistake, they are free to correct it for themselves, and that any vandalism is usually eradicated within five minutes.

However, I see the problem with knowledge-verification process. If each e-learning page is free and open and is used to learn and verify the learners knowledge - a special pages with test result will appear. However, that is because there is no question that could not be answered by "internet"!

Evolution of Web 2.0 may rise the problem of necessity of existing of editors and publishers. Will authors (or group of authors, or internet society) will need anybody that will take care of publishing their thoughts, books, courses? Even today they don't need anybody. Publishing becomes very easy. So what publishing houses will do in 5-10 years form now?

Links

• Opencollege - licensed elements supporting e-learning - http://www.opencollege.com/
• E-content libary samles (by YDP)

e-Learning Management Systems

Learning Management Systems

For company that would like to start e-learning business there is common question about decision what Learning Management System should it use. After few hours of searching the net I can say that there is many of them available on the market (also own system can be programmed and implemented). Some of them are commercial other are distributed as an open source sortware. Decision will not be easy and need a deep investigation in terms of matching company requirements. Bellow you can find short overview of systems that I found in the internet. I haven't made any comparison of them in terms of features, development and costs of implementation.


LON-CAPA - http://www.loncapa.org/ - Open Source

LON-CAPA is a full-featured, web-based course management system similar to commercial systems. At Spring 2006, LON-CAPA was serving over 16,000 course enrollments per semester at MSU alone, and approximately 40,000 course enrollments system-wide, ranging from middle school to graduate level courses. Disciplines include astronomy, biology, business, chemistry, civil engineering, computer science, family and child ecology, geology, human food and nutrition, human medicine, mathematics, medical technology, physics, and psychology.


moodle! - http://moodle.org/ - Open Source

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including websites), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University. This site itself is created using Moodle, so check out the Moodle Demonstration Courses or read the latest Moodle Buzz

Moodle has a large and diverse user community with over 100,000 registered users on this site alone, speaking over 70 languages in over 150 countries. The best place to start is Using Moodle, which is where the main international discussions are held in English, but we have a variety of groups discussing other topics and in other languages. .


LEO - Leo e-Learning Platform - commercial (polish product)

Young Digital Poland designed LEO to be a comprehensive and versatile Internet based eLearning platform, which allows effective management of complex e-learning and e-teaching processes.

The platform has been designed to manage multiple virtual schools, which, within the Leo environment, are called the e-Schools. E-Schools are created by a Platform Administrator who controls the platform’s resources and keeps responsibility for integrity of all the system. Once an e-School is created the LEO platform provides all the necessary tools for tailoring the educational content and maintaining detailed control over all learning processes running within the platform.

Other free e-Learning Management Systems

ATutor
Dokeos
Fle3
other systems in Wikipedia category

Links
List of polish e-learning web pages using Moodle! software
What is Open Source? - elearningg course that uses Moodle!Managementt System

E-learning system elements

In my opinion e-learning may make learning process easier, more attractive and as a result more effective. However, success of e-learning requires integration of many elements. Quality of those elements, their co-operation and their features will decide about the whole product (e-course). Three main elements are as follow:

1. e-Content - electronic courses covering various subjects
2. e-Learning Management System (LMS) - which:
• effectively delivers electronic courses,
• manages and monitors learner's activities
• organises learners' and teachers' interactivity
3. e-learning hardware - not only on the server sides but also on learners side (incl. broadband connection (server and user, PC and mobile devices)

All of aboved elements I will try to decribe in three next posts. It will be published soon!

Podcasting

What is podcasting?
Podcasting is the method of distributing multimedia files, such as audio programs or music, videos, over the Internet (using either the RSS or Atom syndication formats), for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Detailed definition you can find as usually on wikipedia.

How can it be usefull for e-learning?
Podcasting can be use to distribute all learning materials including school lessons in the form of voice recording of the lecture or perfectly and professional prepared lessons that my be viewed or listened on mobile devices. Podcasting has been developed because of the increasing popularity of mp3/ipod players. Short school lessons, especially e.g. history or other (that do not require sophisticated explanations with video tools) maybe downloaded to mp3 players and be listened (eg. on the way to school :). The usefulness of having such possibility to learners is out of the question.

Podcasting may be/is also use at professional trainings, broadcasts from conferences, meetings and many other events.

How to make your own podcast?
Podcasting is easy! It can be done by everybody using simplest audio or audio and video tools! (computer headphones with microphone, mobile phone, mp3 players with microphone). E-learning professional postcast require more professional tools. Then it may be prepared and sell via internet or delivered to textbooks as a supporting materials.

Podcasts are also easy to share! It is enough to publish it (usually in mp3 format) somewhere in the internet. Many podcasting services offer some space for your own podcasts. This will help your postcast be available to broad audience. Publishers may deliver podcasts to defined audience (that for instance, that have been bought textbook). It may be done by delivering with textbook special codes that allow to download podcast form company’s web page. Such podcast my become a interesting marketing tool and may increase product value.

This post in podcast form!
download mp3 file - not in function yet
listen this post - not in function yet

Helpfull links - general links

What is podcasting at graph - http://www.geeksouth.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/Podcasting.jpg

Podcast directory - easy to search via keywords - http://www.podcast.net/

Yahoo podcast, many catogories (incl. learning) - http://podcasts.yahoo.com/

Polish podcasting group - tips how to make podcast (polish only) http://www.podcasting.com.pl -

Interesting podcasts

How to make your own podcast full of product placement commercial :) - helpfull tool showing how podcast make money http://www.podcast.net/show/47271

MBA Podcaster, some podcasts about MBA - http://www.mbapodcaster.com/podcasts.asp

15th Birthday of Polish internet!

Today Polish internet celebrate its 15th birthday. 17 April 1991 Mr Rafal Pietrak (physicist from Warsaw University) connected using IP protocol with Mr Jan Sorensen from university of Copenhagen.

Despite 4 million of internet users and 4th place in terms of number of articles in Wikipedia we are in my opinion far from the internet society.

Anyway, Happy Birthday!

Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikistudy - will Wikimedia dominate?

The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. (also known simply as Wikimedia) starts many project which main objective is to maintain and develop free-content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge. Many of that projects are still pre-mature but each of them may quickly develop to the size of Wikipedia and became one of the main internet learning tool that is continuously developed and what is most important is for free!

Wikiversity
This weekend (August 4th-8th) Jimbo Wales announced that the wikiversity project has been officially approved by the board, and the project is going to be moved to its own server within the month. Initially, there will be 3 languages, and the project will be in a "beta" version for a 6 month trial period. Discussion about how/when/where to move material can happen in a local discussion page, or at Wikibooks:Staff lounge. Material not in the "Wikiversity:" namespace should not be deleted off this server unless it has undergone an official transwiki AND it has been confirmed by Wikibookians that it does not meet Wikibooks' inclusion criteria.

WikiBooks
Wikibooks is a collection of open content textbooks. Wikibooks site is a wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit any book module right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears near the top of each Wikibooks module.
The project is still small, but we hope to mimic the growth of our sister project, Wikipedia, while maintaining sufficient quality controls.
Wikibooks went online on 10 July 2003, and there are 21,049 modules currently on the site.

First books for pupils on WikiBooks in Polish is in progress - Math for secondary school!
http://pl.wikibooks.org/wiki/Matematyka_dla_liceum

Wikistudy
Wikistudy is the home to textbooks that are directed towards specific syllabi and academic exams. The main part of Wikistudy is for books dealing with core subjects. There is also a section for non-core subjects. Because it is directed at specific syllabuses it is divided into two sections, which themselves are divided by country.

Spam problem

My blog is spamed! I got unwanted comments that do not put any "comments" to my blog (insted of some links). Do you have the same problems? Any solution?

E-learning is it threat or opportunity?

Writing about e-learning there is common discussion - is it threat or opportunity of development of e-tools to traditional textbook publisher?

In terms of WSiP that published textbook for more the 60 years in the form of paper (however, paper book changed in last decade significantly) it maybe rather threat.


But from other point of view, as many publishers says, publishing houses sell "content" not form of the "content". In that point of view e-tools are only the mean of delivering the same (or maybe more multimedia) content to the learners. But is switching from paper book to e-learning tools not too high progress to traditional publishing house? Will they be good prepared to face the competition with more it-developed companies? Will they really be able to cooperate with authors to make e-content like they did it in terms of book production? And the most important question! Will authors (willing to give/sell their knowledge) will really need "e-publishers" to have it delivered to learners or will they be able to do it by themselves using wiki technology, blogs, podcasts or using other e-learning tools?

In my opinion some e-tools may force out traditional textbooks form the market, other may become interesting form of supporting them, some other may even increase their sells! Anyway, textbook publishing houses (WSiP) must start doing something in e-business to be good prepared when the e-learning time will ultimately come!