Personal Blogs

• Xerte
• xMOOC

Xerte is an e-learning creation platform that puts the student with a disability first by having readily available options to create content that is accessible. It is the creation platform in the MA in Open & Distance Education module H810: Accessible E-learning. It's an easy to use blog/PowerPoint webpage building platform with a suite of adjustments built into the frame (see above) that allows for personalization of the experience to suit user needs.

Xerte online tool kits for untechnical people

How to start a Xerte object

Guides to using Xerte and installing it.

At JISC

As for an xMOOC I think 'MOOC' will do, indeed already there is a movement to call them 'OOCs' as the 'massive' thing is a misnomer given the vast fall off in participation in the things.

My background is corporate communications where our projects are produced by a team - in advertising an art director works with a copywriter, in web design we added a programmer and for e-learning we added a learning designer and subject matter expert - in education the teacher or tutor is this subject matter expert and at the most senior level is expected to do it all themselves.

I don't get this at all - we know that people have different strengths and weaknesses. There is a particular divide betgween those who can write and those who can visualise, between the author and illustrator, the copywriter and art director.

The result from too many teachers and tutors is either little online presence or a blog, sometimes a power point presentation.

I find resistance and unwillingness repeatedly and have sympathy because they should not be expected to do much other than be brilliant exponents of their subject.

They are rarely good at visuslisation or narrative, have had no training on use of slides so pack 'em full of words or irrelevant clip art and by habit write blog posts that are too long, too dense and too late. They hate to let go of their idea - it is theirs and no one else may touch or influence their brilliant conceptions.

I've given Xerte a go.

I have many users in mind for the content that only it can deliver - but in my case I know when I am stumped and if it feels like I'm having to conjugate verbs in Latin I'll go and find someone who can make it sing.

On my list of tools that promise a lot but fail, Xerte may escape this category for now, I inlcude Elluminate, Compendium, MyStuff and Cloudworks and Social Learn. They all have something in common.

I'll give Xerte another go as I see what I can deliver in terms of access. But as an e-learning platform it is slide show.

Clive Shepherd

On the pros and cons of being both the subject matter expert and the learning designer

http://clive-shepherd.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/do-instructional-designers-need-to-know.html