For the last year, I've been whining about the lack of an effective, low-entry, easy to use tool for educators to move resources online. The complexity of technology is a limiting factor to elearning growth and development. Teachers shouldn't become technologists. New (simple) tools need to be developed that perform basics tasks that instructors must manually perform now. Moving classroom content online should not require learning new complex skills - the process should be an extension of existing work habits.
With that said, there are a few products on the market currently that assist instructors in creating online resources. The two I'm aware of (Convertor and Course Genie) both rely on Microsoft Word.
Recombo has developed a tool to to convert Word and PowerPoint documents to SCORM compliancy. Quote from their site: "Convertor for Word makes it as fast and easy to get validated SCORM(tm) content, as it is to make a .pdf. Specifications such as SCORM(tm) ensure we have common rules to get content divided, described and delivered and Convertor for Word makes applying the standards fast and easy."
The second product is of particular interest...I attended a presentation today by two instructors from Red River College - Guy Dugas and Jody Baty. They have been working in collaboration with Connected Learning to create a product called Course Genie. Essentially Course Genie takes an existing Microsoft Word document, and allows users to assign standard Word tags to parts of the document (Course Genie adds to toolbars to the Word program that can be used to tag), and then export the document - to create XML files. These XML files are then used to generate HTML.
So, with the starting point of a simple Word document, a non-tech instructor could create HTML content that incorporate existing audio, Flash, interactive activities, etc. No need to learn FrontPage or Dreamweaver to create basic online content. A cascading style sheet (CSS) that sits on the server (WebCT/BlackBoard - whatever) then applies the appropriate formats to the HTML...resulting in documents that are consistent in look and feel, regardless of who in the organization designed them (this is one of the benefits of content/presentation separation).
End result...programs like Course Genie and Convertor are critical for wide-scale elearning adoption. Much of the technology must be taken out of the instructor's experience of converting (transforming?) content to online...i.e. the tech experience needs to be "transparent" in order to be integrated into the daily activities of instructional staff.
Posted by gsiemens at October 24, 2002 02:09 PM