The TENCompetence and the SALERO European projects have established an on-line community pilot where you can develop competences and share knowledge with other professionals around audiovisual production and automatic broadcasting using the new NINOS Platform.

The NINOS Platform is a set of tools for automatic and semi-automatic generation of audiovisual pieces.

The training materials (including video tutorials, 3D characters and animations) can be addressed freely by the members of the community. This service has been already launched and will be available for at least four months. In June assessment activities will also be published. Those completing these activities will receive a certificate.

We would like to inform you about this opportunity to increase your audiovisual production competences and knowledge, and get to know and cooperate with other professionals and scholars in this domain. Registration for the community is free of charge since the pilot will be used to validate the underlying TENCompetence infrastructure and is part of the Training tasks of SALERO.

You can find more information and register to the community at: http://pilot-ninos.upf.edu

For screenshots and videos please follow the links:

http://pilot-ninos.upf.edu/ninosweb/imgs/programEditor%20ScreenShot.jpg
http://pilot-ninos.upf.edu/ninosweb/imgs/ProgramEditor_video.mov

A quite complete list of e-learning conferences can be found here. Thanks to the persons compiling and sharing the list!

A promisingly interesting workshop on e-learning patterns will take place in Tuebingen in 4-6 March.

The research and development related to IMS QTI under work within the GTI group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra can be checked here.

The “Handbook of Visual Languages for Instructional Design” edited by Luca Botturi y Todd Stubbs is already available. I am the author of one of its chapters:
Hernández-Leo, D., Villasclaras-Fernández, E.D., Asensio-Pérez, J.I., Dimitriadis, Y. Diagrams of learning flow patterns solutions as visual representations of refinable IMS Learning Design templates in Handbook of Visual Languages for Instructional Design: Theories and Practices, Botturi, L., Stubbs, T. (Eds.), IGI, pp. 394-412, 2007.

This is the abstract:

This chapter introduces the use of diagrammatic representations of learning flow patterns as a means of visualizing refinable IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) templates. It argues that the incorporation of pattern-based IMS LD templates in authoring tools, which graphically guide users to create their own learning designs, offers a solution to the problem of IMS LD constructs not being familiar to educators because of its technical nature and text-based notation. Furthermore, this solution facilitates the reuse of good practices formulated as patterns, permitting a design process that promotes potentially effective results. This issue is especially important in collaborative learning designs, in which elicitations of desired social interactions are planned beforehand. Based on these ideas, the chapter also presents Collage, an IMS LD editor which provides templates based on Collaborative Learning Flow Patterns (CLFPs), and includes an example drawn from a real scenario that show the feasibility and usefulness of the approach.

I have been travelling (for “B”usiness) the last two weeks to two different cities whose names start with “B”. Birmingham and Berlin, both are really nice cities but I have to say that I feel special attraction to Berlin (it is an interesting city indeed).

In Birmingham I attended the JISC CETIS Conference 2007, Beyond Standards – Holistic Approaches to Educational Technology and Interoperability. It is well-known that there is a lot of activity in the UK regarding innovation in Technology Enhanced Learning and I could testify that participating in some of the interesting discussions that took place during the conference.

Because of the European Award in CSCL with which I was co-honored within the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence, I was invited to the Kaleidoscope Symposium in Berlin. It was really intensive and interesting (with demos, presentations, discussions, etc.) and there were more than 260 people from 35 different countries. Berlin also provided me with the opportunity to meet people from Valladolid, which made me happy during these days.

BTW, the photo that is now in the header shows a view of “Serra de Cabrera” (in Catalonia), where I also spent one of last weekends…

Yesterday it was published in the Jounal of Universal Computer Science a paper I wrote with colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen, University Carlos III of Madrid, University of Valladolid and Open University of the Netherlands:
Hernández Leo, D., Harrer, A., Dodero, J.M., Asensio Pérez, J.I., Burgos, D. A Framework for the Conceptualization of Approaches to “Create-by-Reuse” of Learning Design Solutions Journal of Universal Computer Science 13(7):991-1001, 2007.

Abstract: IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) is an interoperable and standardized language that enables the computational representation of Units of Learning (UoLs). However, its adoption and extensive use in real practice largely depends on the extent to which teachers can design and author their own UoLs according to the requirements of their educational situations. Many of the proposed design processes for facilitating the creation of UoLs are based on the reuse of complete or non-complete learning design solutions at different levels of granularity. This paper introduces a comparison framework that conceptually analyzes and classifies reusable learning design solutions and processes that drive the creation of ready-to-run UoLs. The framework provides a comprehensible representation of such processes and units of reuse over two dimensions, namely granularity and completeness. It also offers a frame for discussing issues, such as the proper level of reuse, of existing and forthcoming proposals. Finally, it opens the path to other strands for future research such as providing language independence of learning designs or proposing approaches for the selection of the reusable solutions.