Networking Now

you prob'ly know about the NW conference here in NSW .. Michael Coghlan is keeping an audio blog inside of Learning Times .. you have to subscribe but it's great to hear voices online in good time - conveying the excitement of the event.

Definite highlight on the first day was the session on how the "AQTF can be fun" - using games to make a DULL subject enjoyable. (aqtf = australian qualifications training framework - ew!)

Review of ESL Sites

Don't know how many people know about this report - in 2002, the LearnScope team at Kangan Batman TAFE put together a thorough and very useful review of many online ESL resources. Get your copy Now! (whoops - sorry if you tried that link, doesn't seem to be working - i'll try & find another access point.)

Using other people's Scripts

okay, i've been talking mostly about the big open source systems and the learning management platforms, such as GNU/Linux and Moodle, but honestly i think the best feature of the open source community is the astonishingly huge range of basic scripts that are available.

For a quick overview, take a look at hotscripts.com - i'm linking to the PHP section, because PHP is the language i've been studying, but there are many other programming languages to choose from.

You'll get a sense of the huge range of program types available - these categories all represent small functions you can plug into your site. If you're a web designer, building sites for online learning, you'll see many functions that could be useful to online learning in some way. (Or maybe you're an online project manager, with a web programmer on your design team ..)

Blog (0) Calculators (20) Calendars (73) Chat Scripts (132) Communication Tools (39) Contests and Awards (2) Discussion Boards (171) Education (38) FAQ and Knowledgebase (51)

Form Processors (175) Games and Entertainment (119) Graphs and Charts (34) Groupware Tools (74) Guestbooks (268) Image Galleries (231) Interactive Stories (5) Networking Tools (85) News Publishing (253)

Polls and Voting (114) Portal Systems (98) Postcards (24) Reviews and Ratings (30) Search Engines (68) Site Mapping (3) Site Navigation (51) Site Recommendation (58) Tests and Quizzes (29)

Not all the scripts are open source - i mean GPL (GNU Public License) ie free - in fact many are commercial scripts. But you'll find next to each listing, the type of license involved - whether it's GPL, freeware, trialware, commercial etc.

hotscripts.com !!