Week 8 - Learning Objects

Learning Objects:

"Modular digital resources, uniquely identified and metatagged, that can be used to support learning".

- Durable (long term maintenance)
- Interoperable/Portable (separation of content and rendering)
- Reusable (separation of object and learning objective)
- Accessible (discovery, metadata)

I found an interesting collaboration of articles that are proving useful:

http://reusability.org/read/#3

When I briefed through them I chose to focus on what learning objects were and where they originated because I didn't quite grasp that idea in class.

"Rather than being a single definable object, it is a complex and multi-faceted emerging technological construct—one piece of a larger technological puzzle. The general outlines of the puzzle piece are taking shape concurrently in the several disciplines from which the practices of instructional technology are derived—computer science, information technology, intelligent tutoring systems, and instructional psychology" (Richards 1)

So.... if I'm understand this correctly, learning objects are tools that build on already existent ideas or projects to further explain, personalize and enhance the ideas that they teach.

We talked about XML in class... so if I'm understanding this correctly, XML is the learning object that was built from HTML (and previous languages) and it enhances mark up languages because we can do more things with it.... we can make tags for documents that are specific to that topic (like business or math etc.). These new tags make it easier to understand topic specific documents because of its ability to be universally used... something that people all over the world can understand despite their oral and written language barriers.

Am I on the right path with this?