Landing : Athabascau University

Learning Locker

http://www.learninglocker.net/

Very interesting new development, not quite finished yet but showing great promise - a simple means to aggregate content from your learning journey, supporting open standards. This is not so much a personal learning environment as a bit of glue to hold it together. The team putting it together have some great credentials, including one of the co-founders of Elgg (used here on the Landing) and the creator of the Curatr social learning platform.

Currently it appears that its main open standard is SCORM's new TinCan API, but there are bigger plans afoot. I think that this kind of small, powerful service that disaggregates learning journeys from monolithic systems (including those such as the Landing, Moodle, MOOCs and Blackboard-based systems) is going to be a vital disruptive component in enabling richer, more integrated learning in the 21st Century. 

This is the description of the tool from the site itself:

"It's never been easier to be a self-directed learner. Whether you're in school or at work, you're always learning. And it's not just courses that teach. The websites you visit, the blogs you write, the job you do; it's all activity that contributes to your personal growth.

Right now you're letting the data all this activity creates slip through your fingers. You could be taking control of your learning; storing your experience, making sense of what you do and showing off what you know.

Learning Locker helps you to aggregate and use your learning data in an environment that you control. You can use this data to help quantify your abilities, to help you reach personal targets and to let others share in what you do.

It's time to take your data out of the hands of archaic learning management systems that you can't reach. We use new technologies, like the xAPI, to help you take control of your learning. It's your data. Own it."

Comments

  • James Ronholm June 17, 2013 - 1:16pm

    Delicious irony: "... archaic learning management systems ..."

    We can't even get our professors to stop using photocopied transparencies on overhead projectors!

    (Edit: "our professors" means where I work - it wasn't aimed at AU. I'm not sure what classroom experiences are like at AU, but I suspect the large distance learning components probably drive technology adoption)

    More links:

    http://www.ht2.co.uk/ben/?p=478

    http://www.downes.ca/post/60529