Open Learning, Open Technology

I had a fantastic meeting this week at the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, who were generous enough to show me some of the incredible software they’ve been developing.

I think the standout product was the fantastic Compendium, a software tool for mapping and analysing arguments. It’s free to download and I can already see incredible applications for it in user experience modelling, process analysis and team collaboration. I’m really looking forward to trying it out in some real-life situations.

They also had some brilliant remote-working tools, including FlashMeeting – probably the simplest and most effective video-conferencing tool I’ve seen – plus a couple of other tools for making people in remote locations feel part of a collaborative community. Great stuff.

The OU are also leading the way in open-sourcing their learning curriculum with the OpenLearn project. If you haven’t seen it already, please do take a look: as usual, it’s amazing what you can get for free these days. We’re looking into how we can promote their content via School of Everything now.