Off-line E-learning?
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Looking at the Internet Penetration Rates internet is becoming more accessible worldwide. However some regions do still face access issues (connectivity, infrastructure, …). An argument institutions use to put e-learning initiatives on hold. Much wiser is to walk on parallel tracks and provide alternative off-line strategies until internet access can be guaranteed. This blogpost is an invitation to join our list of off-line initiatives, useful in bandwidth poor contexts.
Getting access to off-line content and information
Wikimoulin : is a project which aims at distributing wikimedia knowledge to people in developing countries.
Creating and authoring content for off-line purposes
ExElearning: is a off-line content creation tool that allows you to produce entire learning objects. These learning objects can be used off-line (USB stick, CD-ROM, computer) and are SCORM compliable.
Courselab: is another easy to use e-learning authoring tool where the final output can be published on CD-ROM or USB.
Running content or programs in an off-line virtual environment
Portable Apps : is a platform that runs from your USB key with all the open source programmes that you want to use (Open Office, Gimp, Skype, …)
Poodle: is an application that allows you to run Moodle content off-line from your USB key. If you want to know more about Moodle offline solutions, download the following L&T paper.
Using mobile technologies that go beyond internet
FrontlineSMS : allows you to communicate with large groups of people through SMS
Any other suggestions you would like to add to this list?
Very interesting material, thanks Tom. One side note, mostly all the examples you’ve posted have to do with content delivery and content creation. It is expected that good e-learning also integrates lot’s of exchange between tutors and participants and also among peers I think we must not forget that the use of mailing lists and pop3 e-mail clients has proven very useful for this exchange to take place with as little online time as possible.
Anyway, there are moodle projects wich aim at producing full fledged offline versions like http://hawk.aos.ecu.edu/mobilemoodle/ or Jolongo, but these are still not stable.
Cheers!
Indeed, you are right. The reason that we did not post any fully fledged synchronisation solutions yet, is the fact that most of them are not ready and not stable yet, as you rightly indicated. I hope technology will advance on this and maybe similar projects such as http://gears.google.com/ will start to happen at the level of Learning Management Systems .. which will allow you to work off-line and synchronize all your work whenever you are on-line, including all the interesting e-learning tools that are based on communication, collaboration and networking.