Xerte

Xerte is an online tool designed to enhance e-learning, it has been developed by the University of Nottingham adn in September 2009 won ALT's ‘Learning Technologist of the Year Team Award 2009’. together with reviews by amongst others JISC, techdis service UK and The Association for Learning Technology, however the proof will be in its use and subsequent evaluation. Is it a tool that caters for all ICT capabilities or will it ultimately be used by those with an interest or ICT specialism.
It is billed as being 'is a fully-featured e-learning development environment for creating rich interactivity'(http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/index.htm accessed 25/01/10). The software is designed for the use by teachers and educators in the production of interactive enriched resources. There is a combination of both WYSIWYG interface and a small amount of scripting, however, where it becomes accessable to many non-ICT specialists is with the Xerte Online Toolkits. This has a series of templates which, with limited training are editable giving the ability to design resources to the users specifications. It is a server based tool, meaning that it can exist either on a network server or as a standalone tool, with a series of templates and add-ons which can be selected by the user by the click of a menu.



Also on the website is an area called Xpert is an area for the sharing and re-use of materials, which can be developed and commented on by RSS feed. The real beauty of this software is that it is open source and in this climate of decreasing and limited budgets is of benefit to most educators.

Xerte is an icon based development tool that allows object based learning tools to be created and has two areas of capability. If you do not code then you can use the software to insert text, graphics, animations, sounds and video. It is delivered as an .XML document and is compatable in SCORM format for Virtual learning environments. If you code a little, you can add to the template and make the interactive resources, developing your own resources and interactivity, if you code competantly you can create sophisticated resources. By this means it shlould cater for all levels of ICT capability, however the proof will be in its' use.

The installation of the of the application is not intuitive, however the supporting instructions are clear and very helpful. One problem I have encountered is that it is unclear where the finished file is saved, which could make subsequesnt use difficult. I will investigate further. Also I will attempt to produce a publishable resource that can then be uploaded to my moodle site.

my verdict is that it is a potentially very useful tool.....Watch this space.



To evaluate the Xerte Online Toolkits go to the following link and go to Get Started

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/toolkits.htm

or alternatively watch a demonstration on
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/toolkits/play_560



Please make any comments on your experience when you have evaluated this link.