Interactive Logbook

The existing commercial Personal Information Management (PIM) tools fail learning in both design and cost. Whilst designed to support the world of office workers, they do not best support specific learning activities such as Personal Development Planning, portfolio recording, assessment, and the somewhat different timetabling requirements of learners.

The back-end systems that underpin the collaborative aspects of these tools are cost-prohibitive and do not operate to fully open standards that would allow for alternative replacements. Furthermore, there is little peer to peer support, making these tools highly dependent on the back-end systems. These commercially-available PIMs often integrate well with other productivity suites from the same software house, but not from external suppliers. Integration with VLEs, portals and other online systems is currently poor.

The aim of the Interactive Logbook is to offer a .best of both worlds. approach, providing a common interface through which learners may access the full range of client and server side tools available to them.

Links:

The project is funded by JISC in conjunction with CETIS and the project home page can be found at: http://www.il.bham.ac.uk

The SourceForge location for the project is here.