Xerte Online Toolkits Webinar: Creating E-Learning Resources

Xerte Online Toolkits is an easy-to-use tool developed by the University of Nottingham, UK, which helps non-technical staff to create accessible, multimedia e-learning materials (including, for example, web guides, 'how to' guides, demonstration materials, as well as more traditional e-learning materials for teaching purposes). 

Once you have installed Xerte Online Toolkits on your server, all objects created in Xerte Online Toolkits are given a stable and unique URL. The software automatically builds into all objects the option for users to change the colour of the background, the size and type of text, the ability to navigate entirely by keyboard, and text-to-speech (currently only when viewed in Internet Explorer) to read aloud the object's contents. 

Originally Xerte was a desktop software for developers, but with the help of JISC TechDis the easy-to-use templates in Xerte Online Toolkits are designed for non-technical staff to use easily.

The EIFL-FOSS Library Advocacy Resource is an object built in Xerte Online Toolkits, so you can test out some of the accessibility features by viewing that resource, and also check out some of the different ways information can be presented. This object uses only 8 of the 65 posible page templates, so it does not display well the full possibilities of Xerte Online Toolkits. To see an object that displays many of the potential page types, view this promotional object from the University of Nottingham.

For further information about Xerte Online Toolkits see http://www.eifl.net/xerte-online-toolkits-creating-e-learning-resource

Webinar August 2012

EIFL-FOSS held a webinar on August 16th 2012 on Xerte Online Toolkits. The webinar focussed on:

• Getting started with Xerte Online Toolkits
• Creating your first object
• Adding pages to your object
• Incorporating multimedia
• 'Hidden' features such as Narration
• Other FOSS tools that help you get the best from Xerte 

You can access the recording of the session here (if your connection is too intermittent to view the recording online, we can provide it to you as a Zip file to download and view offline - just contact simon.ball [at] eifl.net)

You can download the slides from the presentation here.

Further Resources

http://bit.ly/LjkhHx - a range of step-by-step ‘Getting Started’ guides

www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/xertefriday - monthly free webinars demonstrating different uses of Xerte (no sign-up needed, next: Sept 28th)

http://bit.ly/er4tkp - mail list for support and discussion of good practice using Xerte

Files / Images: 

advocacyresource.jpg