At RLO-CETL we actively pursue external funding for projects that are aligned with our aims and we welcome collaborative approaches with other like-minded groups both here and abroad. There are many opportunities to attract external funding through productive partnerships as well as reuse of our valuable collections. We currently working (or have recently worked) on these exciting related projects:

CONTSENS
Funding for the CONTSENS project, Using wireless technologies for context sensitive education and training, has been approved by the Leonardo Lifelong Learning Programme. The 2 year project involves a European-wide consortium headed by Ericsson Education Ireland, with Giunti Labs, ECLO, Plovdiv University and Corvinno. John Cook leads the London Met team that also includes Claire Bradley, Richard Haynes and Carl Smith.

London Pedagogical Planner
The London Pedagogical Planner, funded by JISC as part of the Design for Learning programme, from May 2006 to February 2008. The project is led by Professor Diana Laurillard at the London Knowledge Lab, and includes London Met's LTRI as a partner. The pedagogy planning tool is being developed in collaboration with educational practitioners who define their requirements for an online tool to support their current learning design practice. It focuses on the critical aspects of learning designs, and makes the pedagogical design explicit, capturing it for testing, redesign, reuse and adaptation by the originator, or by others. One aspect of this project concerns the academic planning processes through which learning objects may be incorporated and used in teaching. LPP project website: http://www.wle.org.uk/d4l/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=13

QIA JISC Collections project
The QIA JISC Collections is a JISC funded project (September 2007 – March 2008). The project involves developing multimedia learning objects that incorporate material from JISC digitized collections. These online collections include Newsfilm Online [http://newsfilm.bufvc.ac.uk/ ] and Archival Sound Recording [http://sounds.bl.uk/ ]. The completed Learning objects from the project will be mounted on the Quality Innovation Agency Excellence Gateway [http://excellence.qia.org.uk/ ] by the end of March 2008. The project is led by Kevin Burden (University of Hull). Our involvement is in supporting FE lecturers in using GLO authoring tool to develop learning objects.

Sharing the LOAD – Learning Objectives, Activities and Designs
An 18 month JISC-funded Design for Learning Project (May 2006 – Oct 2007) investigating the learning designs implicit within learning objects and developing new major GLO tools. An important development is the Learning Object Attribute Metric (LOAM) tool that analyses the pedagogical attributes of learning objects mapped to IMS LD. Principal investigator: Dawn Leeder, Cambridge.
Project website: http://www.ucel.ac.uk/load/

Widening Participation, Promoting Science (WIPPS)
A 6 month project commencing October 2007 in collaboration with the College of West Anglia and the Widening Participation Team at the University of Cambridge. The project involves building a flexible resource of short video clips, featuring interviews with scientists talking about their work and showing viewers eye-catching images that bring their research alive. The clips will be available on a specially-created website, will be used in presentations to schools and other groups, and will be downloadable on to mobile phones and other hand-held devices. The material will be aimed at audiences aged 14 and upwards. Press release: http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2007062804