Newsline from EDINA
October 2006: Volume 11, Issue 3

EDINA > News > Newsline > Newsline 11.3 > Jorum delivers valuable resources

Jorum delivers valuable resources

still frame from the video of trussing a chicken

Everything you always wanted to know about trussing a chicken, but were afraid to ask - courtesy of Jorum. Clip from resource "Chicken Preparation [SBC - X4L the Learning Bank]"

Jorum continues to build its contributor and user services. Since launch of the user service in January 2006, 239 UK Education Institutions have signed up for the user (resource discovery) service, with 1,000 users having registered. Currently on average there are approximately 700 logins per month, and to date over 1,500 downloads have been performed by the user community.

Since the contributor service launched in November 2005, 44 UK educational institutions have made a commitment to contribute and share their resources through Jorum with the wider community. Over 1,200 resources have been contributed during this period, with a further 400 to be published soon.

Jorum continues with its research and development work and has released two reports this year, one on preservation of learning materials and another on automated metadata. A further report on workflow will be released in the near future. Service development work continues on a metadata search facility (coming in mid-October) providing web site visitors with the option to discover "information" about resources in Jorum without needing to register, as well as a rich client tool for packaging resources for Jorum.

Examples of the most frequently downloaded resources include:

  1. Trussing a chicken (77 downloads). A video with text that shows how to truss a chicken. (catering)
  2. Out of darkness (55 downloads). A Flash-based learning object which puts you in the role of a fictional detective in 1930s Hollywood. (arts)
  3. Measuring the distances to stars (41 downloads). Explaining absolute and apparent magnitude. With a short Flash activity, a spreadsheet to complete and a star map linked to further information and questions. (astronomy)
  4. Letter Writing (30 downloads). Explanation of the process of responding to business letters with pointers for formal letter-writing style. (communications)
  5. Cell activity (23 downloads). An introduction to cell activity covering the basics of animal cells, plant cells, transport across boundaries and cell division. (biology)