XtLearn is a bookmarking system that can be used to create visually interesting links which can then be embedded into your VLE, website or shared via links on Twitter or Facebook.

I was introduced to the software a few weeks ago and could immediately see the benefits for my institution and their students. Through focus groups for another project that I am working on all of the students had highlighted a preference for visually interesting and colourful content. Traditionally the links on our Moodle pages were presented as lists in folders so weren’t very attractive to look at therefore I have been using this software to update our existing Moodle to make our pages more user friendly by adding pictures, animations and descriptions to the bookmark collections.

Below is an example collection created by XtLearn on the film ‘The Artist’. They have used the page to not only store bookmarks but they have used the learner description box to share a task with the students in which they need to use the web links to answer it.

Question

‘The Artist was hugely successful and won many awards. But what made it such a hit? Examine the resources in this collection to see how the film builds on and pays homage to the silent movie era.‘

The Artist – http://www.xtlearn.net/C/402

The Barnsley College LTU team have used the software to add a page to their Moodle site which links to all of the other websites that the college runs. As you can see the page looks really professional and visually appealing and an added bonus is that by using XtLearn it doesn’t take long to create content like this.

Barnsley College websites

Below are a few ideas that I have for how XtLearn can be used with your classes:

• Visually enhance the links already contained on your moodle pages
• A tutor could post a question in the learner description box, the students need to read the information in your links to answer it
• Students could create their own account to collect evidence for a project, sharing the collection via their class Moodle or Facebook pages, embed the collection into their blog or simply share a link to their page with you by emailing it’s URL.
• The collections can be shared between tutors and institutions in order to collaborate and reduce work load

If you’d like to try the software out for yourself the basic package is free and can be used to create all of the examples above. The website is extremely user friendly and contains a range of text and video based help guides.