In the dynamic landscape of education and training, the pursuit of effective and accessible learning methods has led to the emergence of innovative educational technology tools that break down traditional barriers such as interactive whiteboards. Have you ever created interactive and engaging lesson plans through your interactive whiteboard software? Have you then gone to share those lesson plans with colleagues or tried to use it on another digital whiteboarding platform and couldn’t? Extremely frustrating, right? Well, fret no more! The interactive whiteboard educational landscape is undergoing a transformation with the arrival of the Open Learning Format (OLF).
To address the challenges of emerging technology, navigating diverse hardware, learning platforms, and file types, ViewSonic developed the advanced and user-friendly Open Learning Format (OLF). This innovative file format is poised to become the game-changer for educators, offering a universally accessible and dynamic way to create and share engaging learning experiences. But what exactly is OLF, and how can it benefit you?
Keep reading as we explore what exactly OLF is, the benefits of OLF, and it’s impact on the future of education!
What is Open Learning Format (OLF)?
Open Learning Format (OLF) is an easy-to-integrate, device-agnostic digital whiteboarding solution that enables teachers to use legacy Interactive Whiteboard content more dynamically and engagingly. OLF is a digital whiteboarding format file that works on any device or software and supports the latest media on an infinite canvas. With OLF, you can seamlessly import videos, images, and virtual reality files onto an infinite canvas with multiple page and layer support.
OLF was created by ViewSonic as a path-forward in the interactive whiteboard world. Other file formats are now either too old or not flexible enough for today’s modern educator. Challenges educators face today with existing whiteboard file formats include:
- Whiteboard files are device specific: With proprietary file formats, schools are either locked into using the same devices across their network or using outdated file types.
- Existing formats have limited integrations: Each existing format has built-in limits based on the device it supports or when it was created. Modern media has outpaced current options.
- What we have can’t keep up with the times: The only truly open file format for digital whiteboards is no longer being maintained. All other file types are tied to the development of their devices.
The Benefits of OLF
The possibilities are endless when it comes to what you can do with OLF – it will set a new standard for what is expected of interactive whiteboards for education. OLF empowers media-rich, engaging learning experiences across Windows, Android, and Mac (from M1 processor and later) devices and web browsers. This cross-platform compatibility allows educators and students to view, create, edit, and share OLF files on their preferred devices, making OLF an easy-to-adopt solution that encourages seamless collaboration.
With technology becoming increasingly crucial in schools, addressing educators’ needs becomes paramount. Teachers need EdTech solutions that are quick to adopt and compatible with their existing materials. IT admins require flexible options that seamlessly integrate with various devices, operating systems, and network configurations. Additionally, school administrators seek reliable, user-friendly EdTech solutions that can quickly scale to meet their ever-evolving needs. Purpose-built to address these users’ needs, OLF delivers various benefits for schools.
1. Enhanced Learning Experiences
Interactive learning platforms offer digital whiteboards, virtual classrooms, discussion boards, interactive assessments, and other tools to meet educational needs. These features evolve lessons beyond static content delivery, creating opportunities for personalized learning that nurtures the 21st-century skills of collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.
With an infinite canvas, multimedia support, intuitive zoom, annotation, page, and layer functions, OLF empowers dynamic, engaging, and collaborative educational experiences. Teachers can progress through lessons, delving deeper into content based on their students’ comprehension. In contrast, students can interact, sketch and note-take on the canvas. This non-linear learning contrasts against the rigid structure of outdated file formats, such as slideshow presentations.
Unlike traditional file formats, with OLF adding annotations or multimedia to presentations during the lesson is easy, and sharing the file is seamless as there are no device and/or platform compatibility issues.
2. Easy to Adopt and Scale
Interactive learning platform migration is often a big headache for everyone involved. Teachers face a learning curve and compatibility issues with their existing teaching materials. At the same time, IT admins must provide training, technical support and handle file conversion requests following the migration. Meanwhile, school admins must manage the careful planning, implementation, and associated costs of an interactive learning platform migration. Despite the expenses – such as subscriptions, hardware upgrades, software additions, and ongoing maintenance – keeping up to date with technology is essential to meet desired educational outcomes.
OLF’s device-agnostic nature addresses these challenges, providing an easy-to-adopt and scalable alternative to traditional digital whiteboarding formats. It seamlessly integrates into teachers’ workflows, reducing the learning curve and minimizing disruptions and costs. With OLF, teachers can effortlessly import multimedia formats – like .jpg, .mp3, .pdf, or .ppt – and convert legacy digital whiteboard files, enabling them to use their existing teaching materials more dynamically and engagingly. This streamlined process also benefits IT admins, as it reduces compatibility issues and the need for extensive troubleshooting, file conversion, and training requests typically associated with interactive learning platform migration.
What’s more, with ViewSonic’s OLF conversion, you can conveniently upgrade .Flipchart (Promethean), .Notebook (SMART) and .ENB (ViewBoard 2.1/EasiNote 3) digital whiteboard files to OLF for free!
3. Strengthens the Educating Team
Effortless to share and edit, the school-wide adoption of OLF offers new possibilities for teacher collaboration, fostering openness and sharing of lesson plans, presentations, quizzes, games, and more among teachers and schools. This benefits school admins in the knowledge that teachers are creating an evergreen bank of accurate, high-quality educational content that delivers the desired learning outcomes to students.
OLF helps create impactful learning experiences that drive student engagement and understanding by facilitating an open flow of resources and peer review. Online teaching communities expand this information flow even further. With the ViewSonic Educator Community, teachers can access and remix a wealth of community-generated and purchasable OLF learning materials. Teachers can also use ViewSonic Originals, which is an extensive interactive media collection made in OLF for digital whiteboards.
The Impact of OLF on the Future of Education
The nature of OLF’s open file format will set the standard for interactive lessons on all devices. While recent EdTech developments – like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality – are exciting, implementing presents challenges for teachers, IT admins, school administrators, and students. Therefore, future-proofing interactive learning platforms is vital to meet evolving educational needs.
OLF is an extensible file format that works on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and web. OLF will be a new standard for digital whiteboarding software. Non-linear teaching with infinite canvas will become the standard instead of a special feature – OLF will always support the ability to follow lessons of any size. OLF will also fully supports all existing media file types and objects. What’s more, it will be future-proofed against media advances in AR, VR, MR, and beyond
The OLF integration with UNIVERSE by ViewSonic demonstrates how a simple file format can empower new teaching formats. Teachers can create and import .OLF files on digital whiteboards around the 3D environment within this virtual platform. These files can be saved to the cloud, providing students with an enhanced distance learning experience.
Summing It All Up
ViewSonic’s Open Learning Format (OLF) presents a compelling vision for the future of education. By breaking down barriers between platforms and fostering collaboration, OLF empowers educators to create engaging and accessible learning experiences for all students.
As the world continues to embrace digital learning and interactive whiteboards, OLF offers a standardized and interoperable solution, paving the way for seamless content creation and sharing. This, in turn, fosters collaboration among educators, allowing them to leverage each other’s expertise and build upon a rich repository of educational resources. By embracing this innovative format, educators can become active participants in shaping the future of learning, ensuring that all students have the opportunity to thrive in an ever-evolving world.
We encourage you to explore the possibilities of OLF! As an Elite ViewSonic partner, we’re happy to help you – whether you’re looking to make the most of this new standard for interactive whiteboard software, or if you want to learn more about how ViewSonic’s interactive whiteboards and myViewBoard software offering, let us know! From traditional interactive whiteboards to Google EDLA-certified interactive whiteboards with direct access to the Google Playstore, we’ve got you covered! Give us a call today at (800) 727-6383, send us an email at info@parmetech.com or connect with us online to get the conversation started!
