e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Michael Feldstein

  • Firefox as an e-Learning Tool

    Lately I find myself experimenting with lots of different Firefox extensions and thinking about the browser itself as a learning environment. The number of interesting ways that you can extend the platform is just staggering. When you add to that the fact that Firefox is cross-platform and that you can now run it off a USB key drive, it starts to look more and more to me like a core piece of e-Learning technology. Without even getting into the interesting astand-alone applications built on top of the Firefox technology platform, e.g., eXe or Flock, I thought it might be useful to list a small handful of extensions that have applications in teaching and learning contexts. Feel free to add your favorites to the list. (more…)

  • D'Arcy Lays it Down on ePortfolios

    D’Arcy has a very useful wiki page up outlining all the various dimensions of the huge, amorphous blog sometimes known as “ePortfolios.” This is why there will never be just one class of ePortfolio apps .

  • Speaking at AACE Ed-Media Next Month

    I’ll be participating in the Association for Advancement of Computing in Education‘s Ed-Media 2006 Conference on James Dalziel‘s panel as part of the Learning Management Systems Symposium. Here’s the description of the panel:

    It only took a decade for the LMS to go from being a good idea to being a software system used by most universities. But does the LMS have a certain future? Growing challenges may soon disrupt the existing marketplace � these include:

    • Frustration among many leading LMS users with the slow pace of pedagogical innovation by LMS vendors;
    • Ongoing difficulties in integrating other products into LMS platforms;
    • The rise of other major learning technologies such as Repositories, Learning Content Management systems, Assessment systems, Virtual Classrooms and Learning Design systems;
    • New approaches to building software based on a “Service Oriented Architecture/Approach” (SOA); and
    • The increasing impact of open source software, and open standards.

    Perhaps the greatest challenge may arise from a fundamental shift away from LMSs as the central “platform” for learning. An alternative vision for Learning Platforms is growing around the concept of an overarching portal system that integrates various specialist learning systems (such as repositories, learning design, etc) into a composite learning systems framework (sometimes called a Learning Management Operating System � LMOS). This session will explore current and future challenges for LMSs, how LMSs may respond, and alternative visions for Learning Platforms.

    I’ll be able to post the transcript of my paper after the proceedings are published.

  • BRR Report Published

    I am pleased to announce that our report on BRR and LMSs for the Observatory on Borderless higher education has been published. Here’s the description:

    Apples to Apples: Guidelines for Comparative Evaluation of Proprietary and Open Educational Technology Systems
    Ken Udas and Michael Feldstein, SUNY Learning Network at the State University of New York, USA – May 2006

    Selecting a learning management technology has increasingly become a mission critical and strategic decision for higher education institutions. As technology supported and online learning has become more prevalent and learning management technologies more important institutional features, the selection environment has become increasingly complex. This paper presents a comparative model developed specifically for evaluating learning management software for adoption decisions in which open source software (OSS) and proprietary options are under consideration in higher education. It is intended to support senior academic administrators and policy makers who are responsible for or influence the software evaluation and selection process by proposing a methodology that accounts for organisational context and software system characteristics, while also providing the advantage of cross-organisational comparison.

    Unfortunately, it is only accessible via a paid subscription. However, they do offer a free trial that I assume would allow you access to this report plus other valuable resources published by the Observatory. (And if you do either get the free trial or subscribe, please do Ken and me a favor and let them know that it was our report that attracted your attention. Thanks.)

  • Wikis to Go

    Speaking of Murugan, he has a great post up about making wikis work offline and points to the nice Wiki2Go tool. At SLN, we think having offline capabilities are valuable for faculty (and, personally, I think they are at least as valuable for students as well). As Murugan points out, there is some common ground with the road warrior. I think we have to assume that higher ed learners are road warriors, in a way. Maybe that road is between work and home, but the point is that they are learning online because they are on the move and need to take their courses with them.

  • A Conversation About BRR and LMSs

    I’ve been meaning to write this up for a couple of weeks now. Ken Udas and I recently had a great conversation with folks from OpenBRR and Edutools/WCET about creating a community and framework to evaluate both Open Source and proprietary LMSs, drawing on the knowledge and resources of both OpenBRR and Edutools. In attendance were Tony Wasserman from Carnegie Mellon West, Murugan Pal of SpikeSource, Scott Leslie of BCcampus (and EdTechPost fame), Russell Poulin of WCET, and Bruce Landon of Douglass College (and LandOnline fame). What follows are some notes from the conversation.

    (more…)

  • If They Build It, Will We Come?

    Cole Camplese has a great post about FaceBook:

    FaceBook is a social networking service that about 85% of the college student population uses. A quick survey of my class this semester showed me that 44 out of 45 students were in the FB. It is amazing how much time and energy students give to their entries and it shows me that with the right mix there are things we can do to design killer experiences:

    • One thing is to make it easy to connect to others. LMS tools do not do this. They are positioned as a teaching tool first and only — that is shame as I would love if it my students spent some real time inside our learning spaces.
    • Make features they want — right now our CMS/LMS has dropboxes, messageboards, quizzes and all the things I want as a teacher but nothing for them. There isn’t a place to connect with others outside of email, you can’t leave quick messages for anyone, and the chat stuff is just so old school.

    And yet, we can’t seem to get ePortfolios off the ground. Clearly, we’re starting from the wrong end of things. Let the students show us how they use online spaces to present themselves, and let us go to them and teach them how to harness what they are already doing for purposes like reflection and job hunting. Applications like FaceBook and MySpace are pretty easy to build these days; we shouldn’t have to invest big bucks into designing ePortfolio apps. They already exist. From the software perspective, what we mainly need is a tool that makes it harder for students to carelessly or accidentally throw out the stuff they did for class that may be important in ways they’re not thinking about yet. We need that Box-‘O-Stuff, where they save their first assignment drafts and where it becomes natural and automagic to keep all subsequent drafts. Then we need easy hooks so they can suck that content out of their boxes and post it on whatever MySpace-like application (whether integral to the LMS or a third-party service) suits their specific portfolio purposes. The main focus then becomes on teaching them what to put in the portfolio and why, rather than on how to build the widgets.

    But are we humble enough to approach it this way?