Here’s a nice informational post on the pitfalls of Blackboard as well as various Open Source and home-grown alternatives (including using blogs as an ad hoc course management system) from Kathleen Gilroy. The analogy I often make with Blackboard is to a classroom where all the seats are bolted to the floor. How the room […]
Crossed Wires: The Workflow Intitute Responds and I Apologize
I have had several really gratifying exchanges with folks at the Workflow Insititute over the last couple of days. To begin with, two days ago, I got an email from Anne Henry at the Workflow Institute responding to this post, thanking me for spreading the use of the term “workflow learning” and sending me a […]
Embanet Joins as Sakai Project Affiliate to Offer Hosting
This is big news. As far as I know, this is the first major hosting company to offer managed hosting for an Open Source LMS platform. (And Embanet is a fairly large firm, too.) I was just today talking with some folks at a small university who probably wouldn’t be able to consider using an […]
Parallel Play Grows Up, Part II
Well, the conversation continues, with an interesting twist. This time, one blogger has explicitly responded to a request for his input from another blogger. The semantics here are interesting, since the original blogger (Dave Hyatt) didn’t directly ask for comment. Instead, what he wrote was I’ll be eagerly awaiting the responses of both Tim and […]
Open Source, Cross-Platform Groove for Academia?
It looks like Penn State is modifying the LimeWire code base to create file sharing with digital rights management (DRM) and authentication built in. They will also add the ability to tie into specific university data repositories as well as adding collaboration tools. Sounds like Groove to me. The project, LionShare, will be ready in […]
Open Pedagogy
Carnegie Mellon (apparently sponsored by HP) has created an interesting twist on the MIT “open courseware” (OCW) model. I find the Open Learning Initiative to be interesting for several reasons: They are giving away not just content but also pedagogical models, which include “cognitive tutors,” “virtual laboratories,” group experiments, and simulations. They have focused on […]
KM as Tracks in the Mud
When I was a tourguide at Rutgers (part of my undergrad experience), I learned an interesting (though possibly apocryphal) story about how the sidewalks were planned on the Livingston College campus. Apparently, the university deliberately refrained from putting down any sidewalks for the first several years. (For those who don’t know Livingston College, there are […]