I’ve been getting a bit obsessed recently about the importance of annotation functionality, as a number of my long-suffering colleagues will testify. Here’s my logic: iPads and other ebook readers will increasingly replace paper Some learners, particularly children, will make the transition away from paper now very quickly and be happy to study considerable amounts […]
Last week I was sent a message on Twitter from a strange new follower: my beard. Visiting its home page on Twitter I discovered someone had set up an account using my picture and linking to my blog. Initially I took this in a light hearted manner and even sent a jokey message to it […]
Much of the criticism levelled at virtual learning environments / learning management systems relates to the control of the environment by the institution rather than the learner. The individual student has minimal ability to upload their own content or to set up collaborative tools unless this has been pre-ordained by the institution. The argument goes […]
The Association for Learning Technology’s annual conference currently underway in Manchester included a well-hyped session called “The VLE is Dead”. The debate included a number of well-rehearsed viewpoints on both sides of the divide between those who would like to do away with institutional learning systems and those who see them as essential (if perhaps […]
In the heart of downtown post-industrial Manchester, currently basking in sweltering Mediterranean temperatures, Blackboard is hosting its European Conference, BbWorld Europe ‘08. Michael Feldstein has described the attack on Blackboard’s market share from Moodle. Whether this has anything to do with the negative publicity surrounding Blackboard’s patents, reported on extensively by Stephen Downes and Jim […]
At the Oxford Shock of the Old Conference: I’ve just listened to a thought provoking talk by Ian Bell, Records Manager and Information Compliance Officer at the University of Dundee. It would be fun to get Ian in the same room as people like Martin Weller, who’s sold his soul to Google, and Tony Hirst, […]
I suspect Brian Kelly took great pleasure in attempting to pitch Tony Hirst against me in a session at the JISC CETIS Conference yesterday (photo: Mark Power). Brian had spotted that I had been promoting the benefits of institutional VLEs while Tony is pushing the boundaries in the use of Web 2.0 software for learning… […]
Another attempt to inject some reality into the VLEs v Small Pieces debate after expressing my reservations about the latter in The VLE is Dead. Long Live the VLE. This message was on the slideshare site half an hour ago. Now afficionados of small pieces will argue that services are improving all the time and […]
Martin Weller blogs today that the VLE/LMS is dead. He states some of the pros and cons of VLEs but he feels ultimately that there will be a shift away from VLEs to “loosely coupled, freely available third party systems”. The model Martin describes of “loosely coupled teaching” was tried by Canadian schoolteacher Clarence Fisher […]
One of the questions which crops up regularly at the OU is why we’re enhancing tools such as blogs and wikis within Moodle when there are better ones out there on the Internet which we could give access to instead. Why don’t we just provide WordPress and MediaWiki which have a lot more features than […]