Derrall Garrison's Network

Future of learning: LMS or SNS? « Connectivism

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First: Most organizations currently use a learning management system (LMS) such as Moodle or Desire2Learn. These systems are content-centric. Their objective is to organize and manage content, just as Google did in early 2000. Because higher education is particularly enamored with content, an LMS is a critical service. It’s completely the wrong model, however, and this will become increasingly apparent in the next several years.
ELGG is an excellent alternative to an LMS, but most organizations are not yet willing to accept a network-centric tool as an alternative to Moodle
5 more annotations...
- ELGG is a better model of what learning will/should look like than any of the current contenders in the space. And yes, for you open-source lovers of Drupal and Wordpress, I include those software tools in the “not as good as” category.
- Joseph Thibault says:
  
  November 11, 2009 at 1:27 pm
- On another note, perhaps my biggest gripe is that we’ve provided teachers this AWESOME tool to structure courses and content that could easily be used by other teachers, but the software locks it down (or at least, it provides tools that are easily configured to “close” the content to the outside). Sure there are Moodle course exchanges, but far and wide content is closed to outsiders, difficult to procure (even if a backup is available) and not available as OER. Imagine if all the content created in Moodle were open? THAT would be a great asset to the educational community and would be ripe to transition past the “build today use for 3 years model” to more of a social approach (where the best content floats to the top of social interactions because it’s freely available).
- Beverley Oliver says:
  
  November 13, 2009 at 9:11 pm
- Here’s a thought, though…do many of the LMSs and other systems give the control of the space to the learner? (It’s a genuine question-I don’t know the answer). In the limited examples that I see and hear of, as per some of these comments, the teacher has the overriding authority to lock down or open up, so their ‘teaching paradigm’ rules. At present, at Curtin University, we are building an eportfolio system which (like others) gives control to the student–not only to post, but to form their own groups within and beyond the university and so on. This means the learner’s ‘learning paradigm’ rules, and because it’s not an LMS, the scope is not bound by enrolment in a particular course.

Carol Furchner on 2009-11-13

The comments and discussion that follow the article illuminate some of the issues - worth reading.

sandyor sandyoretr on 2009-11-15

Perhaps my best learning experience was when I was young and stole money from my sister's bank. Other than having to give the money back, all my parents did was tell me I lost their trust, and it would take a long time to build it back
Lean Muscle X

IEEE Spectrum: How Much Information Was Consumed By Americans In 2008?

What the GIIC researchers found (or better estimated), was that in 2008 the average American consumed 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes of information for 11.8 hours on an average day. In 1980, Americans averaged 7.4 hours consuming information.
"Information" is defined as flows of data delivered to people and is measured in the bytes, words, and hours of consumer information. Video sources (moving pictures) dominate bytes of information (television mostly), with radio not that far behind.

However, the study notes that, "computers have had major effects on some aspects of information consumption. In the past, information consumption was overwhelmingly passive, with telephone being the only interactive medium. Thanks to computers, a full third of words and more than half of bytes are now received interactively. Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet."

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Open isn’t so open anymore « Connectivism

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At our current pace, openness will soon be indistinguishable from utility and monetization. While we often hear criticism of Stallman’s inflexibility, he has done more to advance openness by not accommodating than he could have possibly done by assuming a moderate or even commercial stance.
In education, open source is taking a back seat. Educators are using tools like Ning, Blogger, Facebook, and SecondLife, with little or no consideration to ideological openness. Pragmatics reign.
3 more annotations...
- lmost every popular software/technology developed during this time is not open source: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, Kindle, etc. The only tools that readily come to mind are Wordpress, and to a lessor degree, Drupal.
- For Google, openness is a lever of competition, not a principle to be pursued in its own right. If, and when, a different basis for competition is discovered, openness will take a back seat. The goal, after all, is profit.
- Openness should mean something. It should be driven by ideology, rather than convenience. As a foundational principle in education, openness should be discussed, critiqued, encouraged, and aggressively preserved. Or perhaps, openness can best be conceived as the cloth on which the patterns of education are stitched.

elearnspace. everything elearning.

Shared by Miguel guhlin, Miguel guhlin added annotation, like and 10 saves total

Developing Open
Source Content (DOSC) is being formed as a means to foster required changes
in education. The DOSC concept is captured by two statements of learning
objects/content: open access, continual improvement.
1 more annotations...
- If educators had
  access to wide variety of learning objects, a community that had skill
  sets to repurpose their content in a variety ways (this is where DOSC
  templates, models, guidelines become important), it is conceivable that
  the adoption and use of elearning would be greatly enhanced (as well as
  the growth of the field (e.g. biology, chemistry, accounting) itself).

Writers | WritersCafe.org | The Online Writing Community

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elearnspace. everything elearning.

Shared by Miguel guhlin, Miguel guhlin added annotation, like and 7 saves total

The
transition from open to proprietary software and the subsequent evisceration
of university programming departments angered Stallman. The very culture
of innovation driving his work was disappearing.

"'I
was faced with a choice. One: join the proprietary software world, sign
the nondisclosure agreements and promise not to help my fellow hackers.
Two: leave the computer field altogether. Or three, look for a way that
a programmer could do something for the good. I asked myself, was there
a program or programs I could write, so as to make a community possible
again?'" (6)
3 more annotations...
- "The fundamental
  difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways
  of looking at the world. For the Open Source movement, the issue of
  whether software should be open source is a practical question, not
  an ethical one. As one person put it, ``Open source is a development
  methodology; free software is a social movement.'' For the Open Source
  movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software
  movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is
  the solution." (13)
- Open
  Source is developed in groups with high levels of contact between software
  users and developers. Users report bugs, request features, and provide
  solutions throughout the development process. The process is very transparent
  - a blurring of software creator and user. Free Software, on the other
  hand, is generally developed by smaller groups of highly skilled programmers
  (which prompted Raymond to classify the Free Software development model
  as cathedrals "carefully crafted by individual wizards", and
  Open Source as a "great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and
  approaches").
- This open/proprietary debate is spilling over into all
  areas of the digital world. RIAA is requesting greater restrictions to
  digital content use, Microsoft is creating software that has increased
  limitations for users (and greater control for the software creators),
  etc.
  
  The debate has been
  incorrectly labeled as an issue of intellectual property and theft (though
  this component certainly exists). The real debate is on a level that expresses
  views of how society is to be organized, how power is to be distributed,
  which types of resources should be free (not in a monetary sense), what
  are the obligations of content creators to users, and what are users options
  to build on, improve, and incorporate content developed by others.

Free eBooks: Great Books on Your PC, iPhone & Kindle | Open Culture

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Official Google Blog: Browser Size: a tool to see how others view your website

Shared by Wesley Fryer, like and 3 saves total

iNumbr - Virtual Numbers - Manage Your Privacy - index

"Talk without sharing your real number. Get a virtual phone number that will forward calls to any phone.

iNumbr makes it simple to control who can call you and when. "

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Fair Use Evaluator

"What this tool can do for you:

* Help you better understand how to determine the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code.
* Collect, organize & archive the information you might need to support a fair use evaluation.
* Provide you with a time-stamped, PDF document for your records [example], which could prove valuable, should you ever be asked by a copyright holder to provide your fair use evaluation and the data you used to support it. [why is this important?]
* Provide access to educational materials, external copyright resources, and contact information for copyright help at local & national levels."

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Items from 108 people Derrall Garrison follows

Future of learning: LMS or SNS? « Connectivism

IEEE Spectrum: How Much Information Was Consumed By Americans In 2008?

Open isn’t so open anymore « Connectivism

elearnspace. everything elearning.

Writers | WritersCafe.org | The Online Writing Community

elearnspace. everything elearning.

Free eBooks: Great Books on Your PC, iPhone & Kindle | Open Culture

Official Google Blog: Browser Size: a tool to see how others view your website

iNumbr - Virtual Numbers - Manage Your Privacy - index

Fair Use Evaluator

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