VLE
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The VLE/LMS is dead
(but we’ll probably take five years to realise it). Scott Leslie has coined the term Loosely coupled teaching, for the assembly of a number of different, third party apps to do your teaching with. This differs from a PLE in that it is still the educator who provides the tools, they just bypass the institutional systems. Scott’s post set me thinking and I had something of an epiphany (okay, I know I’m slow) – whereas I have been using the odd application you could completely set up your course outside of the institution. What might you want to use? For my course I could use the following: For content and…
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Software sedimentation
I came across this term from Jaron Lanier (in an essay in the book The Next Fifty Years). He writes: "Software sedimentation is a process whereby not only protocols, but the ideas embedded in them become mandatory. An example is the idea of the file…. Files are now taught to students as a fact of life as fundamental as a photon, even though they are a human invention." I think there is truth in this, and I like the mental image of sediment building up within the concepts built in to software and technology. To expand the idea out somewhat, the same might be true of many educational practices. The…
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Democrats and Revolutionaries (in a technological sense)
Due to popular demand (okay, Scott Leslie asked me to expand on it in a comment), I thought I’d say some more about the notion of democrats and revolutionaries with regards to VLEs. It’s set out in chapter 2 of my VLE book, but here’s a summary. I borrowed the idea of technology following a normal distribution curve as it moves in to the mainstream from Wolfgang Greller, (although it all comes from Rogers), particularly the idea that at a certain point institutional responses kick in, such as staff development. Either side of this institutional tipping point are two distinct groups of academics – the democrats and the revolutionaries. These…
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The centralisation/decentralisation dilemma
In my previous post I talked about future learning environments. One of the things about the ‘future’ scenario (apart from it never turning out quite how you expect it) is that it’s very decentralised. It is likely that there won’t be one VLE, but rather different flavours of one, depending on the subject area and the individual student. This begins to sound rather familiar – in fact it’s rather like the situation many universities are currently shifting away from with their VLE provision. They had a confusing array of VLEs dotted around different faculties, with each area or individual having their pet favourite and now want to consolidate on one…
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Future learning environments (the talk I never gave)
I was supposed to give a keynote at University of London this week, but I was laid up with a really bad chest infection (I blog heroically today). If anyone from there is reading this, my apologies. Below is the talk I was going to give. It was about future learning environments. The first half is familiar stuff – looking at the current state of play and setting out the succession model. The main slide is the penultimate one. Here I wanted to demonstrate all the different dimensions to a future learning environment. So I have the following elements and examples: Open content – examples are iTunesU, Openlearn and Slideshare.…
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What does the Facebook API extravaganza tell us?
I know everyone has blogged about the recent openning up of Facebook to allow lots of new applications, but hey, it’s half term and I’ve only just got around to looking at it. Tony Hirst makes the point that it’s beginning to look like a learning environment. I’ve had a play with it, looked at the widgets, updated some stuff and here are some random thoughts on what it signifies: Technology acts as a pull factor – I’ve gone back to Facebook because I wanted to see what new widgets they had (I added in the LastFM one). This demonstrates something I was talking about with the openlearn guys last…
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My book is (finally) out
With definitely more of a whimper than a bang, my book Virtual Learning Environments, was published by Routledge last week. I’d contacted them the week before and asked ‘when is it coming out?’ ‘Next week’ was the response. Anyway, it was good to receive the advance copies last week, although I made the mistake of reading it and immediately finding a second book of omissions, changes, changes of mind, etc lurking beneath the surface of this one. Perhaps I’ll write a post on things I should have covered in a few months time. The book is aimed at a range of users – anyone involved in e-learing basically. It will…
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Stringle implications
The last in this trilogy of posts… Several things occurred to me when playing with Stringle yesterday. I’ll try to elucidate them here: Course design – increasingly I feel that writing course resources is a redundant activity. I think course design will move towards creating activities around as yet unknown content. For instance, we added in a feed for any content that is tagged elearning and evolution. Now it’s a reasonable bet that this will contain some decent (and not so decent material). But it helps future-proof the course. I don’t think you could quite rely on such resources but the ratio of educator derived material to external resources is…
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Is which VLE even the question to ask?
I’ve been up in Inverness as part of a panel looking at UHI’s VLE strategy for the past couple of days (I write this while delayed at Edinburgh airport – not the best place to spend your Friday night). A few things about the rather intense two day process – the first was how much it mirrored the debates we had gone through at the OU. You find yourself continually oscillating between options, which demonstrates that it is a hard decision. The second issue was the tension between what is needed or good now, and what is the better long term, strategic option. The third is the manner in which…
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BB patent reexamination – all good news?
As you’ll probably have seen elsewhere, the Blackboard patent is being re-examined, the prior art raising serious concerns (never!). While this has generally met as a welcome development (it would be more worrying if it wasn’t being reexamined), a cynical part of me thinks that it may not be the victory it seems. These reexaminations can take two years, during which time the patent hangs in limbo. Perhaps this was BB’s intention all the time – it isn’t about actually getting the patent, it is a means of undermining competitors while making yourself look dominant. If you were an institution choosing a VLE now, the threat of the patent might…
