(photo by maxinstosh of flickr)

I attended the 2-3-98 Open Discussion on Technology in Education conference last week. In many cases, Open Source is becoming just another option when evaluating software for use in education. Of course, there are still objections from some, but more and more software in compared on the solution it can provide, without regard for the license. One day of the conference was devoted to Moodle, and it was clear that Moodle was regarded as a superior solution by those that chose it. There was not any bias in choosing open source or proprietary solutions noted by those that chose Moodle. That is, they chose Moodle for the the features it provides.

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(photo by 2-3-98 Conference)

2-3-98 Conference: An Open Discussion on Technology in Education will address Open Source in Higher Education, and include a second day Moodle Moot. I'll be attending the conference June 19 & 20, 2008 as SUNY Delhi. SUNY Delhi is  using Moodle for their unversity LMS.

One of our clients, Stephen Wilmarth, from the Center for 21st. Century Skills will be giving a presentation on how they are using Moodle to conect high school students in CT and in China!

This should be a good opportunity to both learn more about Moodle, spread the word on LAMS and ELGG integrated with Moodle in an amazing setting. According to the web site: "Delhi, NY is nestled in the Catskill Mountains in a land of wooded hills and fertile green valleys with streams, covered bridges, well-tended dairy farms and beautiful vistas. Join us in a great setting for a great conference!"

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(photo by depone of flickr)

Scott Leslie blogged about a new wiki he set up to keep track of content conversion tools for course management systems. He is asking for help to complete it. 

This is necessary since no two CMS support import and export in exactly the same way. We have felt Scott's pain, the .LRN LORS (Learning Object Repository Service) package had to have special import procedures for each version of Blackboard we wanted to support import from.  It looks like there is still a long way to go in learning content interoperability.  

The cynical view is that there is very little ecconmic driver for any particular vendor to really get the bugs out of thier export.  Yes, it has to exist on the spreadsheet, work in the sales demo, or the product won't be bought. However, its years after the system is installed before users really start using export and by then the CMS Vendor has thier money.

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(photo by Photo-Mojo of flickr)

I am interested in how games can be used in learning. Pablo recently announced the release of the e-Adventure engine. This is an adventure game authoring environment and engine for building educational games or simulations. It includes an assessment component and can integrate with an LMS that supports IMS-LD. It also supports adaptive learning and it is Open Source.

Another interesting project I just discovered is Platinum Arts Sandbox. The goal of this project is focused on using the platform to teach kids how to make games. This is a fully 3D game engine and again it is Open Source.

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(photo by CmdrGravy of flickr)

Step by step is a YUI-based tool that builds guided walkthroughs of Web applications.  This looks like a great tool to build documentation right into a Web application.  A context-sensitive help system could be built with this tool.  The script is available under a Creative Commons license.

The positives are it is much more interactive than a video or screencast and the users stay right on the Web site.   

The negative is that, at least for now, a programmer has to be involved in creating the experience.  A screencast or documentation page can be created by a nonprogrammer.  However, we could write a front end if someone wanted to use it extensively.

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(photo by by ecstaticist)

George Siemens outlined some concrete steps to get started with connectivism/networked learning.

Number 4 is interesting!

"4. To be networked, resources and conversations need a degree of openness. This is one of the drawbacks of an LMS. Learners need to develop comfort with transparency and see the impact. In a recent course on digital literacies, Peter Tittenberger and I found learners can be uncomfortable with posting thoughts in an open public forum. There is something personal (vulnerable?) about learning that certain individuals prefer to keep "secure". To balance openness and privacy, tools exist, such as ELGG, that allow educators to create mini-networks with greater privacy than the open web."

By default, our MEL product configures ELGG as a closed "walled-garden".  We made this decision because the target audience includes the 6-12 grade range.  One of ELGG's strengths is access control, allowing users to choose to restrict access even within the school community. MEL creates an ELGG community for each Moodle class so students can set blog posts, files, etc. as visible only to one class, or even just for their teacher.

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(photo by Moodle Teaching Techniques by William Rice)

I love the preface to William Rice's book "Moodle Teaching Techniques".

Rice says,

"While most [software manuals] do a good job of telling you how to perform tasks, that is, what buttons to push and menus to choose, they often leave the two most important questions unanswered:

What effect will doing this have on your audience's experience?

When would you want to do this?"

We are getting very close to having an integrated Moodle+ELGG+LAMS product and I'm realizing that we will need to write exactly this type of manual and/or training.  As Rice puts it, "we need to combine 'keystroke-and-click' directions with advice on how to make the best use of the solutions and what effects it will have on student's experiences."

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"LAMS creates "digital lesson plans" that can be run online with students, as well as shared among teachers. The LAMS Community allows teachers to share and adapt digital lesson plans, and discuss their experiences of using LAMS." "The LAMS Community is central to our strategy of empowering teachers to transform education using the revolutionary digital lesson planning approach offered by LAMS. Educators can now freely and openly share 'best practice teaching' in a way never seen before in the history of education," said Professor James Dalziel, leader of LAMS. "We chose .LRN for its sophisticated community management functions, complementary feature set, and our shared open source philosophy," Dalziel said.

John Norman, Director of the Cambridge University Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technology praised the LAMS/.LRN collaboration, saying, "Both .LRN and LAMS have set the pace in the development of collaborative/active learning platforms for higher education. This integration and co-operation between the two projects will create a powerful learning environment for students".

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