blogging for e-learning - freedom and constraints
After being excited on the back of Marco Torres awesome presentation at the 2005 AIS ICT Integrators’ Conference last week I decided to explore more global e-learning literature.
Last week’s EdTech Brainstorm #3 (grab the podcast file here) provides a really interesting discussion of Learning Objects - and really highlights that a lot of people really don’t have a clue about LOs at all! The guys at EdTech also provide an interesting comparison of two Learning Management Systems (LMS) - Moodle and Elgg. Elgg is apparently heavily blog-based… a more "organic" structure to Moodle (which I heavily use at the moment).
This perhaps leads to an interesting discussion about the extent to which so-called *structured* LMSes overly structure the learning environment. Are systems like Moodle (and commercial alternatives like WebCT and Blackboard) constraing the learning and interactions between students??? Similar issues will no-doubt arise soon with regard to the extent to which we are able to protect the online lives of our students - particularly from each other. Will our eagerness to allow students freedom to express themselves and reflect on their learning through blogs also provide unmitigated opportunities for electronic bullying??? Will the necessary monitoring that we must provide actually mean that students aren’t interested in blogging at school???
Macromedia Studio 8... what the?
One might have thought that the actions of the somewhat recently reformed Microsoft in spacing out its release dates and seeking to ensure product quality is something that other software developers might have taken on board…
At our school, Dann and I have made extensive use of Macromedia products over the past few years as we teach a range of courses.
The school has progressed in the past 4 years through numerous upgrades, initially installing Flash 5, followed by Studio MX and now MX 2004. The pace of change has been truly astounding… and many of the awesome features made available (particularly newish features for PHP development in Dreamweaver and Flash Video in Flash) have been welcomed by students and faculty alike - despite the need for constant re-training.
The recent acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe (whose products we also use extensively in an educational context) has prompted a stack of discussion… mostly around which products will be ditched… Studio 8 has now been released, not 12 months after we outlaid extensive moolah for its predecessor… with Flash 8 described as "Macromedia’s biggest Flash release to date."
HUH? What gives? Is this looking after your developer base?
Studio MX & MX 2004 installed across our site with more than a few hassles. For starters, Macromedia don’t support its rollout in large Microsoft networks by not providing .MSI files… and the WebDAV features…. don’t get me started!
One wonders whether later this year the promise of Adobe-branded Macromedia products will be realised and we’ll see yet ANOTHER version of buggy Macromedia goodies…
hmm…
windows to linux - way too easy
Tonight I migrated this site from our development location to the live site…
… the only problem being that it meant going from IIS6 / Windows 2003 Server to Apache on Linux…
AND… it all went off without a hitch. Something major must be about to go wrong, but it hasn’t so far. Those kids at Drupal certainly have their stuff under control.
I think perhaps I might do SysAdmin stuff under the influence of Pseudoephedrine in the future too!
Impressions on Drupal
Dann and I are experimenting with this open source CMS tool… and to be honest I’m totally blown away by its blend of rich features with genuine usability…
