On the SocialLearn site there is an interesting opinion piece. Martin Weller raises the questions of how students used to the interactive, decentralized tools in their own lives will react to the traditional, centralized learning management system. His examples from The Open University are very helpful. The SocialLearn project sets up learners with a central profile for learning goals and tools. It also has an open API to allow other applications to be written to access and extend the content.
As none of us really know where all this technology-driven communication is going keeping development open and flexible seems to be the best strategy. Develop small, simple applications that can easily be paired with other small, simple applications. Encourage students, faculty and technology staff to tinker and see what comes out of it.
Wired Campus: The Battle Between Web 2.0 and the Classroom – Chronicle.com
SocialLearn: Bridging the Gap Between Web 2.0 and Higher Education at e-Literate
Higher education faces a challenge. It may not know it yet, but it does. And the challenge is this – when learners have been accustomed to very facilitative, usable, personalisable and adaptive tools both for learning and socialising, why will they accept standardised, unintuitive, clumsy and out of date tools in formal education they are paying for?
I was really pleased to be asked to contribute an article to the edition of On The Horizon that Michael Feldstein is editing. As part of the procedure all the authors are writing a guest blog post on e-Literate. It feels kind of like getting the opening slot on the Parkinson show (US readers – substitute with Leno).
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Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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