Jon Mott and David Wiley have posted their paper on Open learning.  Well done, nicely argued, with good supporting references.  Bravo!  Their basic point is traditional Content Management Systems — i.e. Sakai, Blackboard — reinforce the the management side of teaching to the detriment to the innovative, student-centered, learning side of the equation.  And while I agree with much of their argument, I’ve come to realize that this approach also misses some important  points: Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent post and at a session at last weekend’s WordCamp NYC Jim Groom questions how much commercialization belongs in the WordPress community.  A post on the WPMU.ORG blog, holds that WordPress’ future is in premium, purchased plug-ins, a point Jim takes great exception to.  He points out that the strength and quality of WordPress is a direct result of the active, sharing community, and if increased commercialization displaced this shared ethos, then WordPress might well suffer.  And while I agree with Jim, I also wonder if this isn’t an inevitable phase in the growth of WordPress and other active open source projects.

Read the rest of this entry »

The WordCamp NYC Educators Roundtable featured Matt Mullenweg, Joseph Ugoretz, Jim Groom, Luke Waltzer, Tom Woodward,  facilitated by Mikhail Gershovich.  I have the audio posted below, and with a crew like this you know the discussion is worth listening to.  So my apologies, as the audio is less than perfect.  I only post it here because I didn’t see anyone else recording it.  At least you know it is live and unedited!

Read the rest of this entry »

The Google Wave team makes some conference visits, aiming at corporations at Enterprise 2.0and the educational market at Educause. Google seems to have created a cool tool, and is now trying to figure out what it is good for.  It will be interesting to see if it changes much as it comes out in a more general release.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the seventh year Educause has conducted a survey on IT trends in higher educational institutions.  This year’s report is out, and a couple of things caught my eye: Read the rest of this entry »

We had a good group watching the Effective Use of Social Media for Student Recruitment webcast last week.  The session was nicely moderated by Jacques Steinberg of the New York Times, with speakers Robert Moore a consultant and Greg Carroll from Furman University.  A couple of take-aways: Read the rest of this entry »