Anyone else notice all the 40th anniversary celebrations lately? The Internet, Sesame Street, Woodstock, People walking on the moon, and of course the premier of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Funny, but as a nine year old I remember vividly the movie and the moon — Sesame street just seems like it has always been there, and I missed the Internet launch completely.
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 »
A great post by Jim Groom at UMW on the use of WordPress multi-user to aggregate content via technologies like RSS. Places like universities are complex places with many affiliates who all have needs for their own web identifies, and control over these identities. These can range from grant-funded projects to various centers to faculty research sites. But there is also a need to be able to pull this content and re-mix it in various ways for various audiences. For instance faculty research sites that feed content to a department site that highlights the latest doings by their faculty. Jim describes this all better than I’m doing here so go read his post. We have something similar running with MU here, although we haven’t really started to employ it in a production way yet (too much beginning of the year stuff to work through!) But the bottom line is what sounds really complex is actually pretty easy to set up from a technical standpoint, and pretty cheap from a hardware/software cost perspective, when you use a tool like WordPress MU.
In Using Learning Environments as a Metaphor for Educational Change Martin Weller presents an interesting case. Current learning/course management systems are a transitional step, but need to start moving aside in favor of tools much more open, decentralized and student-driven. There in no need to perpetuate the metaphor of the classroom in the move on-line, and in fact doing so can have the effect of stifling innovation (software sedimentation) in the creation of new learning tools.
One of the new tech-memes is that the Internet brings a new information abundance, and businesses built on a model of information scarcity, like newspapers and universities, are doomed. I think many aspects of the delivery of information and where learning takes place is changing — and it needs to given the many new opportunities offered by the internet. But to predict that the experience of taking on-line courses replaces the in-person experience of participating in a learning community is foolish. The experience of going to college is so much more than just the time spent in class. Institutions that only focus on the traditional classroom are probably at risk. But those that recognize and embrace the full value of a multifaceted learning community have a value that will endure, and will actually be enriched by the internet.
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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