The shortcomings of these approaches rest in their lack of integration and the control required by many universities. The experience of many educators parallels my own—learners are very active with technology, but once in an LMS space, they seldom do more than the minimum required (a particular concern in courses where dialogue and theory are important to explore). This may be a function of students taking on “the student role”—defaulting to passive behaviour—once in an academic environment. It may also be due to the change in behaviour expected by educators—where learners must leave their tools behind and adopt tools with limited functionality. For an individual used to Skyping, blogging, tagging, creating podcasts, or collaboratively writing an online document, the transition to a learning management system is a step back in time (by several years).
Martin Burrett on 30 Nov 11A brilliant, 'must try' web tool for group to text/voice chat, with a collaborative whiteboard, document viewer and more, all in real time. I'm really loving this tool at the moment for joint language lessons with my school's Chinese partner school. No sign in require, however register for free for extra features. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
