The LMS market today faces a strange contradiction - few teachers truly *love* their current LMS but at the same time no one wants to endure the pain of switching to a new LMS. The LMS vendors are slowly cloning each other's features and innovation is slowing. At the same time how people teach and how people learn using technology is constantly changing and evolving. Teachers continuously experiment with technologies outside of the LMS system with varying levels of success
I am seeing a day rapidly approaching where many of the major Institutions provide platforms that empower open content and scholarly activity … a place where the next LMS/CMS is simply a browser, a social bookmarking toolset, and perhaps a social recommendation space (like Times People). Imagine how amazing it will be when the best content is published in the open where debate, conversations, and discourse happens at the micro and macro level.
The International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments provides readers with a comprehensive coverage of developments in learning technologies for an international readership of educators and trainers. The journal is a primary source for academics, professionals, corporate trainers and policy makers in information and communications technologies. The journal publishes work of a high standard on a range of fields associated with Course Management Systems (CMS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), Personalized Learning Environments (PLE), Social Networking Software (SNS), and 3D virtual worlds, including for example Second Life (SL).
observations at a specific urban university in the mid-west, shows vast variation in terms of faculty who choose to utilize online instructional technologies and a significant lag in desired online development.
With ConnectYard you can:
- Bring along your Facebook identity and friends
- Find students in your classes that share mutual friends
- Share materials and calendars with your study groups
- Receive notifications via Facebook and text message
- Setup real-time whiteboards and group conference calls
Rodríguez congratulated committee members on playing an instrumental role in the successful selection, promotion, and implementation of Sakai as the replacement for WebCT at the University of Delaware.
As you may have heard, a number of contributors in the Sakai community have begun talking about, and even working on, something being called Sakai 3. Sakai 3 would be a new version of Sakai representing significant change to the end-user experience and, likely, the underlying technology.
This blog post is somewhat a summary of my understanding of what Sakai 3 is all about, from a user point of view. I hope it can become a starting point for current community members who might still see Sakai 3 as a blurry long term vision, and maybe even draw more people's attention to Sakai as a valid alternative to commercial learning management systems like Blackboard.
University of Delaware Information Technologies has announced that faculty and staff can now create "project" sites on Sakai@UD -- the UD-supported learning management system.
Edupunk, as defined by the New York Times, is "an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like Powerpoint and Blackboard, and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and D.I.Y. ethos of 70s bands like the Clash to the classroom." The term was coined by Jim Groom, Instructional Technology Specialist at the University of Mary Washington.
Twitter is the class' main mode of communication, and he writes that Twitter has replaced three classroom technologies: listserv, email, cardboard box to collect papers.