Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Web 2 e-learning and the bureaucratisation of the learning management system.


It might just be me but it seems that the innovations of the web 2 revolution have not really filtered into the e- learning realm. Sure there are no doubt many instances of web 2 apps being utilised within an LMS but there are no real examples of web 2 applied to the whole LMS. There are examples: nuvvo http://nuvvo.com/ for instance is promising,as is schooltool http://www.schooltool.org/and more recently chalksite http://www.chalksite.com/ but nothing as yet approaching the power of the much maligned LMS. What I think we are all waiting for is an LMS that has lots of features combined with the ease of use of many of the popular web 2 apps. I think we are waiting for something that gives the power back to the teacher to decide what content they consider appropriate for their students,and which can be updated on the fly with content updated as is needed. Maybe it is the bureaucratisation of the Learning Management System that is the real problem and not the technology itself. Asp or php of themselves are surely not the problem. The problem is probably the misuse of these technologies to serve purposes that have not been fully examined. Why for instance is there so much emphasis on control over and above that exercised by the teacher? These are bureaucratic concerns about the utilisation of new teaching methods even though it is at least ten years since they could have been considered new.

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