An Outsourced Open Source LMS and a Pot of Gold? | EDUCAUSE CONNECT Annotated
tags: blackboard, lms, lms-project, moodle
Like many WebCT campuses, SUNY Delhi must select a new LMS and complete migrating to the new system in the next year. The total cost of ownership comparison led us to adopt a remotely hosted open source solution. We’ll examine the facts, figures, and progress of moving from WebCT to Moodle and integrating with Banner.
 OpenSourceLMS-shah-nelson |
How Seaworld used social network to drum up interest for their new roller coaster - Profit.ca Annotated
tags: @robinyap, measurement, seaworld, social-networking
What are you trying to achieve in measuring the information you are getting?
Jeff Han’s amazing work with how we interact with our technology is not a new item, the video and buzz has been circulating on the ‘Net for more than 9 months. Yet it took Tim Lauer’s post, Jeff Han article in FastCompany, and another on Touch Interfaces… last week for it to sink in.
My issue of FastCompany (February 2007) arrived this week and I’ve only just now gotten a chance to sit down and flip through it. The article about Jeff Han (available online here) and his work on the touch interface is amazing and as I reflect, it strikes me as a way to kinesthetically interact with our technology in a much more organic and natural way than we ever have before. I also took the opportunity to view the FastCompany video clip thanks to Bryan Alexander and the TEDtalks video linked to by Tim. What I have seen resonates within me. It makes me wonder how this interaction will affect our learners. Will it improve accessibility? Is it intuitive enough? Will it lead to advances in learning?
We all have those kinesthetic responses: your PIN at the ATM, your password on your computer, phone numbers that you can only remember when your fingers simulate the act of keying them in. We don’t really have to think about them, they happen almost autonomically. But this action involves only our fingers, what would happen if our interactions utilized and/or required more of our body? What if recollections were based on physical gestures? I envision a musician or rock climber for whom their knowledge manifests itself in a physical form. Consider the new opportunities for kinesthetic learning that could be incorporated into the Wii system. There is already talk of creating a surgery sim but what else could be developed which would tap into this new tool for learning?
Data is no longer uni-dimensional, and as Han has shown it can be now represented visually in three dimensions. Think Minority Report meets the Matrix where tables, graphs and data can have a physical structure. How will this new way of visualizing and physically manipulating information allow us to retain, reuse and reconstruct knowledge? With visionaries such as Han, we may well find out within the next few years.
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I’ve been testing Office 2007 for compatibility issues on our Plymouth State University campus. For those who haven’t seen the interface, it is SIGNIFICANTLY different from Office 2003 and will likely require some bridging support for those who may not enjoy being beta test guinea pigs like the rest of us! Our Office of Teaching & Learning Technologies anticipates an increase in demand for user training.
Note: All of the images below can be viewed in larger format from my Flickr account by clicking the image.
Microsoft Outlook 2007
I’ve dropped a couple of comparative screenshots of Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 below.
Image 1: 
Image 2: 
One interesting thing to note is that Outlook is the one app in the suite which doesn’t look radically different. It has the same general interface with the addition of another column on the right which provides a heads-up display of your calendar, events and tasks.
Image 3: 
Microsoft did add RSS support to their app in this version. It integrates with mail and new
posts are treated as unread mail.
Image 4: 
Here is an example of the feed from think:lab
Image 5: 
First the things I like:
That said, therre are a few oddities with Outlook 2007 that I find inconvenient and/or frustrating:
All in all, Outlook 2007 is an interesting development. Now I am no seer, but I do feel that the adoption of RSS in Outlook and its integration with IE7 will lead to a surge in the use of RSS, particularly among those who aren’t familiar with the technology. It may not be my primary offline feed reader as I prefer the simplicity of SharpReader but with a few improvements I might consider using it instead.
technorati tags:microsoft, outlook, 2007, msoutlook2007, rss
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As part of the committee charged with developing the USNH e-Portfolio summit, one of our tasks was to determine our audience. Now this initiative is coming out of a system-wide $450,000 block grant so on one hand an obvious audience are the constituents who pay into the system, namely the University of New Hampshire, Plymouth State University, Keene State College and Granite State College. But my friend and colleague, Dr. Royce Robertson, has thoughts similar to mine when the topic of e-portfolios in the state arises. In his blog, The Virtual Sherpa , he states:
The cycle of change regarding ePortfolios in the State of New Hampshire has a few missing links - teachers, employers, college admissions, and licensing boards.
Which echoes my thoughts exactly. Three of the four institutions have a focus on teacher preparation and education. The State of New Hampshire is eyeing an electronic portfolio requirement. And then there is what we do with those portfolios when we’re move from K-12 to higher ed and from higher ed into the job market.
It strikes me that the most logical partnership would be one between the State and the University System so as to create standards and portability between all of our institutions. Consider what an effective model of Dr. Robertson’s cycle listed above could look like.
Our learners begin their electronic portfolio career as early as the primary grades. These portfolios then follow our learners into middle and high school. As part of their commencement, these learners will be expected to present a portfolio which highlights their mastery of certain core competencies. As they begin to look towards their post-secondary education, these learners submit their portfolios to the institution(s) of their choice as part of the admissions process. Once admitted, the build upon their existing portfolio with their post-secondary work and employ the portfolio as part of their degree defense. As our newly graduated teachers begin to seek employment, this comprehensive portfolio is used during their job hunt to highlight their competencies and areas of expertise. Because these schools are using similar standards, the evaluation process is simplified. Now if the learner decides to pursue an advanced degree, they take their portfolio and carry it over (virtually) to their new institution.
I’ll admit that their are a lot of assumptions here, but since all of these entities are utilizing e-portfolios in one way or another, would it not make sense for folks to be able to take a look at any portfolio and have an understanding of what it represents?
technorati tags:eportfolio, electronic, portfolio, usnh, college, university, summit, psu, plymouth, state, nh
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Coming up in April, an un-conference - HigherEd BlogCon.
From their website,
HigherEd BlogCon
Transforming Academic Communities with New Tools of the Social Web
April 3-28, 2006
This brand-new, all-online event aims to bring together in a single Web space many of the leading players who are transforming academe with their use of the new tools of the Social Web.
All presentations will be made available on the event website at no charge to participants (with the exception of the live, web/audio CASE Online Speaker Series events).
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Note: This post is from my former WordPress account and came over in the import.
I’ve outgrown what my Wordpress.com account can offer. Turns out I want to play with widgets and scripts and such, go figure. But I like the Wordpress environment so I visited wordpress.org and downloaded and installed v.2 and imported, successfully, my posts from this blog.
So far, so good. I’ve got a long way to go to figure out themes and PHP but now I can experiment with my own installations - how dangerously exciting!
Here is the new URL and feed for my new blog hosted on www.whitemountaintech.net
New blog URL: http://www.whitemountaintech.net/wordpress
New blog feed: http://www.whitemountaintech.net/wordpress/feed/
I’ve also tweaked the blog a bit to include the following plug-ins:
bsuite - a stats program courtesy of Casey Bisson
podPress - a podcasting encapsulation plug-in
Just a note, I plan on leaving this up until Wordpress decides to deep six it so any links that currently point here will not break. But if you do find this blog, please visit my new home and link to these posts there.
Sorry for being incommunicado the past week and a half but the flu has worked its way through the family and has knocked me off my stride.
Today is a new day, a new start - and it is good to be back!
Ok, so my blog and I are having a difference in opinion when it comes to creating and publishing new pages. In an attempt to fulfill my first New Year’s resolution, I am trying to develop some of the reference links I have been citing. However, the Wordpress engine refuses to publish the content even though I see it when I go to manage the page. Hopefully I will have this resolved soon.
Update: It turns out that Wordpress is finicky and it did not like the code that was placed into the post when I cut and paste from either Writely or from Word (at times, not always). I had to get into the HTML view and in one case, rebuild the post entirely, to finally figure this one out.
EdVentures in Technology is authored by John Martin, communication and collaboration consultant with White Mountain Technology Services.
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