A few recent reports and nuggets have come my way regarding elearning tools and education/training.
The first is an excellent academic report delivered from the recently (2007) formed TLRP-TEL Programme. They also have a collaboration project with JISC.
Their new commentary entitled "Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning."
is an excellent summary of the sate of play regarding the use of web2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, social networks, etc). The bits I found really useful for acadmic staff keen to cut thorugh the rhetoric and hype of web2.0 are the 4 simple modes of learning that could be exploited by the web and the recognition of the social and collaboration (constructivist) side of the learning experience.
The four potential learning concepts to be exploited by web 2.0 are :
- Collaboration (obvious really, but more difficult to acheive in reality)
- Publication ("we" create web content see wikipedia)
- Literacies (learners engaging with new digital content and cultures)
- Inquiry ( creating personal learning journeys in a connected/hyperlinked web)
Then whilst reading an article on using Acrobat 9.0 to archive web pages, I stumbled across a whitepaper that Adobe has published entitled "Delivering on the promise of eLearning". It's quite a short document talking about the requrement to ensure that elearning is rich & engaging to ensure our digital natives will keep on learning in this google age !! Tell us something we don't know Mr Adobe - purrrrrrrrrlease..... Anyhoo on page 5 they produce a table of top elearning products again referenced form the elearning guild, see below.
left click table to see it largeThree interesting things on this list, namely only one open source app :o( , no web 2.0 tools!, and even more surprisingly blackbored VLE is on the list! All I can think is that this list must be based soley on very big USA corporations and huge learning networks.com Still, I'm also guessing if you dive under the hype over web2.0, you would probably find a similar picture in the UK? Apart from the fact we seem to have understood, and are exploiting the potential of Open Source tools! http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html to gain an idea of what the top 100 elearning applications are in the UK.
Posts
4 comments:
Hi Kev,
I thought I would get a head start on my programme and I was interested to see that powerpoint showed as top of the list on page 5, perhaps this is a demonstartion of the theory of "Death by Powerpoint"?
As you also pointed out, the only VLE on the list is Blackboard. Although this list was generated by the eLearning Guild in December 2007 I also think it must be reflecting a non UK source as I beleive a recent survey by Becta showed Moodle as far more popular over here.
Yes Graham, the EGuild is USA. thanks for taking the time to comment.
Hi Kev,
The use of web 2.0 applications opens up a myriad of possibilities for us as educators and how we might plan learning experiences for our students. The intriguing thing also about this technology is that it is continually in an evolving state which is captivating for inquisitive minds.
I was interested to read the article on the concept of Learning 2.0. This puts the focus back where it should be - on the learner.
Post a Comment