OK, I found the source Towards an Education Inflected Architecture
Cindy Xin
Posts made by Cindy Xin
I have heard multiple sources praise WebCT as a responsive vendor, but I have heard the opposite about BlackBoard. I hope the consolidated company will take after WebCT.
Alan, I applaud your bringing up some hottest issues facing us educators nowadays. I have a few words to add.
You said, ?Frankly what I do not like about any of the CMSes is that they are structuraly organized around the wrong atomic unit- the "course". A student's work disappears when the course does, and work in one course silo has no connection to work elsewhere. The main organizing unit ought to be the student??
I can?t agree with you more on this. In the first Moodle Newletter I read in Moodle 1.6, it?s going to have a My Moodle page for all users that contains a course listing with latest activity for each course. But I?m not sure whether the data are persistent over semesters. The Moodle+ELGG work at Athabasca is intriguing. For those of you who want to learn more about it. Here is the paper by Terry Anderson.
?I also worry about the degree of lock-in we end up with the bit monolithic packages. Web technology is moving much more into a distributed collection of smaller technologies that are joined as needed, yet we tend to keep our desires into this behometh like enterprise systems which are slow to change, are mostly completely closed spaces.?
Stephen Dowes talks about the ?e-Learning 2.0? after the term Web 2.0. The e-Learning 2.0 describe the stage we are now in ed tech and online learning where users join and remix light-weighted tools and materials to create the environment they want to live in. I also learned the term ?educational inflected architecture? recently which I forget who coined it. It describes the kind of system that allows such kind of remixing and the join of ?a distributed collection of smaller technologies as needed? ? the way you call it.
?I am rather doubtful in 5 years we wll be talking about BlackCT or WebBoardCT or whatever married name they come up with. It will be moving fast and furious and have trouble seeing them move switfly enough. But I could just as well be wrong, ??
I have the same feeling, but we both could be wrong. Be it 5, 10, or 15 years, I hope they won?t leave their hundreds of thousands users stuck behind. And here is where successful open source software has a definite advantage ? there are always multiple sources of providers, and you always have the code to work on.
You said, ?Frankly what I do not like about any of the CMSes is that they are structuraly organized around the wrong atomic unit- the "course". A student's work disappears when the course does, and work in one course silo has no connection to work elsewhere. The main organizing unit ought to be the student??
I can?t agree with you more on this. In the first Moodle Newletter I read in Moodle 1.6, it?s going to have a My Moodle page for all users that contains a course listing with latest activity for each course. But I?m not sure whether the data are persistent over semesters. The Moodle+ELGG work at Athabasca is intriguing. For those of you who want to learn more about it. Here is the paper by Terry Anderson.
?I also worry about the degree of lock-in we end up with the bit monolithic packages. Web technology is moving much more into a distributed collection of smaller technologies that are joined as needed, yet we tend to keep our desires into this behometh like enterprise systems which are slow to change, are mostly completely closed spaces.?
Stephen Dowes talks about the ?e-Learning 2.0? after the term Web 2.0. The e-Learning 2.0 describe the stage we are now in ed tech and online learning where users join and remix light-weighted tools and materials to create the environment they want to live in. I also learned the term ?educational inflected architecture? recently which I forget who coined it. It describes the kind of system that allows such kind of remixing and the join of ?a distributed collection of smaller technologies as needed? ? the way you call it.
?I am rather doubtful in 5 years we wll be talking about BlackCT or WebBoardCT or whatever married name they come up with. It will be moving fast and furious and have trouble seeing them move switfly enough. But I could just as well be wrong, ??
I have the same feeling, but we both could be wrong. Be it 5, 10, or 15 years, I hope they won?t leave their hundreds of thousands users stuck behind. And here is where successful open source software has a definite advantage ? there are always multiple sources of providers, and you always have the code to work on.
Wow, Dan your postings have made so many points that I want to respond and I'm having a hard time to decide which to pick first. In any case, I want to let you know that you and Andrew?s dialogue is very intriguing and important. In my view, the points you collectively raised (cost, administrative efficiency, education proper, etc.) contribute to one of the greatest debates in online education, which has been ongoing for the past decade. It well deserves a forum on its own.
Here, I just like to say a few words about the last point you made - "open source does not come free." If by "free" we mean free beer or free lunch, you are absolutely right ? open source does not come free. I believe hardly anyone would argue with you on that. But if by "free" we mean freedom, then open source does provide that. As you rightly pointed out yourself - "What it [Open Source] does give is control over one's software ..." Control over one's software, is this a kind of freedom? How much is it worth? What is this freedom capable of offering us?
What ?control over one's software? really means is what Tim O'Reilly [*] (Are you cousins, Dan? ;) calls "the architecture of participation" by which he means "the nature of systems that are designed for user contribution." It lowers "barriers to entry by newcomers." It "allows for a real free market of ideas, in which anyone can put forward a proposed solution to a problem; it becomes adopted, if at all, by acclamation and the organic spread of its usefulness."
User contribution, easier entry by new comers, free market of ideas, organic spread of usefulness... How much are all of these worth? How do we measure them in dollar terms? Where does this architecture of participation lead us? Will it give us enough generative power to allow us to create what we want but don't have now? Will this capability continue to benefit us afterwards?
[*] Tim O'Reilly In a Nutshell: Collected writings of the founder of O'Reilly Media, Inc. See also -
http://tim.oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html and http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3017
Here, I just like to say a few words about the last point you made - "open source does not come free." If by "free" we mean free beer or free lunch, you are absolutely right ? open source does not come free. I believe hardly anyone would argue with you on that. But if by "free" we mean freedom, then open source does provide that. As you rightly pointed out yourself - "What it [Open Source] does give is control over one's software ..." Control over one's software, is this a kind of freedom? How much is it worth? What is this freedom capable of offering us?
What ?control over one's software? really means is what Tim O'Reilly [*] (Are you cousins, Dan? ;) calls "the architecture of participation" by which he means "the nature of systems that are designed for user contribution." It lowers "barriers to entry by newcomers." It "allows for a real free market of ideas, in which anyone can put forward a proposed solution to a problem; it becomes adopted, if at all, by acclamation and the organic spread of its usefulness."
User contribution, easier entry by new comers, free market of ideas, organic spread of usefulness... How much are all of these worth? How do we measure them in dollar terms? Where does this architecture of participation lead us? Will it give us enough generative power to allow us to create what we want but don't have now? Will this capability continue to benefit us afterwards?
[*] Tim O'Reilly In a Nutshell: Collected writings of the founder of O'Reilly Media, Inc. See also -
http://tim.oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html and http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3017
And an ode to the open source community, and the unleashed creativity of educators and learners.
From Godfrey Parkin at http://parkinslot.blogspot.com/2005/10/blackboard-webct-swan-song-for-lms.html
From Godfrey Parkin at http://parkinslot.blogspot.com/2005/10/blackboard-webct-swan-song-for-lms.html
So Blackboard is to acquire (sorry, merge with) WebCT. Does it mean anything, other than to all those folks who will soon be looking for jobs?
What we are seeing is simply further implosion of the dedicated e-learning technology industry. The more oligopolistic this market becomes, the more generic it becomes, and the less able it is to sustain the pretense of any meaningful differential advantage. As open source systems undermine it from below (particularly in the academic arena) and ERP systems make it redundant from above (particularly in the corporate arena), the less relevant this relatively small software market segment becomes.
Hence the increasing investor wariness. Soon to be followed by more enthusiastic uptake of what I have been advocating for ten years now ? educators, trainers, and especially learners will start to focus less on the means and more on the end, invoking whatever technologies happen to be mainstream to facilitate whatever learning experience is most appropriate to them. IT departments will find it easier to wrest away from training departments the decisions about enabling technologies, and learning information flows will move out of their relatively proprietary niche and finally become fully integrated with the rest of the corporate nervous system.
The openness and dynamism of the web will finally be allowed to permeate the thinking of the learning establishment, and Model-T e-learning will succumb to a flood of performance-driven innovation.
What we are seeing is simply further implosion of the dedicated e-learning technology industry. The more oligopolistic this market becomes, the more generic it becomes, and the less able it is to sustain the pretense of any meaningful differential advantage. As open source systems undermine it from below (particularly in the academic arena) and ERP systems make it redundant from above (particularly in the corporate arena), the less relevant this relatively small software market segment becomes.
Hence the increasing investor wariness. Soon to be followed by more enthusiastic uptake of what I have been advocating for ten years now ? educators, trainers, and especially learners will start to focus less on the means and more on the end, invoking whatever technologies happen to be mainstream to facilitate whatever learning experience is most appropriate to them. IT departments will find it easier to wrest away from training departments the decisions about enabling technologies, and learning information flows will move out of their relatively proprietary niche and finally become fully integrated with the rest of the corporate nervous system.
The openness and dynamism of the web will finally be allowed to permeate the thinking of the learning establishment, and Model-T e-learning will succumb to a flood of performance-driven innovation.