Open source and collaboration equals better VLEs

One thing that could be done to a much greater extent is collaboration on Open Source solutions for Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). I know that this is done already, especially at university level, but there are still a lot of money wasted in investments in expensive proprietary solutions that can not be modified without expensive consultants, as well as there is a lot of money wasted on “in house” development and adaptations that are not shared with others. This is especially offensive when tax money is wasted - which is often the case.

Open Source collaboration could be much more organized and better financed at the national level. Stronger incentives need to be created for collaborating in this way, which would for certain benefit the progress in general.

So far, the main part of all innovations within software for Technology Enhanced Learning have originated from Open Source projects!

 

The media Zoo

In this film Twofour Communications and The Beyond Distance Research Alliance based at The University of Leicester presents The media Zoo - an immersive teaching and research environment in Second Life. Gilly Salmon, Professor of E-learning & E-learning Technologies at Leicester gave us this film at the conference Online Educa in Berlin, november 2007.

Do you have any experiences of learning in Second Life? Can you tell us about it?

 

Learning in a 3D environment and the future

Education in Second Life is in many ways a mirror of the real world with classrooms et cetera. But says, Olle Wästberg, General Director of the Swedish Institute, education in Second Life has spotlight possibilities for education on the web and in social medias. And it´s a way to gather people from different parts of a country.

How do you think learning in 3D environmnets will look like in the future?

 

The future of digital learning …

We asked David Kernohan from JISC eLearning, UK about his opinion of digital learning in the future. He thinks the future of elearning is going to be based around particular applications and networks. And he also talks about a flow between institutions and different methods of learning.

Do you agree with him?

 

What about the balance of power?

Will future teaching enviroments change the balance of power?

No, not really, says Bas Cordewener from Surf Foundation, Nederland. But he thinks that the ways we act are going to be less structured in the future.

Hear him speak and tell us what do you think? Will future teaching enviroments change the balance of power?

 

Good old Web 2.0

I get a feeling that we often apprehend technology as developing faster that it actually does. The Web 2.0 phenomena is an interesting example of this. When Web 2.0 suddenly appeared, as it seemed out of nowhere, there was actually nothing sudden or even new about it. Web 2.0 is in fact mainly based on “old” technology.

The picture of the Web 2.0 technology cloud illustrates this  quite well.

What had changed was actually our conceptions of how technology can be used and how different (regarded individually rather simple) technologies can be combined to produce an added value. In fact, this has been a rather slow process that suddenly hit the critical hype-mass and became Web 2.0 with the people.

 

Communities are important for education, but…

I agree with Irma Mänty and others that virtual communities and collaboration is very important for education. At the same time I think that there is a impending risk that we will soon have a situation where people are getting fed-up with communities. Partly for the same reasons that LMSs doesn’t work (they are to isolated), but also for integrity reasons. One get quite terrified when reading the agreements that users (unknowingly?) signs to get access to some communities. These agreements would not even be legal in some countries!

I think that we have an ethical dilema when we expect students to become members in those communities (a practise that is geting increasingly common) in order to participate in our courses. Especially since neither students nor the teachers are usually aware of the contents of those agreements - and even less about potential consequences.

 

Virtual communities

The future of digital learning is in virtual communities. The new knowledge borns with people interacting with the resources of the community, both human and material. E.g. Jaiku www.jaiku.com is a brilliant channel for micro blogging and being in contact with your peers. Jaiku is originally finnish, but now part of Google programmes. You can instantly share your ideas with your colleques, students, friends.

Best regards

Irma Mänty, Development Manager (eLearning) Laurea University of Applied Sciences

 

Modular is the future?

It is a problem that virtual learning environments (VLEs) are perceived as something that are installed centrally (silo-like) to be used by teachers and students as is (referring back to my last post, Where do VLEs come from and where are they heading?).  VLEs should not just “be there”, they should be assembled when needed, put together and adapted to specific pedagogical needs. And, in fact there is an interesting ongoing development towards modular VLEs. This is actually a trend that affects most application fields of IT. In general modularity (in its most ideal form) means that a VLE are viewed as a (distributed) toolbox from which different tools (or components/modules) can be chosen and assembled to form a loosely coupled learning environment with the look and feel of a VLE, but that actually consists of small parts provided as services by different providers - much like the parts of a machine is forming the machine or like Lego. This is of course still a vision, but it is far from unrealistic and we can already see examples of this happening. As a concept this development can be compared to Learning Objects, which doest really work as supposed (yet?), but anyway, as a concept…

Underlying is a technological development that, in the long run, will most likely mean a lot for learning technology.  To some extent it is actually the same technology that constitutes the basis for the kind of services that often goes under the name Web 2.0. Technologies such as RSS (blogs and pods), light-weight protocols like XML-RPC and technologies for rich web-based user interfaces (Ajax) and so on. But also more comprehensive technology platforms such as for Web Services. This may seem overwhelmingly technical (and it is technical), but the knowledge about this is really important for mapping pedagogical requirements to technology. Modular approaches makes it possible to actually adapt technology on the fly, and adaptability is one of the missing links in many VLEs (and especially in LMSs). However, one of the most important conditions for this to happen are (the right) standards - standards for learning technology based on generic technical standards - so that we know that we have agreed upon how our services and components are supposed to interact from an educational perspective. Such work is actually already going on in projects like the e-Framework, IMS, and The Open Knowledge Initiative.

 

Second Life – learning as in 1927?

Second Life has been described as a taste of what the future online socialization will be. But does that mean that the door to future distance education is open to explore… The question concerning potential differences in pedagogy for online learning environment and traditional campus education appears; Why are we trying to build ordinary classrooms in a virtual environment? Aren’t we supposed to find new innovative educational ways when new Medias are emerging? If not the pedagogical thoughts are developed in the same pace as the technique will all new virtual meeting places only fill the gap already filled by the telephone.

1927 was the year of the Swedish school reform “Enhetsskolan” – open and free for all.

Jonas Paulsson, NSHU