Tek4L

the beauty of tagging is that it taps into an existing cognitive process
without adding add much cognitive cost

A useful diagram showing some of the concepts behind web2

http://readwriteweb.com/archives/002834.php

This is a copy of presentation I delivered at efest 2005

E-learning to-date has largely followed a traditional
approach to teaching and learning. In most tertiary face to face settings a
lecturer delivers materials to a group of students over a set period of time.
The students then produce assignments based on this material which are then
marked and filed away. All this happens in isolation from the classes on the
same topics that were delivered before, and that will be delivered after. Unless
peer review type assessments are used, the only person that may benefit from
the knowledge constructed by the student, is the student themselves and the
lecturer …

In most cases, this same paradigm has been carried across
into the virtual world. Course material is delivered, assignments submitted,
and then it is all filed away before the next group of students arrive. Little
attempt is made to capture student work and make it available to future
students, or the wider community. Instead of being locked behind wooden doors
and in metal filing cabinets, learning is hidden behind passwords, and buried
in zip files. Perhaps the reason being that much assignment work is of little
use to anybody else – is it then of any use to the student?

There are of course many examples of people trying new
approaches, for example using open source software development as a model for a
course where students ‘build’ something that future students continue to build
upon (http://newmedia.colorado.edu/cscl/61.pdf).
Another is the move towards the concept of
‘communities of practice’ where people “engage in a process of
collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor” (http://www.ewenger.com/theory/) and
students learning in a particular domain are seen as part of the larger
community of people working in that subject area. It is this approach that was
taken when a new qualification in the area of e-teaching was being established
as part of a New Zealand
government funded eCDF (http://www.tec.govt.nz/funding/strategic/ecdf/ecdf.htm)
project.

The qualification was aimed at both teachers and support
staff involved in e-teaching (http://www.e-teaching.ac.nz/), and it was decided
early on in the development phase that the qualifications should be delivered
in the context of a community of practice, where students and practitioners
could interact together in an online community, and build a knowledge resource
that would be of use to the wider e-teaching fraternity.

A problem that many institutions would face with taking this
approach is the fact that their e-learning platforms are tied into commercial
licenses based on number of users. To attempt to license these systems for an unknown
number of users for an unlimited period of time would make the system providers
eyes light up, but could provide some budget problems for the institution
involved! The host institution for the e-teaching qualification, Christchurch
College of Education used an open source e-learning platform (http://www.interactlms.org/) so this was
not an issue. The open source nature of the platform also meant that a number
of modifications could be made to the system to meet the needs of the new
qualification.

Along with the usual forum/chat/publishing type functions
found in an e-learning/online community platform the following key requirements
were identified:

• Allow
  access to the community areas to the public
• Separate
  ‘spaces’ for community and course activities
• Allow
  the pushing out of content created in course areas to the wider community.
• The
  ability to restrict access to certain areas to community members, or
  specific course members
• Provide
  community members with a personal space for storing resources, conducting
  private discussions, etc.
• Allow
  members to create e-portfolios from resources in personal space and across
  the community for use in assessment and for personal resumes, etc.
• Allow
  canvassing of wider community for participants for course based
  activities/projects.
• Provide
  matching functionality to match members with similar interests and provide
  them with a space to interact.

As at the writing of this paper the majority of this
functionality was available, either in a production or beta state, with the
matching functionality still to be coded. The full system is required to be up
and functioning by February 2006, but should be available by the end of 2005. All the above functionality will be included
in the core release of the Interact online learning and community platform
(http://www.interactlms.org/).

Version 0.8 of the eXe editor http://exelearning.org/ has been released

I hope the NZ Ministry of Education is sensible enough to give them another round of funding. IMHO this is one of the only NZ government's eCDF funded projects to produce anything of any lasting value.

New buzzword for the week - Glocalization

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/09/05/why_web20_matte.html

A project that you may be worth following
http://www.flock.com/home/
It is apparently a mozilla based 'social browser' designed to make
local editing of blog posts with drag and drop, etc. possible and also
collecting of tags and other 'social software' type functions possible. A pity it is not open source!

Some good thoughts on Scott Wilson's blog on how a 'Personal Learning Environment' might look

http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20050831112123