e-learning 2.0 Infiltrates the Classroom
Disclosure: One of the products listed in this post, Digication, has been a recent R/WW sponsor.
One of the more active markets for web 2.0 is e-learning; for example we've written before about ChinesePod (learning Chinese) and Elgg (social network software for education). Also last August Steve O'Hear wrote a very insightful introduction to e-learning 2.0 for R/WW. As Steve pointed out back then, blogging, podcasting, media sharing and social networking are all well-used in the e-learning world.
What else is out there currently in Internet-based education software? It's time for an update...
Big Internet Companies
You may not be aware of it, but the Internet BigCos all have products in the e-learning segment. Google offers the free Google Apps for Education (includes Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Page Creator, start page). Microsoft has a range of education products (including live.com hosting/email and potential groupware for education), and Apple offers free podcast hosting for education (iTunes U). IBM is also a player in the education sector.
Google seems to be
particularly active in education, amongst the Internet companies. It has Google for Educators, described as
"a platform of teaching resources". Also its Google Enterprise Professional program
has at least one education provider - Blackboard
become the first member of the program to focus primarily on educational
institutions.
Not to mention that online office products can be used to enhance collaboration in an education setting. Google Docs & Spreadsheets for example. In effect, the BigCos are able to leverage their current product range and promote them to schools.
Collaborative E-learning Systems
Elgg, Nuuvo and recently Digication are all examples of collaboration systems. We've already profiled Elgg, so I took the opportunity to interview Digication's Jeffrey Yan to find out what's happening in this sector.
Digication has the expected online classroom features, such as enabling students to submit assignments and teachers to control security settings. Jeff told me that users from over 380 schools have signed up to Digication - and it's been a wide range of education facilities, from kindergarten to school districts to universities. For example, Jeff recently taught a college level course with Digication - using it as a supplement to the traditional classroom. His course only had 12 students and it lasted 6 weeks, but by the end of the course he said there were over 600 messages created by the group.
One pattern Jeff has noticed is that e-learning 2.0 tools are often promoted in a grassroots manner; which when you consider the usual hierarchical academic setting, is an interesting trend. Jeff told me there is a community of users who support these tools and "their approval/disapproval with features, functionality and direction can make or break a [e-learning] company."
As for the near future of collaborative systems, Jeff says that blogs, wikis and podcasts will start to merge with more educationally focused systems in 2007.
Traditional Learning Management System (LMS)
Also known as Virtual Learning
Environments (VLE), examples are Blackboard, Moodle and Sakai
(the latter two are open source) The big commercial software like Blackboard is very 'old
school' and doesn't have much focus on the community aspects of learning. They're also
expensive and are generally seen as clunky and difficult to use - not unlike traditional
Content Management Systems in enterprises (Vignette, InterWoven, et al). They also have a
lot of features that most teachers and students don't want or need.
There are some newcomers that are interesting - call them LMS 2.0 perhaps ;-) As well as Digication and Nuvvo, there is Chalksite and haiku LMS.
Blogs / Wikis / Podcasts / Flickr
Many tech-savvy teachers who keep up with mainstream technologies are maintaining blogs, wikis, Flickr accounts, and so on. The Elgg community is a good example, also edublogs.org and wikispaces.com. Such tools are easy to use and spread quickly and virally. While they don't integrate with school backend systems or address classroom-specific issues such as grading, blogs and wikis are proving very useful in the classroom.
There are also some interesting apps for students popping up, for example a
collaborative note taking app called stu.dicio.us.
Also check out the ReadWriteThink
Printing Press, which enables users to create a newspaper, brochure, etc. So just as
with enterprises, there are a lot of small apps bubbling up and 'infiltrating' the
classroom.
Related
There are many excellent resources in the blogosphere for e-learning 2.0. Here are a few of them:
Infinite Thinking Machine: Best of
2006: The Read/Write Web in Education
ReadWriteThink
SolutionWatch: Back
to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1, Part
2 and Part
3
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I would like to point to the efforts by Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel. He has been using web technologies, including Google Co-op, wikis, etc to teach chemistry at Drexel University.
http://drexel-coas-elearning.blogspot.com/
Nice post Richard.
When I was running feedrollpro.com the biggest cutomer at the time was the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, who were using the service to offer a large number of newsfeeds for syndication from their website, eldis.org. For them RSS powered syndication (in the original sense of the word) enabled them to easily distribute their work widely across the web on shared interest sites, raising their profile and no doubt driving traffic.
Subsequently, I also experimented with another customer in education, where we were using serialized (timed) RSS to distribute class materials, ie. students subscribe to the course feed at the beginning of term and get course notes, presentation materials and even class audio automagaically downloaded via feed enclosures...I guess that makes it Educasting?
Sorry, this is off topic, but I just was to say thanks for your first line:
"Disclosure: One of the products listed in this post, Digication, has been a recent R/WW sponsor."
Wish I saw more of this type of upfront disclosure. Your credibility just went up in my book.
Blackboard.
Bane of my existence.
Our school promotes blackboard as the course management tool, and I use it as a TA only because I think it's good for students to have one source of constant education.
However, most classes do not use it. Why? It's unusable.
The professors I TA for have given up trying to use it and just given me their person USC login information so that I can go onto their accounts & do class administrative actions.
It takes atleast 5 clicks to complete any action.
But someone has managed to convince our lead tech guy that blackboard is "hi-tech," and he's actually proud of it-- we were recently cited in the "Most hi-tech colleges article" and he says blackboard is part of the reasons.
So I'm going to do what I can in my remaining time here to emphasize that Blackboard is nearly counter-productive.
Also, related note, I'm switching many things over to google groups/docs - class mailing lists, task lists, etc.
Hi Pamela,
Just a quick note to say that the website for the Elgg open source social networking platform is http://elgg.org/ - http://elgg.net/ is our flagship educational community. We don't own http://elgg.com.
I'd really appreciate it if you could change the links in your post :)
It's also worth noting that Nuvvo is for sale, effectively taking it out of action.
Ben, apologies for the incorrect links. I've updated them now.
www.carmun.com is another one with a different twist, focusing on utility tools and the sharing of information about books.
Though your post focused eLearning 2.0 for higher education don't forget about the corporate market which has been typically thought of as being far larger both in terms of users and revenue opportunities.
Equally as important is having a discussion around what qualifies as eLearning 2.0 vs what online learning is today. Platforms that enable collaboration have been around for a long time and as you point out few have integrated Web 2.0 solutions like YouTube, Flickr etc. I believe that the magic of 2.0 is it's ability to connect learners together so that they can share their knowledge (learner produced content) in ways that can be leveraged by both others (the wisdom of crowds) and to filter and improve the underlying educational content through rating, ranking and reviews to create life long learning experiences. Elearning 2.0 is about bringing online learning literally to life by putting the learner back into the learning equation.
If eLearning 1.0 was about static content controlled by the content creator then eLlearning 2.0 is about dynamic learning environments, made up of both content and collaboration, that is controlled the learner.
Sincerely,
Ben
Ben Watson
ben.watson@thomson.com
VP, Collaboration - Thomson NETg
http://www.netg.com/experts
Thanks Richard - and my apologies for calling you Pamela :) Serves me right for commenting before I've had my first morning coffee ...
One thing to note on Blackboard that is very damaging to this space -- they adopted a "patent the obvious and sue" business model in the summer of 2005 that, if it stands, will be very damaging to innovation. Details (with links to analysis from eLearning leaders) are on my blog at --
http://elearningskinny.com/blackboard-adopts-a-patent-the-obvious-and-sue-revenue-mode/
Resources for the actual infrastructure of elearning:
http://www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/
Articles and case studies on development and use:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/education/
jd/adobe
Another site to add to your list is http://www.edu20.org. Graham is doing some interesting things there - listen to the podcast to get an idea of where he's going with the site.
A site also to add to the list is http://cnx.org/
from their site:
Connexions is a rapidly growing collection of free scholarly materials and a powerful set of free software tools to help
* authors publish and collaborate
* instructors rapidly build and share custom courses
* learners explore the links among concepts, courses, and disciplines
Excellent article, Richard. Digication sounds interesting. I've heard about it here and there, but haven't looked into it yet. Nice to see Jeff used it with his own students, too.
Keep up the good work and thanks for mentioning the Back to School series!
Great article. I have been researching internet based LMS's recently and inspired by your article i have written a blog about some of the great sites i found.
www.edugator.wordpress.com
I want to add SLoodle, Second life Object-Oriented Distributed Learning Environment. Have a look!
have a look to http://www.landesinteractives.net/default.asp?cnf=2|