Tag: CMS

Hands-on Segue Demo Available

http://www.opensourcecms.com/
modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=74

There’s been a little buzz over the last few months about using blogs as replacements for CMS, and this open source example from Middlebury College is sometimes held up as an example. So I was happy to see that you can get administrator access to a hands on demo through the invaluable OpenSourceCMS site. Thanks to Charlie for the post reminding me to keep going back to this site. – SWL

JISC Study of Managed Learning Environment Activity

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/project_mle_activity.html

Recently (August 2003) published report on the state of affaris in the U.K. around Managed Learning Environments (MLEs).

My understanding of MLEs – whereas the Brits speak of ‘virtual learning environments’ (or VLEs) as roughly the equivalent of what we call ‘course management systems,’ MLEs are more like what you get when you add in single sign on, access to a student information system, potentially a portal system and any number of other integrated student service technologies. (Somewhat unsurprisingly, they reported that “the term ‘MLE’ is rarely if ever used, although a general and shared understanding of its definition is common. Within institutions, systems are considered primarily from a functional perspective…”)
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WebCT Vista demonstrates Open Knowledge Initiative support

http://www.webct.com/service/ViewContent?contentID=18218512

“In the demonstration, the WebCT Vista academic enterprise system automatically synchronized calendars with Microsoft Outlook using the OKI authentication and scheduling OSIDs, or APIs, to exchange data. This would enable both calendars to be simultaneously updated by updating one.”

This probably doesn’t seem like much, but in theory the promise held by widespread OKI OSID support is much greater. If such support were to be found in even a couple of the major CMS players (as well as one or two viable open source projects,) the barrier to entry for discipline-specific or pedagogic-specific application developers suddenly gets much lower, as they can focus on their application’s core functionality and not on re-building it to work with each of the different proprietary APIs. It’s perhaps unfortunate, though, that they chose the application they did to illustrate their implementation of the OSIDs. – SWL

California State University Signs System Wide Deal with Blackboard Inc.

http://www.cpwire.com/archive/2003/9/24/1396.asp

“The California State University system has adopted the Blackboard Learning System and the Blackboard Portal System to meet the e-Education needs of more than 414,000 students and 46,000 faculty and staff.”

Wow. There have been quite a few large CMS RFPs and competitions over the last year (Wisconsin, Minnesota, MiCTA to name a few) but California’s always the biggie. I seem to think, though, that this announcement is more a formalization of something that had already been happening at many of the campuses concerned, and so maybe isn’t quite the coup it first sounds to be. – SWL

– via [Online Learning Update]

Keynote Speech on Literacy and Learning Technologies from Eurocall03

http://iet.open.ac.uk/pp/r.goodfellow/Euroc03/talk.htm

This is the text of the keynote speech at the recent European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning in Limerick, Ireland. The speech is by Dr. Robin Goodfellow (no, not that other guy) of the UK Open University. It’s longish but I found it worth the read, in part because there were lots of useful references to be picked up along the way. And I must say that where the paper ends up got the cultural theorist in me stirred up a bit

“Thus we arrive at the conclusion that the literacies of online learning environments, for all the revolutionary and progressive claims, continue to be constructed by, and in turn to construct, the discourses and forms of social action of the embodied world, in particular of the institutions, corporations, schools, colleges, and universities, very largely English-speaking and technology-owning, in whose interests the globalisation of education is proceeding”

It’s pretty easy not to talk about these issues. Much harder to not just ‘go along.’ I’m mostly berating myself on this point. It’s 3 in the morning. Good night. – SWL

Jay Cross’ Notes on LMS presentation by Bryan Chapman (from Brandon Hall group)

Jay Cross is blogging the VNU Supplier Summit. There are lots of nuggets in his notes, and of particular interest to me was the session by Bryan Chapman, an LMS analyst with Brandon Hall, who had some numbers associated with average LMS license prices.
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Government gives One Million Euros towards Claroline development

http://www.claroline.net/news.php#28

This summer Claroline released version 1.4 which has many new features, not least of which is an ever expanding list of languages it supports. Their credits page also has the look of an open source CMS project that is actually taking off! This recent announcement of additional investment is great news for this project, and for open source CMS in general. – SWL