Image Source: http://www.biol.sc.edu/~vogt/courses/neuro/dendrite.jpg

What a great conversation that was had over at George Siemens blog (linked below)…I could say I missed it originally (not true) but that wouldn’t be accurate. The truth was, I skimmed it, promised myself I’d come back to it, and never did. Since I had time earlier today, I went through highlighting some of the points that jumped out at me as relevant.

Image Source: Moodle is an Airport, not a total solution and
Moodle 2.0 Tools or Web 2.0 Alternatives

What do I think? Well, it’s a tough one. Like the image above suggests, Moodle just doesn’t measure up to dedicated solutions (e.g. blog, wiki). Yet, it does provide the opportunity to introduce people in K-12 learning environments to those tools in a “safe” environment. This is essential.

In K-12 education, there’s a clear need to focus on content-centric course management systems. Even though tools like Moodle are used as content-centric tools to run people through a predetermined set of activities designed to facilitate “online learning,” we’ve seen an explosion in self-directed learning that’s enhanced by people making connections with each other as if dendrites were reaching out to each other. In K-12, though, it’s clear that self-directed learning–where people build professional learning networks, connect via Twitter and blogs, and Nings–hasn’t caught on completely yet. I predict another 5 years at least until the technology makes such networks unavoidable, or impossible to live without.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to see an explosion of Moodle use in K-12, not only because it’s a transitional technology, but because Moodle is adaptable to a variety of pedagogy/andragogy employed, allows for walled garden scenarios that enable K-12 to be CIPA compliant (something our college brethren have less to be concerned about with their eager embrace of ELGG, Facebook, and other tools).

Another point to consider is that Moodle itself is evolving, making it possible for educators to continue to lean on it as it scaffolds their growth and expansion into the kinds of connected learning many of us recognize as possible and engage in daily.

•  Future of learning: LMS or SNS? « Connectivism
  • First: Most organizations currently use a learning management system (LMS) such as Moodle or Desire2Learn. These systems are content-centric. Their objective is to organize and manage content, just as Google did in early 2000. Because higher education is particularly enamored with content, an LMS is a critical service. It’s completely the wrong model, however, and this will become increasingly apparent in the next several years.
  • ELGG is an excellent alternative to an LMS, but most organizations are not yet willing to accept a network-centric tool as an alternative to Moodle
  • ELGG is a better model of what learning will/should look like than any of the current contenders in the space. And yes, for you open-source lovers of Drupal and WordPress, I include those software tools in the “not as good as” category.
  • Joseph Thibault says:

    November 11, 2009 at 1:27 pm
  • On another note, perhaps my biggest gripe is that we’ve provided teachers this AWESOME tool to structure courses and content that could easily be used by other teachers, but the software locks it down (or at least, it provides tools that are easily configured to “close” the content to the outside). Sure there are Moodle course exchanges, but far and wide content is closed to outsiders, difficult to procure (even if a backup is available) and not available as OER. Imagine if all the content created in Moodle were open? THAT would be a great asset to the educational community and would be ripe to transition past the “build today use for 3 years model” to more of a social approach (where the best content floats to the top of social interactions because it’s freely available).
  • Beverley Oliver says:

    November 13, 2009 at 9:11 pm
  • Here’s a thought, though…do many of the LMSs and other systems give the control of the space to the learner? (It’s a genuine question-I don’t know the answer). In the limited examples that I see and hear of, as per some of these comments, the teacher has the overriding authority to lock down or open up, so their ‘teaching paradigm’ rules. At present, at Curtin University, we are building an eportfolio system which (like others) gives control to the student–not only to post, but to form their own groups within and beyond the university and so on. This means the learner’s ‘learning paradigm’ rules, and because it’s not an LMS, the scope is not bound by enrolment in a particular course.
  • Jude Rathburn says:

    November 28, 2009 at 1:19 am
  • I am wondering whether you think the social networking model should be more open than what most universities can currently offer in their LMS. Issues such as user authentication (making sure that everyone who enters the space is a registered user) and privacy (protecting students’ rights to know who is viewing their posts) – seems to make it less likely that LMS will adopt an open social networking model. While I think there may be some value to having folks from outside the university participate in discussions, it seems like it might be very hard to manage the complexity.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.