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Jill Walker's description of an easy to use QwikiWiki is just a piece of what she describes like assembling her own bits of small technologies loosely joined:
So I’m thinking Blogger.com blogs (no comment spam, no setup for me, they own it completely; no trackbacks but c’mon, comment spam is too high a price to pay), a fictional “reality show” project in Flickr (no, I’ve not quite figured that one out yet, but I can just feel that it’d be cool), make something collaboratively in a wiki, maybe contribute something to the Norwegian version of the WikiPedia, and then the standard group website project but using a web-based project management site to experience that kind of group interaction, and hopefully, help the groups to work together better. And no, the university’s CMS won’t do all those things. No single system will.
(Emphasis added). Is there anything radically new about a teacher selecting from a wide range of sources (rather than a "one size fits al" approach) the best resources and methodologies to help her students learn? Isnt this been what good teachers have done for centuries?
This is how the internet game is played by the best, CDB readers. It is pulling together a loosely collection of often free, discrete tools that can do things your bloated, creaky enterprise systems would not consider until the 18th fiscal quarter. It is accepting that the technology may fail (and living with that) or may need to be changed. It is a new technology world order, of chaos, movement, things that go bump in the night... It is how the world operates. It is not for everybody, but the sooner we can move people towards acceptance of this reality, the better.
Get with the game.
blogged December 14, 2004 08:51 AM :: category [ wide world of blog ]Just turned in fall quarter grades. I guess that explains why I'm in commenting mode today.
I like to think that answers to many technology policy issues don't necessarily require "new" thinking. Rather, they often simply require us to recognize basic concepts and principles that have long been fundamental to education.
For example. the notion that a single vendor (or open source) CMS is going to be the one best option for everyone in all situations defies logic and history. Imagine the uproar if an institution tried to tell faculty that they could only require texts from a single approved publisher? Or imagine a decree that only books could be used as resources - no video, no sound, no slides, etc. Yet somehow it seems reasonable to some that we could require all faculty to use a single CMS - for all types of classes, all disciplines, all teaching styles?
Good educators effectively use a wide variety of tools that they know are most appropriate for the learning situation at hand, and they integrate and move among them as needed. One incorporates outside study assignments, lecture, discussion, individual and group projects into an effective learning experience.
Dan
Commented by: Dan Mitchell on December 14, 2004 02:10 PM