Sustainable Sustainability

Yesterday I finally took all of the cardboard boxes from the garage to the recycling center. After only four months (since moving here) I somehow managed to fill half of one bay. Arriving at the recycling center, I found ten or so large dumpsters with sliding doors in the lids. Looking to see which one [...]

What do you bring to the Table?

  Making the dip, originally uploaded by MonkeyEggplant. Found this pic on Flickr of a someone’s special dip they brought to a potluck. Open Content is kinda like a potluck. You can always count on some people to bring chips to the potluck – they’re fast, cheap, and easy. They don’t require much effort so [...]

I need Flash on my iPod Touch

Steve Jobs, President of Apple – makers of the top-selling iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad – has stated they will not use Flash with their hand-held technology. Flash has become the de facto standard for delivering online media including video, games, and animation. Hulu uses Flash, Scribd uses Flash, TeacherTube, Slideshare, StudyMate and many other [...]

Extending the Virtual Classroom

The LMS of today is too confining a virtual learning environment. Such closed systems lock out all but those officially enrolled in the course. The emerging LMS needs to accommodate others in addition to students and faculty, allowing learners to benefit from interaction with a broader network and community of practice. Last semester, as part [...]

The Future of Online Learning

I predict that in ten years there will be no such thing as “online learning”. There will be only learning; all learning will be to some degree online. Students will choose to what degree based upon their personal learning preferences and the availability of course sections in relation to their location and schedule. Sloan-C recently [...]

Here comes Open Content

Each year New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative publish the Horizon Report, listing emerging technologies for teaching & learning and predicting the time-to-adoption for education. The report lists the technologies to watch into three time frames: one year or less, two to three years, and three to five years. in this year’s report: One [...]

My Spanish Language PLE

On the last day of late registration the thought occurred to me that I might register for a Beginning Spanish class, but then I remembered what a pain in the ass it was the last time I wanted to sign up for a single course. Admittedly, if it wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment decision, if I [...]

The “New Normal” for Instructional Technology

Recently, a faculty member asked what I thought about the use of Web 2.0 technologies as opposed to the standard campus solutions for teaching and learning. I was reminded of just how much things have changed since I first began an instructional technologist. Back in the day I would have advised sticking with the campus [...]

Academic Technology

We just finished a two-year project migrating from WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 to Vista 4x (now 8x) at our university. We enjoyed a fair amount of success. In addition to migrating from one deployment to another which was significantly more complex, we also integrated our CMS with our Luminis portal and Banner student information system. [...]

Trying out Moodle

Over the past couple of years I have attended various instructional technology / e-learning conferences, at which there was a lot of talk about Open Source learning management systems (LMS). Two solutions in particular, Sakai and Moodle, came up time and again. Last fall a grad student in our MISM program agreed to provide a [...]