Flexknowlogy – Jared Stein

Notes taken at Distance Teaching and Learning Conference 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Presenters: Tina Parscal, Maureen Hencmann

Session presents an extremely brief overview of cognitive apprenticeship. Uses obnoxious, unnecessary terms “more knowledgeable other” (MKO) instead of “expert”, and “less knowledgable other” (LKO) instead of learner.

Implementation aspects of cognitive apprenticeship educational approach:
Content
Modeling
Coaching
Scaffolding and fading
Articulation
Exploration
Reflection

Let learners decide what tools to use to solve a problem

Idea for application: Would it be neat to give 3 lessons that are optional, and give 3 different projects that may use some or all of those lessons?)

As part of cognitive apprenticeship, “facilitators” should “encourage discovery”. Learners should “Learn to learn”

Does this help learners learn? If so, why? Does it cement or reinforce the important information or skills?

Prompt students to seek answers in a (general) document (learn to navigate the course and use resources–not spoon feeding).

Is this annoying, inefficient? Is there a faster way to deliver the information? Or is learning to navigate a system (that they may never use again, or use infrequently) that important? (Counterpoint: you could send them to a system that they should use, but is this now an information management task? E.g. Google, Wikipedia, etc. Is that appropriate here, or better in a learning skills course? Do computer literacy courses require this?)

Write good questions and robust feedback.
Discussion – articulation, reflection, exploration

In a lot of ways, my DGM 2120 and 2740 courses are modeled on cognitive apprenticeship, though I’ve found that in 2120 greater structuring was necessary.

Course design has a lot of cute representative icons relating to the content. Are these useful? Will these symbols be used beyond the course? I’m always looking for how what we learn or do in class is applicable beyond the class. That’s the epitome of education.

Shows off interactive Flash “office” to simulate a few questions principals might have to deal with daily, with MC options for responses to e-mail, phone call.

Presenters walk through these pretty intensively, but I got lost thinking about the tool and the scenario as a learner. Participants need to be reminded to think about this as an example to reflect upon as an educator. We do reflect on this at the end.

Break into groups for corrabolative discussion.

Exit, Mr. Stein.

I’ve been itching to write a post on “edupunk” since Jim Groom first added the term to our edtech lexicon. The term “edupunk” is both provocative and deeper than it seems, and so it deserves the benefit of a close analysis. My problems with “edupunk” have been:

1. I have a hard enough time converting faculty to use edtech as it is; a label like “edupunk” will only further alienate those faculty. And as john Krutsch suggested, “cliques suck, especially when you are on the outside”.
2. “edupunk” presumes a politik that Mr. Downes has already claimed as “progressive”, but that is too exclusive for me. (I am not “a progressive” [but it's amusing how vilifying that statement sounds--"liberal" was far more neutral, though admittedly it had gained some negative connotations in the last several decades. Ergh, I digress.]), and implies a knee-jerk or overgeneralized anti-establishment/anti-corporate mentality that I am not willing to fully accept.

There might be other reasons for my distaste. I may be taking the term in an altogether too personal context, for as a youth I was pretty active in the punk music scene, but I wasn’t ever on the inside of punk. You see, my friends who were into the cookie-cutter punk politico dug a lot of my libertarian ideals, but didn’t understand my capitalism, and my Brave New World “elitist” interpretation that conservative/traditionalism is served by (if not necessitates) punk-type counter-culture just as punk-type counter-culture is served by conservative/traditionalism. Even if we had a utopia (by anybody’s definition), we would always need an other, and some other’s are more harmless than others. Also, punk itself is not so punk as it would like to think it is–as I suggested, it’s often cookie-cutter, it’s often whiny or anti-corporate, and not because of strong ideals as much as it is because of failure or missed opportunities to exploit the corporate system for it’s own benefit. Most “punk” bands will “sell-out” if they get the chance. Sell-outs are sell-outs, and “true punk” treats them as such, maintaining a superficial fraternity with the black-white-black-sheep punk bands through artificial sub-labels like “pop punk”.

It may be that some edtech’ers feel the same way about educators who toe the corporate line, and thus find “edupunk” a great metaphor for their societal angst. While I have plenty of of my own societal angst, it rarely fits under any the de facto “edupunk” political posturing. At the same time, I’ve found that I can sit down with edtech’ers on the other side of the political fence and agree a lot on issues of educational strategies and philosophies for technological adoption, which makes Ken Carroll’s suggestion the more useful and bridge-building: “I would not recommend that we politicize learning 2.0″. Let politics stump us when it can; I’m here to make teaching and learning better and easier.

But at the same time, the DIY, question-authority aspect of edupunk is not only attractive to me, it resonates with my daily activities–to an extent. Martin Weller nailed the middle path (my emphasis):

it’s not about being an edupunk, but rather preserving some area of what you do where you can do edupunk kinda stuff … universities and educators need to have edupunk time – a period when you can explore stuff away from the mass of concerns that arise.

Martin suggests 10% of your day for edupunk time, i.e. innovation, experimentation, DIY, whatever. I wouldn’t do it for less than 33.33333%.

Unexpectedly, I began reading a lot of blogs this evening when I was supposed to be going home thanks to Darren Draper’s summative review highlighting criticisms of and ideas to improve Steve Hargadon’s trailblazing Edubloggercon 2008. Just as with Educause ELI 2008, I learned a lot about ed tech conferencing (or unconferencing) from a conference I didn’t even attend thanks to blogs and Twitter. I read these reviews greedily, as I am anxious to continue to morph the Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange into one of the most engaging ed tech conferences for presenters and participants.

So I’ve collected here a bunch of quotes that speak to the good and the bad of Edubloggercon in it’s first two years that I personally am going to think about as we begin planning TTIX 09. As I said, I wasn’t at Edugbloggercon so I can’t speak to the accuracy, yet I do think they communicate something about ed tech conferencing in general.

Content

Didn’t we talk about this stuff last year? And the year before? Not to mention in many places online in the interim?

Tim Stahmer

[Get] outside the echo chamber… I look at the title of the session above and think: Yeah…we know that.

Jeff Utecht

[This year's conference was] more about tools and vendors than about the real work of getting our brains around how learning and networks and the very essence of how teaching and schools are being pushed by the shifts that are occurring.

Will Richardson

Structure

Start … with a set of questions, and then ask attendees … to collaborate in answering those questions from what they’ve learned from the conversations

David Warlick

Set up a space with two (or more) mini-presentation areas (not unlike the bloggers cafe actually), many “round tables” for people to retreat to for further conversation (this is key!), and plenty of power and wi-fi. … [Impromptu facilitators] sign up for [5-15 minute] time slots at the presentation areas

Mark Wagner

Engagement & Participation

…the breakout groups were too large which turned what should have been conversations into something more like panel discussions

Tim Stahmer

[In the informal area of the Blogger's Cafe] multiple conversations could occur and overlap – and we were able to ‘play’ in a serendipitous fashion

Mark Wagner

[At Blogger's Cafe] I would engage in a conversation to my right, over hear something on my left and turn and join that conversation.

Jeff Utecht

…the scanty fortunate [engaged in the impromptu 'edupunk-esque' sessions at Blogger's Cafe] … represent less than 1% of the people that actually attended EduBloggerCon. Moreover, as others gradually attempted to join in on this cocktail party of learning, when the party became too large, those that were truly invited quickly dispersed…

Darren Draper

[Last year] the focus was on having conversations with people without the intrusion of [technologically mediated] methods of communication. … The back channel … got in the way.

Vinnie Vrotny

It felt more like Monday than Saturday…

Will Richardson

That last quote is my favorite–I think ed tech conferences should be more fun and relaxed than a Saturday, yet be more productive and enlightening than a Monday.

John K. read these quotes and mused, “Where do we take these ideas?” I’ll think that through myself over the next little while, and let any readers post their comments to assist.

The office bought ASUS EeePC 900s for Marc Hugentobler, John Krutsch, and me, and this tidy little tool deserves a review.

My review will be a little different from John and Ben Krutsch’s review, as I almost immediately set about wiping the Xandros Linux operating system (OS) and installed Ubuntu Linux, which I am using on several other computers.

Specs of EeePC 900

Review

The ASUS EeePC 900 is a compact, fairly light, surprisingly powerful notebook that will suit the needs of nearly any mobile dekstop computing user, providing they have good manual dexterity and eyesight.

Strengths:

• Small width and depth
• Good resolution for the size (1024 x 600)
• Sufficient USB ports (3) & SD card slot
• VGA video out
• Fairly lightweight
• Fast boot up (< 1min) and application starts
• No moving hard drive to farm
• Bright screen in normal, indoor lighting

Weaknesses:

• Average height
• Small screen requires good vision (disclaimer: my colleague John Krutsch has a visual impairment but did not complain about the readability of the screen size)
• Keyboard is a little awkward and uncomfortable for my hands
• Not as lightweight as I’d expected
• Limited storage space (I’ve set aside the 16gb 2nd memory for my storage space.
• Achromatic chassis may be boring to some
• No Bluetooth or WAN

It’s fair to say I have high expectations for laptops/notebooks. I’ve owned half-a-dozen different brands of laptops (Panasonic, Dell, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Lenovo, Texas Instruments/Acer), and so far my favorites have been Lenovo, Fujitsu, and Dell, in that order. In fact, I now own two Lenovos which I use 90% of the time—a Thinkpad T60 for my “desktop replacement” with a docking station, and a Thinkpad x60s as my writing notebook.

Because the EeePC was predicted to replace my Thinkpad x60s in my workflow I reviewed the EeePC in comparison. It’s important to keep in mind that the EeePC costs three times less than the Thinkpad x60s, and ASUS certainly didn’t intend for it to be a competitor of these higher-end laptops. I run Ubuntu 8.4 on my Thinkpad, and for the basic word processing and Web/Internet apps I used there is very little noticeable advantage to the Thinkpad in terms of speed, which is a strong mark for the EeePC.

The battery life of my charged EeePC was labeled at approximately 6 hours, though I will update this information tonight after I let it run down.

Obviously the Thinkpad has a larger screen and a full-size keyboard, and so it wins there hands down—by comparison, typing on the EeePC was painful, though the more I type with it the easier it becomes.. What really startled me upon comparison was how insignificant the weight difference was between the EeePC 900 and the Thinkpad x60s—the Thinkpad was a mere 6 oz heavier—not enough to really notice.

So while the EeePC is a compact tool of considerable computing power at an unbeatable price, it’s small size can be weighed as a disadvantage in terms of screen and keyboard usability. For my purposes, it’s not significantly lighter or more convenient than my Thinkpad x60s, and so to facilitate my writing work I will probably stick with the latter. I expect the EeePC to be very convenient, however, to keep in my office as a highly portable, on-demand notebook for toting around campus to meetings and appointments.

Applications for E-Learning

The most prominent application for learning with EeePCs comes from their low pricetag. At ~$400 USD I could imagine these being standard equipment for jr. high or high school students. If my son’s school had an established plan for integrating use of notebook computers into the daily curriculum, I would have no problem shelling out the money for one of these. Presuming that these could be used for at least 2 years, probably 3-4 if any memory expansions become available, the bang-for-the-buck potential is high.

The Xandros and the Ubuntu distributions come with Firefox for the Web, OpenOffice for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, and Ubuntu comes with GIMP for image editing–this open source suite alone provides users with significant opportunities to learn and create right out of the box.

Collaboration or other connected learning opportunities are less apparent, but I think it’s worth considering further, even to the point that ed tech bloggers come up with a “best practices” list of ways to support engaged learning through these and other laptops (something the OLPC focuses on with Sugar).

Continuing from yesterday’s post, 31 Out of 95 E-Learning Ideas Ain’t Bad, here’s the second half of my pick of the strongest e-learning ideas found in Patti Shank’s useful book, The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning.

17. Use electronic flash cards (p 184). (Coincidentally, @KenWoodward and I are working on providing an extremely reusable flash cards app for both desktop Web browsers and handheld devices.)
18. Drag-and-drop activities for self-assessment within a lesson (p 194).
19. Use pre- and post-assessments to demonstrate the value of the e-learning (p 205).
20. Provide flowchart(s) to illustrate processes (p 216). (I’ve found these are easy to create in most spreadsheet programs.)
21. As part of prototyping and design, write a learner scenario to describe possible interactions with e-learning (p 221).
22. Tap into learners’ “emotional brain” with personalized learning models (Concrete experience; Reflective observation; Abstract hypothesis; Active testing) (p 226). (This model is similar to Stevick’s Observe – Span – Do, which I’ve found to be effective in language learning.)
23. Use content templates to rapidly turn out lesson pages with a consistent look and feel (p 228; p 232).
24. Use concept maps and causal loops for navigation as an alternative to linear navigation for complex concepts (p 240). (I do recall some early studies of hypertextual learning suggested that non-linear navigation is risky at best.)
25. Embed hyperlinks to glossary entries within the lesson content (p 249).
26. Provide a printable summary of lesson content as a study aid (p 265).
27. Develop a virtual campus to help wholly distance learners orient themselves and feel connected (p 287).
28. Use visuals to show relationships between course concepts (p 291).
29. Slow down or speed up motion to demonstrate complex physical skills (p 301).
30. Create an interactive, multidimensional timeline for subjects such as history that weave events in places and times (p 308).
31. Use still and interactive graphics for complex or obscure physical concepts (e.g. atoms, cells, galaxies, tidal pools) (p 312; 315; 318; 321; 324).

These 31 ideas are the choicest out of Shank’s 95+ picks. Note that I’ve written 95+; Shank explains at the end that there are more than 95 ideas in this book, despite the title. She suggests that the element of surprise can help learning along, yet at the same time she notes that she herself wouldn’t have noticed, and the book doesn’t even number the ideas so that you could know there were more than 95. Really, who’s going to be keeping count in their head?

Length and those minor complaints aside, I recommend this book to instructional designers or technology-minded teachers, if only to see the screen-shots illustrating the most useful and innovative ideas.

Patti Shank has put together The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning, an annotated collection of 95+ examples of e-learning tools, scenarios, or applications. Her book delivers best-practices in e-learning in a format that is both accessible and well-illustrated. And while I am glad she put this book together as it will be especially useful to those just getting into the field of e-learning, my general reaction to the book was that it is too long, being packed with a number of examples that are either redundant or simply common sense.

I might correct myself on that last point to include “common sense” ideas that are of significant value; yet even so, I think I could edit Shank’s book down to simply 31 useful and noteworthy ideas for technology-enhanced teaching. My version would include just the following.

1. Provide a detailed, weekly study schedule (p 16).
2. Embed performance tips to direct study and discipline toward learner success (p 20).
3. Anonymous weekly surveys to collect formative feedback (p 31).
4. Have contingency plans in place for learning in the case of technology failure (p 39).
5. Explain discussion message protocols to keep students focused and comfortable in forums (p 78).
6. Let learners evaluate their own contributions to the course through online quizzes or surveys (p 82).
7. Use tables as graphical organizers to illustrate relationships between information or concepts (p 94).
8. Ask students to enter their answer and compare it to an expert’s response (p 101).
9. You mouse rollovers to show ancillary info, allowing students to learn more about topics or passages (p 105), or use collapsible layers for text or illustrations (p 244).
10. Share bookmarks to web sites online (p 112). (Surprisingly, del.icio.us or other online tools were not mentioned.)
11. Show an expert’s view of a question or issue surrounding a topic (p 118).
12. Use a table, or Word’s track changes for easy peer editing (p 132).
13. Moderate student chat rooms (p 142). (They recommend a “knowledgeable assistant”, but I say that’s the teacher’s job!)
14. Use word games, such as 5 summative words that start with the same vowel to reinforce concepts (p 161). (I like acrostics, such as are found in the Nintendo DS game, Brain Age 2.)
15. In synchronous lectures, let learners determine the order in which topics are presented (Gordon MacKenzie-style) (p 163).
16. Use games and puzzles to review (e.g. crosswords, fill-in-the-blank (p 180). (I recommend our GameGarten, aka The Play Station hosted by John Krutsch.)

I’ll stop at number 16 to give you the information in two manageable chunks. Chunking is one idea that I think is pretty useful in e-learning, though it is overlooked in The Online Learning Book. I’ll post the last 15 strong ideas on this blog tomorrow.

It looks like I’ll be presenting at the 2008 MoodleMoot San Francisco, June 9 – 11, 2008 South San Francisco Conference Center on our Open Mod for sharing open educational resources. I’ll be dragging Kenneth Woodward along to explain the technical facets of the mod, and to delve into the community of Moodle developers.

Of course, prior to the conference Ken and I will have to work pretty aggressively with Clark Nielsen and John Krutsch to ensure that the mod’s features and functionalities are stable and presentable.

Marc Hugentobler, John Krutsch, and I will be presenting our online cheating sessions a couple times this summer, and would like to welcome everyone to attend:

1. The Cheatability Factor at Distance Teaching and Learning 2008, Madison, Wisconsin
2. How to Cheat Online & The Cheatability Factor at Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange 2008, Orem, Utah

Here are some details, reproduced from the proposals:

Promotional Summary

What is your online course’s “cheatability factor”? 75% of students have admitted to cheating during their college career, and according to some studies online assessment makes cheating easier. This session considers technical, philosophical, and environmental factors that may increase or decrease the cheatability of online courses from design to delivery, and presents a rubric used to assess those factors.

Objectives and Description

Presentation objectives:

Participants will..

1. Discover the extent to which cheating-related problems exist in online education and online-based assessments
2. Consider factors that may contribute technologically, philosophically, or environmentally to online cheating
3. Examine a rubric used to measure the “cheatability” of online course
4. Discuss practices and strategies to avoid or minimize the impact of cheating

Presentation description:

Nobody wants students cheating in their online class, yet an estimated 75% of students have admitted to cheating during their college career, and according to some studies online assessment makes cheating easier. The problem is not only one of practical importance for educators, it is one of growing importance to instructional technologists, administrators, and anyone else with a vested interest in the validity and reputation of distance education and technology-enhanced teaching.

This session will first present information and collected research data that summarizes the state of cheating in higher education in general, and in distance education specifically. While a general awareness of the pervasiveness of cheating may be in and of itself an eye-opener to many educators and administrators, the motivations behind cheating and the responsibility teachers have to recognize their own influence on cheating can provide an alternative perspective on what is normally considered a quite simple choice. McClusky’s theory of Power-Load-Margin, for instance, informs teachers of the impact they may have on students’ lives, and the impact students’ lives have on their studies, both of which can lead students to choose to cheat. A number of environmental factors are particularly salient in online courses, such as ambiguity of definitions of cheating, actual or perceptual “distance”, level of instructor-student interaction, individual relevance or meaningfulness of activities and assessments, etc. Additionally, there are a number of more technical and technological factors that can increase or decrease both a student’s propensity to cheat, and his/her ability to cheat.

By considering these technical, methodological, and environmental factors, Distance Education at Utah Valley University has developed a rubric to assess online courses and report on potential factors that may increase or decrease the cheatability of online courses from design to delivery. This rubric is (1) provided to teachers engaging in distance education course development or instruction, (2) made available to administrators and department chairs as an example of our mutual interest in preserving the integrity of online education, and (3) implemented internally as a tool in our course design process to better evaluate and recommend online assessments before, during, and after an online course is delivered.

Because cheating itself is a complex and sensitive issue informed by experience and diverse perspectives, this session seeks to engage participants in a dialogue on cheating, online assessments, and technology. We predict there will be naturally flowing discussion and debate between participants who may favor one approach over another, e.g. a “direct assault” approach which seeks to thwart any and all attempts at cheating using technology or applied strategies, vs. “hearts and minds” pedagogical approaches that focus on course environment, assessment design, and student engagement.

This article is an attempt to objectively define the phrase “creepy treehouse” as coined by Chris Lott, and in current usage by ed tech folks such as Scott Leslie, Marc Hugentobler, John Krutsch, and others. I plan to follow up with a post on my perspective on CTH in the field of educational technology.

creepy treehouse

see also creepy treehouse effect

n. A place, physical or virtual (e.g. online), built by adults with the intention of luring in kids.

Example: “Kids … can see a [creepy treehouse] a mile away and generally do a good job in avoiding them.” John Krutsch in Are You Building a Creepy Treehouse?”

n. Any institutionally-created, operated, or controlled environment in which participants are lured in either by mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments, or by force, through a system of punishments or rewards.

Such institutional environments are often seen as more artificial in their construction and usage, and typically compete with pre-existing systems, environments, or applications. creepy treehouses also have an aspect of closed-ness, where activity within is hidden from the outside world, and may not be easily transferred from the environment by the participants.

n. Any system or environment that repulses a target user due to it’s closeness to or representation of an oppressive or overbearing institution.

n. A situation in which an authority figure or an institutional power forces those below him/her into social or quasi-social situations.

With respect to education, Utah Valley University student Tyrel Kelsey describes, “creepy treehouse is what a professor can create by requiring his students to interact with him on a medium other than the class room tools. [E.g.] requiring students to follow him/her on peer networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook.”

adj. Repulsiveness arising from institutional mimicry or emulation of pre-existing community-driven environments or systems.

Example: “Blackboard Sync is soooo creepy treehouse.” Marc Hugentobler

In the field of educational technology a creepy treehouse is an institutionally controlled technology/tool that emulates or mimics pre-existing technologies or tools that may already be in use by the learners, or by learners’ peer groups. Though such systems may be seen as innovative or problem-solving to the institution, they may repulse some users who see them as infringement on the sanctity of their peer groups, or as having the potential for institutional violations of their privacy, liberty, ownership, or creativity. Some users may simply object to the influence of the institution.

I’ve been observing this phenomena increasingly, as instructors push down hot Web 2.0 technologies, while students push back with vocal objections or passive resistance. I call this the creepy treehouse effect.

More directly, any move to integrate or aggregate new institutional tools or systems with pre-existing tools or systems already embraced by the community may be seen as creepy treehouse, in as much as it may be construed as institutional infringement upon the social or professional community of it’s participants.

For example, the Blackboard family of learning management system products are often seen as creepy treehouses, as they provide e-learning tools in a very rigid, closed environment that is institutionally controlled in an attempt to “engage” students through technological novelty or mimicry of existing Web-based tools for social engagement. Increasingly, learning management systems are incorporating what educators assess as being potentially valuable learning tools such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, instant messaging, etc., not recognizing that these tools may be seen as artificial, meaningless, tiresome, temporary, or simply another aspect of The Man by the institution’s target participant group: the students.

At the same time, other LMS tools that are more exclusively related to the traditional activity of teaching (e.g. gradebooks, online quizzing, material posting, etc) are not viewed as inherently creepy treehouse. Tyrel Kelsey suggests:

Students reject creepy treehouses for one reason: they are creepy. I think a better approach to education is the idea of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) … which [students] can invite the professor into when they feel comfortable doing so.

In Students should build their own tree house

Creepy treehouses are not limited to the realm of education or educational technology. In the computer software environment, for instance, Microsoft Office Live is likely to be judged as creepy treehouse relative to Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho, not due entirely to it’s competitiveness or the relative similarities of the products, but more to the origination of the software: Microsoft is often seen as a controlling, soulless, self-centered institution, whereas Zoho and Google are seen as not only preceding Microsoft Live, but also open, user-centered, community-driven, or alternative.

Opinions in the community as to the creepy treehouse-ness of a given system or environment may vary greatly due to the subjectiveness of individual experiences. I expect that newly introduced tools, systems, or environments are more likely to be suspect and labeled “creepy treehouse”, though over time such systems may prove to have more salient long-term value to the community than anticipated.

I’ve read a number of blog posts and articles about learning management systems (LMS) and personal learning environments (PLE) as of late. LMSs, once the darling of educational technologists, have been getting a sound thwacking inspired by the recent Blackboard patent lawsuit victory. In almost a stars-aligning continuity, PLEs have been gaining more attention and support as “Web 2.0″ technologies have improved, broadened, and gained in popularity amongst communities. Several aspects of both have risen to the top of my constantly-refilled cup of questioning: LMS as a “walled garden”, PLE as perhaps pedagogically superior but strategically tenuous or immature, and the lack of full debates between the two approaches to technology-enhanced education.

George Siemens blogs up just exactly the news I’m interested in week after week, and on the 28th he posted up a reference to Peter Tittenberger’s short piece The Strength of Garden Walls found on his a touch of frost blog. This article describes the percieved value of institutionally administered learning management systems and social software tools as “walled gardens” for their ability to provide teacher control over user access to learning materials and tools, and the distribution of the participants’ input and output.

(I should restate that, for most institutionally administered social software tools are set up specifically to inhibit or even disallow public access and public viewing, often out of fear of legal repercussions for providing access to students’ personally identifiable information (e.g. in the United States, FERPA in higher education and K-12). For example, LMS’s natively restrict public access, typically don’t allow publishing of student work outside the password-protected site, and authentication access is often provided only through the institution’s student information system. So walled gardens don’t really provide teachers with control, they simply give teachers a box of handcuffs, sans keys.)

My perception is that most of the prominent folks involved in new teaching and educational technology believe that the walled garden approach is “bad”, that LMSs are “bad”, and that open, learner-centered strategies, such as personal learning environments (PLE) are “good” (or at least “better”) because they better reflect or adapt to current Internet-driven trends in networked information and social connectivity. To elaborate:

• Educators who believe in fostering authentic learning experiences have become increasingly disillusioned with the walled garden of the LMS. Increasingly popular “real world” Web-based social software has cast many LMS tools as redundant.

• Many institutionally adopted learning tools, driven by the perceived needs of the institution, directed by non-faculty IT, and limited by the pace of administration, are rarely able to maintain currency with readily available “real world” tools simply because the institution has neither a massive, global audience to demand innovations, nor the breadth of competitive capitalism to fund and incentivize them. Tools provided by education-centric companies such as Blackboard often come in packages, overproduced versions of real-world tools tightly bound to provide a one-stop-shopping experience, and therefore a supposed panacea for all educational technology needs. Few Web application companies would commit such an act hubris–Google has proven itself fairly capable of such a Heraclean act, with competitors Yahoo! and even Microsoft taking tentative stabs of their own.

• Educators personally committed to ideals and philosophies of openness–open source, open access, open publishing–are also frustrated with LMSs and other institutionally controlled software for their innate closed-ness through restriction of access for both contributors and readers.

• And while distinctions between the accuracy of definitions and theories of collective intelligence and connective intelligence are being debated, they share a common recognition that there is significant value in community-involved (influenced?) and socially-invigorated education. Educators who ascribe to such learning theories also find the walled garden approach to be too limiting and lacking provisions for social networking within the institution, let alone the world.

These common postures (I’m abusing that word this week–thanks, Scott) taken against the “walled garden” approach to educational technology are sound, but I do not want to suggest that the LMS is therefore obsolete, for I have presented (and probably insufficiently) only one side of the issue. I daresay there are as many sound arguments the use of walled gardens and even the traditional LMS. And though I have seen Scott Leslie weigh pro’s and cons of “loosely coupled” approaches and even one or two ed tech bloggers recognize the continuing significance of the LMS, I’ve not yet seen a full and complete debate involving people genuinely committed to each of the two sides. (If anyone is game for staging one, my alter-ego would be happy to suppress my doubts completely and take the pro-LMS side–in fact, my ego would probably not let me resign that side to anyone else!)

In my opinion, a really good debate on the subject would illustrate philosophical differences between the two sides, and might even invoke political stances (technology adoption in education [if not pedagogy in general] as “conservative” vs. “progressive”; information access and publishing as an issue of power, definable through capitalist or socialist anarchist ideals, etc).

Even if the outcome of such a debate was largely in favor of an authenticopenconnectedcollective strategy, there are of course still questions about how a PLE is LE really looks and acts like, if it is teachable. Just today on Twitter there were a number of provocative questions about the value of PLE, either as a term or as a “single”, methodological approach.

Add to that the problem that I personally still can not say with total conviction that the LMS is obsolete. Folks like myself have talked up the potential value of PLEs, but broad adoption of the PLE is currently impossible because key technologies and services are still being developed (e.g. good hubs of aggregation [go eduGlu]) or have not yet been widely adopted (e.g. OpenID). Compound that with faculty and administrative anxieties regarding new technologies and teaching approaches, and I can only conclude that the LMS will be around for a long time yet. So until fully viable (every need) and broadly accessible (every application) alternative strategies and methods become available, we might as well openly examine, in good-faith, the value of the LMS, the benefits of walled garden systems, and our reasonings for choosing one or the other.