Connecting people.

Presentation by Doug Ransom on April 16, 2003. [via syndic8.com]

11:29:29 PM    

Rob Reynolds over at Xplana has posted this useful piece that helps frame some of the issues an institution should factor in when considering looking at an open source solution to course management systems, proposes a rating scheme based on these factors and rates many of the currently available options. While I might differ on a few small points (OCW is not a CMS!!) I think I would also end up suggesting the same four products that show up in his 2 top 3 lists (CHEF, LON-CAPA, Moodle, FLE3) are the most likely contenders.

There are a few things I think we at edutools can learn for the factors he highlights as important (we allow reviews by features, but don't tie features to these kinds of factors in any strong manner). That said, one lesson I think we've learned is that you end up getting way to much clumping in the middle on a 5 point scale (mean on this was 21 with highest score 24 and lowest 17). But I'm probably getting nitpicky as it is getting to the end of the day - SWL

9:25:44 AM    

George Lorenzo at Educational Pathways has a nice write up on OKI and OCW - in fact that's how I found the piece, via a reference at the end of Rob Reynold's piece on open source CMSes to 'OKI and OCW Defined.'

But what I want to know is why OKI have never posted an equally as straightforward explanation on the actual OKI site which is to my mind a model of unclarity. I recognize that there are some subtle concepts at work, but the number of times I've had to explain the difference between OKI as an architecture and the various systems (CHEF, Stellar, LON-CAPA, etc) that will be reference implementations, to people who should know better...sheesh! - SWL

9:24:55 AM    

Quote: "ContentPackage provides ZOPE with the ability to import IMS Content Packages and turn them into Zope objects (see http://www.imsglobal.org)."

Well this bodes well for the future. Has anyone heard from the eduzope folks lately - for a while it seemed like it was going to be vapourware, and then I checked back in a month or so ago and saw so release stuff, but in general it seems to have been quiet. Must check back in - SWL

- via [Serious Instructional Technology]

9:24:03 AM