C3MS was not a character in Star Wars: Content management for collaborative constructivist community building.Draft paper on using community software for rich constructivist education. http://tecfa.unige.ch/proj/seed/catalog/docs/sevilla03-schneider.pdf This 39 page paper (draft 1.5) by Daniel Schneider is well worth the effort. On top of the ton of good thinking on why traditional CMS don't suffice and what roles the instructor might play within different pedagogical designs, the paper was worthwhile simply for introducing (at least to me) the term "Community, Content and Collaboration Management Systems" (C3MS) to describe packages such as Plone, PostNuke and Drupal. As the author notes, these are often discussed as 'content management systems' but this term belies much of their true nature as collaborative and community-building content management systems. - SWL - via [Kairosnews] [EdTechPost]6:39:05 PM ![]() |
Open-Source LMS Open Learning Management System (O-LMS). http://www.psych.utah.edu/learn/olms/ New to me is this java-based open source 'LMS' from the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah. This system is designed to support "vigorous shared knowledge communities" and as such focuses very much on communication and collaboration tools and seems to recognize the role of shareable learning content though it is unclear to me what kind of actual functionality it offers there. One thing that seems slightly unfortunate is to base an open source project on Oracle and Solaris, but this may well have been what was literally at hand. - SWL [EdTechPost]6:34:08 PM ![]() |
Open Source Course Management System (CMS).Another open source CMS - Interactive Learning Environment. Again new to me but maybe not new (why does no one put dates on their pages!), an early version of a new open source 'cms', this time in part notable because it is written in Ruby. Also, you may or may not have noticed that I am slowly moving over some of the more trafficed resources from the old site. So far I've reposted the list of open source course management systems, which I am now trying to keep more up to date. More to come. - SWL [EdTechPost]6:14:47 PM ![]() |
Another open source CMS - Interactive Learning Environment. Again new to me but maybe not new (why does no one put dates on their pages!), an early version of a new open source 'cms', this time in part notable because it is written in Ruby. Also, you may or may not have noticed that I am slowly moving over some of the more trafficed resources from the old site. So far I've reposted the list of open source course management systems, which I am now trying to keep more up to date. More to come. - SWL [EdTechPost]6:14:04 PM ![]() |
Pay-per-use e-Learning: Lessons Learned.The current issue of Information Week (October 20, 2003) has an excellent article on how UPS solved its IT training problem. (You can read this article online here.) If you are building your business as a vendor of online learning, there are some powerful lessons here, and not just from UPS. Here is a summary: UPS :
Colgate-Palmolive:
So here's what I see as obvious extrapolations from this data. If you are offering online courses to clients:
These are probably all very obvious, but a lot of vendors still seem to be missing the point. 2:40:56 PM ![]() |
Download IMS Specifications as Content Packages.http://www.imsglobal.org/specificationdownload.cfm You can now download the various IMS specification documents packaged as an IMS Content Packages themselves. The advantages, as their feed says, are that "by downloading the specification as IMS packaged content, you can see what a content package looks like and how it is organized. You can also import it as a learning resource into your Content Packaging enabled learning management system or repository." - SWL 11:19:39 AM ![]() |
eLearning Specification Abstract Framework (IMS).Major importance for e-Learning application developers. More comments when I get a better handle on it. IMS releases elearning specification Abstract Framework. http://www.imsglobal.org/af/index.cfm "The IMS Abstract Framework (IAF) is a device to enable the IMS to describe the context within which it will continue to develop its eLearning technology specifications. This framework is not an attempt to define the IMS architecture, rather it is a mechanism to define the set of services for which IMS may or may not produce a set of interoperability specifications." It's hard to describe how huge this is. A lot of work has gone into this. It is not for the faint of heart. Start with the white paper, that alone is worth a few days or reading and digesting, and is invaluable for the appendices alone. - SWL 11:17:22 AM ![]() |