Sunday, April 24, 2005

LAMS: Learning Activity Management System I haven't yet tried the LAMS software but want to re-post this message from Auricle for reference. I have used another open source tool, Moodle, with instructors and can report that if functioned very well; most instructors liked it as well as the commercial product Blackboard. LAMS appears very promising from the reportage at the web site. The release of high quality open source course management software is a hopeful trend because many colleges and universities can no longer afford the high-priced commercial products; even for those that can pay the high prices of acquisition and maintenance, it seems highly desirable to have open source options that allow for backups and experimentation. ____JH "LAMS is now officially open source software under the GPL License. At a ceremony held on April 13th at Macquarie University, Professor Di Yerbury launched LAMS as open source software. At the launch, attendees were presented with the LAMS Launch CD: a compilation of documents, videos, case studies, news, general resources and the LAMS Installers for most platforms. This CD is now available online. The LAMS Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation that manages research and development into LAMS and the concepts of Learning Design. The Foundation is based at Macquarie University, Australia as part of the Macquarie E-learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE), under the leadership of Professor James Dalziel (Director of MELCOE and inventor of LAMS). The LAMS Foundation collaborates with LAMS International to foster the adoption and implementation of LAMS across all education sectors. For further details, contact james@lamsfoundation.org." Learning Activity Management System launched as Open Source. Last Wednesday (13 April 2005) the not-for-profit LAMS Foundation (managed by Macquarie University) launched the open source version (GPL) of the IMS Learnng Design 'inspired' Learning Activity Management System. LAMS is a visual authoring environment for creating sequences of learning activities; so those with a personal preference for a heavy dose of teacher design in learning (or at least who are working in... [Auricle] 10:10:47 AM    COMMENT []