Thursday, December 14, 2006
Durham Blackboard 2006 - Day 1
The conference has 100 delegates, which seems like a lot for Durham. There are several institutions who seem new to Blackboard here, and switched from homegrown systems.
53% of the delegates have never been to Durham before, but the old favorites are here too.
The keynote was by Martin Weller from the Open University, who presented on Web 2.0. It seemed like he plagiarised from an O'Reilly article I read online the other day. There was no acknowledgement of the source though.
Wasn't a big fan of commercial VLEs. Hates the Blackboard software patent. His prediction was that people would all shift from commercial VLEs to open source VLEs, then to e-portfolios then to personalised learning environments. Can't say I agree that this will be the linear way things go...
Said VLEs were bad because:
Are missing tools you want
The tools that are there are average, not best of breed
Follow an instructor-classroom model, not new pedagogy (bad affordance) - affordance is the conference word of the day I think. Says VLEs have content-based affordance.
Predicted VLE 2.0 would be:
Able to plugin a variety of tools
Standards-based
Configurable/personalisable
Can plugin external tools easily
Students as co-creators
Social
Mentioned there might be implications for support about this - what if different students using different tools? Upgrades might be more dynamic. Are all tools equal/appropriate?
HE needs to learn to let go of control, give powers to users, and build community.
Staff will use the tools that save them time.
That's most of what he said. A bit controversial, but good at starting a debate.
53% of the delegates have never been to Durham before, but the old favorites are here too.
The keynote was by Martin Weller from the Open University, who presented on Web 2.0. It seemed like he plagiarised from an O'Reilly article I read online the other day. There was no acknowledgement of the source though.
Wasn't a big fan of commercial VLEs. Hates the Blackboard software patent. His prediction was that people would all shift from commercial VLEs to open source VLEs, then to e-portfolios then to personalised learning environments. Can't say I agree that this will be the linear way things go...
Said VLEs were bad because:
Are missing tools you want
The tools that are there are average, not best of breed
Follow an instructor-classroom model, not new pedagogy (bad affordance) - affordance is the conference word of the day I think. Says VLEs have content-based affordance.
Predicted VLE 2.0 would be:
Able to plugin a variety of tools
Standards-based
Configurable/personalisable
Can plugin external tools easily
Students as co-creators
Social
Mentioned there might be implications for support about this - what if different students using different tools? Upgrades might be more dynamic. Are all tools equal/appropriate?
HE needs to learn to let go of control, give powers to users, and build community.
Staff will use the tools that save them time.
That's most of what he said. A bit controversial, but good at starting a debate.
// posted by Brian @ 5:46 PM 
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Brian, you should do the keynote next year! It doesn't sound like the keynote was giving us any new insight.
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