This just in; Pearson looks to disrupt the LMS scene

My colleague, Mike Edwards, just G+'d me about Pearson's attempt to change the LMS game completely.  Watch this video about their new FREE cloud based LMS called OpenClass, which supposedly seamlessly integrates with Google Apps for Education. It's quite bold of Pearson to call the current state of the LMS "dead." YIKES! I will be eager to see how it compares to the LMS I am currently enjoying in Instructure's   Canvas. Canvas does a lot of things well, but their cloud based solution is just as costly as the other LMS providers. I wonder how Pearson plans to keep the Cloud-based solution free for Universities that need Enterprise level service and support?
Here is the write-up:
OpenClass is a dynamic, scalable, fully cloud-based solution that stimulates social learning and the exchange of content, coursework, and ideas - all from one integrated platform. Out of the box it has all the LMS functionality needed to manage courses. But that's just the beginning. OpenClass actually advances education by leveraging modern social technology to encourage collaboration and communication for students, faculty, institutions, and administrators around the world. OpenClass also features an idea exchange that will make it easy to find and share the latest approaches, content, and curriculum.

Learn more about it here 

Canvas LMS: Technology that facilitates good pedagogy

All LMS's (learning management systems) are not created equal. The design of the LMS must be done right to facilitate good pedagogy.  It needs to be easy enough for the  non tech person to use, yet it must do very sophisticated and complex things in the background to facilitate the learning process. I would also say that pairing a faculty member with an instructional designer/academic technologist at the onset, will yield the best courses possible.

The Canvas LMS does design right and consequently facilitates good pedagogy.  That is the key, because all LMS's say they do the same things, but Canvas does them right, which makes it a tool that improves, not hinders the learning process. Here are just a few reasons:

• Easy and efficient access to content, instructor, and students
• Content is easily mapped to learning outcomes by instructor 
• Assignments can be assessed using rubrics you can easily create in canvas (HTML5 anyone?)
• Canvas makes grading assignments very engaging and efficient. Instructors can leave feedback (text, audio, or video) in the rubric or as a side comment. Students can comment back seamlessly (text, audio, or video).
• You can easily pull learning outcomes into rubrics to ensure mastery of content

More to come in my next post...

Have you used Canvas yet? How would you compare it to other LMS's you have used?

The Perfect Tablet for Me - An Obvious Idea in Tablet Innovation that Should Have Been on the Market Last Year

Tablets are excellent tools for content consumption, yet their OS's and overall design limit their ability to produce content. The Asus Transformer and Eeepad Slider were steps in the right direction as devices geared at both consuming and producing content, yet the Honeycomb OS still hampers the content creation process, even with the keyboard. I think a really simple idea would be to use honeycomb OS when the device is being used as a Tablet, yet when you dock it to the keyboard you should be able to choose to switch over to the Chrome OS or Win 7 OS. Apple could do the same thing with an ipad that when docked to a keyboard could switch to the Lion OS for the heavy lifting. Even though Apple doesn't care about Flash, this would enable the device to get the entire internet experience through Lion OS when docked as well. A really simple idea that would enable all the Netbook users of the world to make the switch over to the Tablet Hybrids. What do you think? Is there anything on the market that does this?

Reverse the lecture paradigm

Rather than teachers lecturing (sometimes poorly) and kids doing homework at home (sometimes poorly), kids watch world-class lectures at home and do exercises in class with their teachers, who are best for such personalized interaction. Agree or disagree?

Resources to learn more about online learning today

The following are resources to learn more about online learning today.

Blogs

• Ray Schroeder Online Learning Update http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/onlinelearning/blogger.html
• Tony Bates e-Learning and Distance Education http://www.tonybates.ca/
• George Siemens ElearnSpace http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/
• Stephen Downes Online Learning Daily http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm
• Seb Schmoller Fortnightly http://fm.schmoller.net/
• Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/
• Online Learning Tips http://onlinelearningtips.com/
• University of Mary Washington Online Learing http://online.umwblogs.org/

Twitter

• @rayschroeder http://twitter.com/#!/rayschroeder
• @onlinelearningu (twitter of Online Learning Update) http://twitter.com/#!/onlinelearningu
• #elearning http://twitter.com/#!/search/elearning
• #onlinelearning http://twitter.com/#!/search/onlinelearning

Wikispaces Study Groups

• Wikispaces Study Site http://edumooc.wikispaces.com

Disrupting Trends - Online Learning

• Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, Louis Caldera and Louis Soares Disrupting College: How Disruptive Innovation Can Deliver Quality and Affordability to Postsecondary Educationhttp://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/pdf/disrupting_college.pdf

Sites

• Online Learning learning http://www.onlineeducation.net/internet-revolutionizing-education
• Sloan annual survey http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/class_differences
• Sloan-C http://sloanconsortium.org
• US Distance Learning Association http://usdla.org/
• League for Innovation in the Community College http://www.league.org/
• iNacol http://www.inacol.org/

Ezines, Journals and Articles

• Journal of Online Learning and Technology (JOLT) by Merlot http://jolt.merlot.org/
• International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl
• Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/
• European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning http://www.eurodl.org/
• Journal of Interactive Online Learning http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/
• Journal for Asynchronous Learning Networks http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/jaln_main
• Turkish Journal of Online Distance Education http://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/
• THE Journal http://thejournal.com/Home.aspx
• Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/issue/view/71
• eCampus News http://www.ecampusnews.com/
• Infographic: How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education: http://www.onlineeducation.net/internet-revolutionizing-education
• iNACOL Fast Facts about Online Learning in K/12 http://www.education.virginia.gov/docs/NACOL_fastfacts-lr%20Oct%202010.pdf
• What Does Online Learning Really Mean? - SkepticLawyer blog: http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2011/06/22/what-does-online-learning-really-mean/
• Putting Online Learning Statistics in Perspective - MyEducation.com http://www.myeducation.com/blog/2011/01/19/putting-online-learning-statistics-in-perspective/
• Future of E-Learning is More Growth
  http://campustechnology.com/articles/2010/03/03/the-future-of-e-learning-is-more-growth.aspx
• University of the Future is Here!
  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/university-of-the-future-is-here/story-e6frgcjx-1226066713881

Reference

https://sites.google.com/site/edumooc/edumooc-week-one-online-learning-today

The Power of Blogs: Read The Comments and Participate in the Conversation

A blog article that provokes people with differing perspectives to comment and discuss is something to be valued. For example, check out the Endgadget article and video titled, "The iPad is taking away American jobs, Jesse Jackson Junior's sanity (video)" -- The video itself is kind of funny as JJ Junior comes off sounding like a technophobe, but the content of what he is saying can make for some really good debate on the economy and the interplay of technology and society. Any prof that teaches a course on Technology and Society should ask their students to read and comment on the blog. I initially read the article because I thought it would be funny but found myself really engaged in the comments section of the blog. By looking at a complex system from multiple angles and perspectives, I become more informed in my own opinion of the topic. Educators should constantly be on the lookout for blog articles that evoke multiple perspectives and then encourage their students to comment and be a part of the conversation.

Google's ambitious world changing project winners

Here are the results of Google's ambitious world changing project, I blogged about in 2009

It was neat to see the Khan Academy as one of the "world changing" winners. It will be neat to see where these projects go!

Project 10¹⁰⁰ Winners

We are pleased to announce the winners of Google’s Project 10¹⁰⁰.

Thousands of people from more than 170 countries submitted over 150,000 ideas. From that group, we narrowed it to the final 16 ideasfor public vote.

The following five ideas received the most votes and are the winners of Project 10¹⁰⁰. Over the past 12 months, we have reviewed concrete proposals to tackle these ideas. We are pleased to give a total of $10 million to five inspiring organizations working on solutions to each of these global challenges:

Idea: Make educational content available online for free

Project funded: The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides high-quality, free education to anyone, anywhere via an online library of more than 1,600 teaching videos. We are providing $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages.

Idea: Enhance science and engineering education

Project funded: FIRST is a non-profit organization that promotes science and math education around the world through team competition. Its mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by giving them real world experience working with professional engineers and scientists. We are providing $3 million to develop and jump start new student-driven robotics team fundraising programs that will empower more student teams to participate in FIRST.

Idea: Make government more transparent

Project funded: Public.Resource.Org is a non-profit organization focused on enabling online access to public government documents in the United States. We are providing $2 million to Public.Resource.Org to support the Law.Gov initiative, which aims to make all primary legal materials in the United States available to all.

Idea: Drive innovation in public transport

Project funded: Shweeb is a concept for short to medium distance, urban personal transport, using human-powered vehicles on a monorail. We are providing $1 million to fund research and development to test Shweeb’s technology for an urban setting.

Idea: Provide quality education to African students

Project funded: The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is a center for math and science education and research in Cape Town, South Africa. AIMS’ primary focus is a one-year bridge program for recent university graduates that helps build skills and knowledge prior to Masters and PhD study. We are providing $2 million to fund the opening of additional AIMS centers to promote graduate level math and science study in Africa.

Khan Academy is Tip of the Iceberg in Education Reform

The first time I learned about the Khan Academy about a year ago, I thought, "this is just the tip of the iceberg in reforming education." I posted Sal Khan's TED talk a few posts ago and I recommend checking that out if you are unfamiliar with his story. Free, easy to follow, online educational videos in subjects such as math, history, science, languages, etc will equip schools like never before. Instead of getting lectures and lessons in class and getting homework at home, we flip that around. We get the lectures at home via free video tutorials and online lessons and we get hands on learning, active discussion, and assistance from the teacher during class in real-time. The online videos actually make it easier for the student to learn as they can pause, rewind, and fast forward the videos. The Khan Academy is loading thousands and thousands of curriculum based videos to the web for free along with assignments, quizzes, and even games that encourage achievements in learning. Khan says his method of learning, "will liberate teachers from the standard "one-size-fits-all" lesson plan and help to "humanize the classroom." I think these videos represent just a fraction of the potential that can be harnessed in online and blended learning. The fact that one guy made thousands of educational videos that are actually pretty good, will give schools something to think about regarding how they can use asynchronous learning to improve the educational system. These are exciting times. Check out this article - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/04/the-khan-academy-and-educ_n_844390.html

Online Courses Increase Access to Courses Students Actually Want to Take

Universities that offer online courses and programs enable students to choose classes based on what they want to learn rather than what fits into their schedule. Online course content can be accessed and engaged any time, any place, so that students are not bound by geographic locations, scheduling conflicts, building conflicts, etc. When I did my undergrad work, I never once got the class schedule I planned on because classes were either full or conflicting.

Let's use video (and the internet) to reinvent education

Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script -- give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help.