Learning Innovation

You love books. I love books. Neither of us has much time. How can we read more?

Chuck Severance wrote such an amazing "push back" (in comments) to my piece on Sakai (and D2L) biases that I wanted to re-publish it in full (see below).

One of the great things about our ed tech world is how our people sometimes move back-and-forth between academic and company gigs. If you want to sell, serve, or code for a higher ed customer then the best prep is have come from that world. If you want to evaluate vendors, negotiate contracts, and engage in meaningful partnerships with companies then having worked in the corporate sector will be your best education.

I'm hoping that the Desire2Learn (D2L) and Sakai folks among our IHE community will tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about. When it comes to the LMS (or really anything in life), where you stand is where you sit. I've been on Blackboard for 10 years now (across 2 different institutions and in roles ranging from instructor to learning designer to program manager), so naturally I'm biased toward what I know best.

I'm always curious about what books our IHE community is reading, and how we choose what to read. My dream IHE site feature would be an interactive dashboard that gave real time and historical information of our reading preferences, and provided a method that we can make recommendations and share our thoughts about our books.

This I Believe: That the distinction between an educator who works for a university and an educator who works for a company is meaningless. None of us would survive long if we failed to produce value.

Our community has been discussing EDUCAUSE 2011 (both on campus and virtually), and one theme that seems to be resonating is the erosion of centrality of the LMS (learning management system). With LMS platforms increasingly built to integrate with Web 2 platforms, particularly Google Apps tools, the LMS no longer needs to be the "be all and end all" for learning, collaboration, and exchange.

Reading Reamde (Kindle) and Ready Player One (Audible) simultaneously is somewhat of a surreal experience, as both novels feature massively...