The Jolaus Lifestream

Who we are
Gnomio is not a company. We are only a couple of spanish guys enjoying a unexpected success while spending our little time.

We are hosting over one thousand e-learning sites and we give service to tens of thousands of students at no cost.

Gnomio te permite montar tu propia plataforma de Moodle o tu eportfolio con Mahara de manera gratuita en un abrir y cerrar de ojos. Muy interesante para los que quieran practicar con ambas aplicaciones sin complicarse la vida con hostings o instalaciones complicadas.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the LMS and the PLE

LMS Strengths	LMS Weaknesses
Simple, consistent, and structured	As widely implemented, time-bound (courses disappear at the end of the semester)
Integration with student information systems (SISs), with student rosters automatically populated in courses	Teacher, rather than student, centric
Private and secure (FERPA compliant)	Courses walled off from each other and from the wider web, negating the potential of the network effect
Simple and inexpensive to train and support (compared to supporting multiple tools)	Limited opportunities for students to "own" and manage their learning experiences within and across courses
Tight tool integration (such as quiz scores populated in gradebooks)	Rigid, non-modular tools
Supports sophisticated content structuring (sequencing, branching, adaptive release)	Interoperability challenges and difficulties26
PLE Strengths	PLE Weaknesses
Almost limitless variety and functionality of tools, customizable and adaptable in multiple configurations and variations	Complex and difficult to create for inexperienced students and faculty members
Inexpensive — often composed of free and open source tools	Potential security and data exposure problems (FERPA issues abound)
No artificial time boundaries: remains "on" before, during, and after matriculation	Limited institutional control over data
Open to interaction, sharing, and connection without regard to official registration in programs or courses or particular institutions	Absent or unenforceable service-level agreements; no ability to predict or resolve web application performance issues, outages, or even disappearance
Student-centric (each student selects and uses the tools that make sense for their particular needs and circumstances)	Lacks centrally managed and aggregated group rosters (such as class rolls)
Learning content and conversations are compilable via simple technologies like RSS	Difficult and potentially expensive to provide support for multiple tools and their integrations with each other and with institutional systems

First: Most organizations currently use a learning management system (LMS) such as Moodle or Desire2Learn. These systems are content-centric. Their objective is to organize and manage content, just as Google did in early 2000. Because higher education is particularly enamored with content, an LMS is a critical service. It’s completely the wrong model, however, and this will become increasingly apparent in the next several years.

To survive, LMS vendors will need to transform their offerings on the social network model of Facebook. ELGG is an excellent alternative to an LMS, but most organizations are not yet willing to accept a network-centric tool as an alternative to Moodle (disclaimer or bragging – you choose: I was on ELGG’s initial advisory board that never fully materialized, and used the software for several pilot programs in 2005 with Red River College and with Duke Corporate Education). ELGG is a better model of what learning will/should look like than any of the current contenders in the space. And yes, for you open-source lovers of Drupal and Wordpress, I include those software tools in the “not as good as” category.

Second: The wild card in education today is abundance. We simply have too much information and we can’t make sense of it all. It changes too quickly. Many universities rely on a “design today, use for three years” course design model. It worked great in 1950. 2009 – not so much. Greater adaptivity of content is required. Learning resources should be tagged with a “best before date” so we’re not teaching information that is no longer accurate. LMS’ perpetuate the course model. And that is their greatest flaw.

Third: Complexity is quickly becoming a type of conceptual language that all members of society should be fluent in. When something is complicated, every piece has a place and a right answer exists. Our education model reflects this view – get the experts together, let them tell us what the answers are, then design curriculum to reflect those answers. It’s all knowable. Complexity, on the other hand, recognizes that numerous interacting elements will form and reform to produce patterns that we can’t anticipate in advance. Complicated=jigsaw puzzle. Complexity=weather.

Fourth: Managing abundance and complexity requires a different view of teaching and learning than currently forms the foundation of education. The content-centric view reflected by LMS’ must be replaced with more adaptive network models. Instead of experts and designers serving as the key sensemaking and wayfinding agents in curriculum, social networks and their ability for context-sensitivity must play a greater role.

Course management systems, like any other technology, have an inherent purpose implied in their design, and therefore a built–in pedagogy. Although these pedagogies are based on instructivist principles, today’s large CMSs have many features suitable for applying more constructivist pedagogies. Yet few faculty use these features, or even adapt their CMS very much, despite the several customization options. This is because most college instructors do not work or play much on the Web, and thus utilize Web–based systems primarily at their basic level. The defaults of the CMS therefore tend to determine the way Web–novice faculty teach online, encouraging methods based on posting of material and engendering usage that focuses on administrative tasks. A solution to this underutilization of the CMS is to focus on pedagogy for Web–novice faculty and allow a choice of CMS.