Microsoft(R) Firefox | We’ve Made it Better
Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Firefoxhas raised some eyebrows. Careful examination of this helpful site will lay to rest the worries of many in the open source ‘alternative’ computing community. Everything is going to be fine! They made it better.
Tags: evaluation · rant · research
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http://www.ulm.edu/universityrelations/news/nov07/moodle.html
http://tarrysingh.blogspot.com/2007/11/open-source-e-learning-louisiana-state.html
For more financial details: http://mfeldstein.com/louisiana-state-university-moves-to-moodle/
What keeps budget conscious college administrators paying through the nose for Blackboard, D2L, or E-College? My theory is they are risk adverse. They stay safe and allow inertia to rule. By sticking with the big outfits that overcharge for online services they can ‘play it safe’. Who ever lost their job by hiring Blackboard to provide an online learning environment?
But what if it becomes clear that you could save a million dollars+ over a decade by going with Moodle? Hmm… perhaps some of the savings could be invested in training professors to teach online so that students could get a ‘quality’ online education?
Could someone in admin get canned for NOT being technically adept enough to make the Moodle move?
Sure everyone knows that open source software is like a free puppy. You have to pay for maintenance. But the wisdom ULM displays is going with Moodlerooms, which supplies everything: tech support, servers, software upgrades for about $1 a student. With the big boys charging outrageous seat costs, and Moodlerooms providing world class infrastructure and Moodle… what’s keeping other struggling small schools from making the change?
It used to take vision and guts to switch to open source.
Now it just takes fiscal responsibility and common sense!
ps. I know the folks at Moodlerooms and believe in what they are doing… that’s why I’m writing! ~ Dennis O’Connor
Tags: Course Design Reflections · Web 2.0 · class management · e-learning · moodle · rant
I live in northern San Diego County. I’ve just spent a day without Google thanks to some mystery glitch at Cox Communications. I could get to the net, but all Google services wouldn’t resolve. This kicked my habits in the head and disrupted my workflow more than I thought it should. Over the last year I’ve gradually abandoned Eudora and gone completely on line with G-Mail. Yesterday I paid the price for working on the edge.
Loosing access to my G-Mail account was like going temporarily blind.
But now I can see, and now I understand the danger of putting too many eggs in any provider’s basket.
I have dozens of email accounts associated with my online work. Each is set to forward to my G-mail account which (in theory) is always just and quick connection away.
But when the network is down, your email is hard to reach.
I’m going to get back to my old habit of subscribing and registering with my regular email addresses (which all forward to g-mail). This will leave a backdoor to my mail should ‘Google Go Down’ big time.
Reminder to self: Murphy will always love computers. (Gupperson’s corollary to Murphy’s Law: A knowledge of Murphy’s Law cannot be used to your own advantage.)
~Dennis (re-googlized)
Here’s everything I’d need to create a killer unit on medical ethics, media literacy, and website evaluation.
Barnum would rub his hands and grin at the state of gullibility exhibited by Digital Natives (better described by Carl Heine of the 21st Century Information Fluency Project as the Un-taught Generation).
Too often we (as educators) assume that common sense develops overnight. Anyone who has observed the Un-Taught Generation search will report that the first result is the one they choose and their common belief is that everything on the Internet is true.
Why do they think this way?
The Un-taught Generation don’t know how to search, evaluate, and ethically use digital information. The Self-Taught browse, believe, and share without thinking about intellectual property rights. Why? Because the Un-taught Generation is kept bored and so busy filling and drilling and test prepping that there isn’t time in the curriculum to teach them 21st Century Skills.
20th century knowledge testing runs the show, while educators debate filtering and the evils of social networking and blogging. Time to get real… or at least take the time to teach our students how distinguish reality from deception.
Tags: IMSA · Top Posts · Web 2.0 · e-learning · rant
