Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Blogging or LMS?

Hi there

I have been trying to work out the difference between this approach for study and using the LMS system. I came across this article which is quite good to provide a bit of balance. Go to:

http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=opinion&article=118-1

The interesting statement is;
No 3) Not everyone can (or should) teach (or learn) in a YouTubey, Twittery blogosphere, where mobs clamor and technology obtrudes relentlessly.

Has anyone got some opinions? Especially about the technology intruding, since I think there is a point there?

Cheers

9 comments:

  1. I have to admit that I am biased toward the 'youtubey' way of learning. I know that it is very hard to work through all the 'noise' to start with (when you come outside of a LMS) but once you've worked your way through the pain barrier, life is so free...so much access to so much knowledge :)

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  2. Hi Sarah
    Thanks for the comments. I am trying to work out how sociable this system is. I am pretty into information literacy and enjoy You Tube which, after all is used by everyone (almost) these days. What I haven't got my head around is the usefulness of things like Elluminate. Notes are so much quicker to read!! The other side is that I am here to learn about all this stuff. Doing everything the first time from a distance can be a real challenge.

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  3. Hi Nan, I agree. I feel a bit as if I am not really the target audience for this course as my paid work takes place in LMSs. It's great to learn about everything that is out there. I hope that I will also learn more about how to facilitate formal courses on an LMS. I am finding the technology a bit time consuming. My inclination is to centralise everything using the email so that I dont have to check my email, check my blog, check my feeds from everyone elses blogs, check the course wiki, check the course blog etc, etc. And all this before I even start to look at the resources and start writing my blog posts!
    Oh well, it's all very interesting and I'm sure I will learn a lot.

    Cheers, Adrienne

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  4. Hello Nan and Adrienne, when you are working in the 'open' environment, you have to work out ways of bring everything together to save you from having to check for info all over the place. The key to this is using RSS - in other words, subcribe to all the channels you are trying to watch. Then, bring them into a page like the Pafeflakes page that Chris has set up, or set up your own igoogle space as I do. I use RSS and alerts to monitor all my channels - that way I don;t have to be forever checking for things ie ifo comes to me and not the other way around :)

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  5. sorry...that's supposed to be 'pageflakes'

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  6. Hi Nan,

    Interesting comments here, I also sometimes felt out of the loop, trying to check what everyone is upto in this course, but as Sarah has mentionned about the Pageflakes and RSS, i think it would be quite useful. to be honest i have not used either RSS or Pageflake, so have to yet discover and research on them a bit.

    Regards
    Krishan

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  7. Hi Guys
    I have been trolling around the pageflakes tonight- after listening to the Recording of Mondays Elluminate meeting- (online communities)- so there is lots going on in my head- but these particular blog posts are of comfort to me as I also feel a bit scattered in our "community/group/network" whatever, simply because we are still getting used to the channels and the technology- there seems to be 2 groups already- the Elluminate musings and the Blog musings and it seems (to me anyway), they are both moving at different paces. Those of us who may have previously thought we were "lurkers" may be more likely contributing on the blogs and those of us who like to chat more, maybe feel more comfortable on the Elluminate page- and then there are those who didn;t have time to make the meeting, and are still doing the readings- so haven;t connected. The big question seems to be 'are we a communuity"?? I think not yet- but we are all part of the same group by way of our linked participation of the WIKI- the community feeling will come later, I guess, as we get to know each other more.
    Bye for now -DebraM

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  8. There's a bit of jargon here I haven't come across. Could you please tell me what a LMS system is?

    I too feel like I'm bouncing around a bit... starting conversations here but not necessarily finishing them. It all feels kind of random. But then again it is early on.

    When people get to know each other a bit more, I can see us self-organising and holding small group side-conversations. This will provide some depth, plus provide a way for us to bring in conversations each of us are part of (and therefore mean we don't have to track all 40 blogs).

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  9. Hi Stephen

    A LMS is a learning management system, like Moodle or BlackBoard. There's a lots of discussion about the pros & cons - for strong 'anti' LMS views, have a look at what Leigh Blackall says on his blog.

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