Facebook | Teach the People | Recently Changed Communities
WOW! This has real potential. If you can get your students into Facebook (and access it from school), this could be a real challenger to Ning and other online social networking apps focused on learners.
Don't get me wrong, this is not an LMS. This is an online social networking service that works on top of Facebook and provides functions that teachers might find useful. However, with the increased availability of widgets and the ability to embed them in Teach the People provide for an environment that could be just about anything you want it to be.
I've only set up a site, I haven't tested it yet. We'll see if the performance lives up to my first impression.
Showing posts with label lms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lms. Show all posts
Monday, November 3, 2008
Monday, September 17, 2007
How “open-source” is Sakai? at bavatuesdays
How “open-source” is Sakai? at bavatuesdays
This post just re-awakens my criticisms of Sakai. It was bad when I first started using it, it's bad now. There are many more bells & whistles now, but they aren't much more than squeaks and moans.
Here is a copy of my reply to that post
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Indiana University moved to Sakai about 4 years ago as its university-wide CMS. Having heard great things about it, I was eager to give it a try. Prior to that we were using an in-house CMS that left a lot to be desired.
After a brief test period, I pushed very hard not to retire that clunky in-house solution. Sakai was slow, confusing, and was a step down from other popular open-source elements out there. Not to mention, it had (has) one of the worst discussion forums I have ever used. Since then, the build at Indiana has added a lot of new, exciting features. Unfortunately, nearly all are sub-par.
Being open-source, we imagined that it would be easy to do a little of our own development, but this is where university bureaucracies make open-source nearly meaningless. At that time, the process ran through a chain of requests, committees, and finally a masked developer somewhere in Michigan who might, if it fit in with the grand vision, look into finding an existing module or developing a new one to fit our needs.
I've gone back to Sakai each year for the last 3 to test it out as an instructor. Each time I turn right back around and use Moodle on my own server. I might be one of the few who don't want to use their own. Though it's easy to use and provides a lot of freedom, it's just another thing I've got to manage. I just want to simplify my life.
I still hope that one day they'll get it right. I'm hoping that one day, they'll offer workshops on how to teach better instead of how to configure your class workspace.
Dan
This post just re-awakens my criticisms of Sakai. It was bad when I first started using it, it's bad now. There are many more bells & whistles now, but they aren't much more than squeaks and moans.
Here is a copy of my reply to that post
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Indiana University moved to Sakai about 4 years ago as its university-wide CMS. Having heard great things about it, I was eager to give it a try. Prior to that we were using an in-house CMS that left a lot to be desired.
After a brief test period, I pushed very hard not to retire that clunky in-house solution. Sakai was slow, confusing, and was a step down from other popular open-source elements out there. Not to mention, it had (has) one of the worst discussion forums I have ever used. Since then, the build at Indiana has added a lot of new, exciting features. Unfortunately, nearly all are sub-par.
Being open-source, we imagined that it would be easy to do a little of our own development, but this is where university bureaucracies make open-source nearly meaningless. At that time, the process ran through a chain of requests, committees, and finally a masked developer somewhere in Michigan who might, if it fit in with the grand vision, look into finding an existing module or developing a new one to fit our needs.
I've gone back to Sakai each year for the last 3 to test it out as an instructor. Each time I turn right back around and use Moodle on my own server. I might be one of the few who don't want to use their own. Though it's easy to use and provides a lot of freedom, it's just another thing I've got to manage. I just want to simplify my life.
I still hope that one day they'll get it right. I'm hoping that one day, they'll offer workshops on how to teach better instead of how to configure your class workspace.
Dan
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