Friday, November 23, 2007

Its raining forums...


Ok, its time to come to terms with the three learning environments.

Peter says in his announcement: "Moodle, knowledgeGarden and Virtual Classroom forum to ensure that you are aware of most of the important aspects of the course environment.......details are included in the Moodle, knowledgeGarden and Elluminate forum" (Forum Post:by Peter Evans - Monday, 19 November 2007, 11:03 PM)

So why is three learning environments better than one? From a learner perspective, much time is spent learning the technology rather than working with content. From a teacher perspective, I can imagine that duplication of posting to different forums is time consuming and difficult to management. The fact that these learning environments are emerging means that each is still developing functionaltiy and "one size does not fit all" purposes.

On refection, I think it is posible to compare emerging learning environments within a historical context. For example, an emerging technology of the past 10 years has been the mobile phone. I remember when once we had a phone, a music device, a camera and a computer. Now we have a device like the iphone that converges all these technologies and more.

Perhaps soon a learning environment will emerge that brings together the best features of the learning tools we are using in this course, without reducing fuctionality of each and with a user friendly interface.

No comments: