A way forward for learning

Here's a thought-provoking post!

A way forward for learning: "

Teemu Arina has a link on his blog to an article he wrote for his company blog on ‘Horizontal technologies for learning.’ The following definitional distinction between LMS and PLE is huge. It is a key insight into why education has barely moved into the connected age and why social technologies are, as he says, ‘a way forward’:

Horizontal integration is a way forward. In the eLearning sector many vendors have created eLearning solutions primarily for educational institutions. These technologies are supposedly designed for learning but that is not true. These technologies are institution-centric and vertical by nature. The concept of Learning Management System (LMS) was wrongly named. Better fit for a name would be Teaching Management System or Institution Control System.

No student would use the current so-called learning environments during their worktime or freetime. In 2006 I was at EC-TEL where Scott Wilson asked the audience full of educational technology specialists, ‘how many of you use a LMS for your personal learning?’. Surprise. No hands.

Social technologies are different. Blogs and wikis are already being implemented by learners themselves. Call them Personal Learning Environments (PLE) if you want but the key issue here is that they are based on user-centric design.

(Via Smart Mobs.)