LMS

Now, call me behind the times. I just stumbled upon http://adlcommunity.net/ which is undeniably significant evidence of the Moodle LMS's entry into the mainstream. This is great news for those of us striving for a new era beyond the stranglehold the corporate LMS vendors have maintained for years. Anyone familiar with industry-specific software will understand the need for competition in these venues. Let's welcome the gentrification of the corporate LMS!

ADL is the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative of the federal government.

Yes, that's right, this fledgling site has not quite gotten off to a good start. Surely I've got enough caffiene at my disposal to write plenty of observations here over and above the typical work and family stuff! As much as I'd love to elevate the likelyhood of getting some serious traffic here, my own self-deprecating nature causes me to ignore clear opportunities every day to update the site with my newest ramblings. I'll be talking soon about upcoming technologies in e-Learning, some great conferences, and my usual ranting about archaic LMS architectures and the challenges of working in massive corporate.

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of research lately as I have been assembling the 2008 development plan for my employer. While much of the e-Learning industry tends to lag technologically, I'm trying to avoid that going forward. It is an exciting prospect to look for points where we as a vendor might expand our field of view to encompass the latest goings-on in interactive media development.  read more »

Ah yes, the good old 'outsource the services' effort to limit fixed costs. Nice idea, a nice thought really. On the surface it seems just as cut-and-dried as outsourcing your marketing or Human Resources. Surely a simple web application does not warrant its own dedicated in-house resource, right? Or not?  read more »

So how about this AIR thing?? Let me explain. You've probably heard of Adobe's Apollo project, which is a binary runtime for executing web client applications outside the auspices of a browser. Apollo's "real name" is AIR, or Adobe Integrated Runtime.  read more »

I had first heard of Moodle while attending a conference in California some years ago. The presentation was done by a (Australian?) University administration person or teacher who was using it to enrich instructor-led classroom material. I was of course interested initially due to its low price [a reasonable $0], open source, and architecture [PHP], but I became further invested once I'd installed it. It really is quite full-featured and given the erstwhile limited gamut of commercial LMS's, it brings something to the table. Especially taking into account its ability to integrate community learning features and a rich user heirarchy, it goes beyond its peers in some respects.  read more »