Dear Nigel, Rod et al,
Using JavaScript as a mechanism of reading in a feed is handy but does have
limitations, e.g. there's limited control over what is displayed and how it
is displayed. (And, of course, it needs JavaScript support!)
I expect that most VLEs will soon have tools that can read in feeds in
various formats. For example, I expect the Bodington 2.6 release will be
able to read RSS and Atom[*]. Anyone with the appropriate access rights
(staff, students, visitors, ..) can include these feeds in all kinds of
areas such as lecture courses, administration areas and tutorials, because
Bodington has generic containers.
Actually, it looks like there is an RSS Building Block being developed for
Blackboard:
http://blackboardblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/blackboard-and-rss.html
However, as they stand such tools are only consumers. Further development
consider more the communication between the VLE and the blog server so that
e.g. tutors can set up blogs from the VLE, students can contribute to these
blogs from the VLE and tutors can provide comments. An important area is
privacy - ensuring that the right people can create, view and contribute
respectively.
The picture can soon become complicated, so I certainly think that such
communication requires the use of standards, as promoted by JISC through
e.g. the e-Learning Framework (ELF).
- Paul
----
Paul Trafford
[*] A preview of what this tool might look like is at:
http://ramble.oucs.ox.ac.uk/docs/quickstart.html
At 09:17 18/04/2005, Nigel Peet wrote:
>This and other replies show an increasing interest in blogs. I think
>students like them because they are potentially anarchic and democratic
>at the same time. I like the RSS feed to the VLE. Anything that
>contributes to providing a rich learning experience for our students is
>OK by me. However does this apparent lack of standard connectivity with
>the VLE mean that part of the rich picture of the student experience is
>not available to the tutor, or does "course specific" avoid that
>problem?
< ... >
>From: VLE Developments in Teaching and learning
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rod Ward
>Sent: 17 April 2005 20:38
>
>I only found out about the issues about BECTA & the VLE list etc via
>Derek Morrisons Blog Auricle & then joined this list.
>
>I run a blog Informaticopia at
>http://www.rodspace.co.uk/blog/blogger.html
>which I wanted to include as a "current awareness" component on a health
>informatics module I run. Our IT support people said this couldn't be
>done - all you could do is link to it from within Blackboard (our
>institutional VLE). However, a neat bit of javascript does the trick &
>displays the latest RSS output from the blog on the front page of the
>course in Blackboard. Each time a student clicks on it it goes & fetches
>the latest updates from the blog. Seems to work OK but not done any
>student evaluation with it yet.
>
>Rod
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