Surely, Educationally, its not what you've got, its how you use it that
counts?
Sarah Currier <[log in to unmask]>@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> on 14/10/2005
14:54:15
Please respond to Virtual Learning Environments <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: Virtual Learning Environments <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
cc:
Subject: Re: open source, open standards, free
Hi all
First let me state that I am agnostic on the issue of open source over all.
But I want to give an example of a point of view that rarely gets raised in
these discussions.
Miles Berry wrote:
> The key difference is, of course, not the costs, but the openness of
> open source. The free bit is about freedom as much as cost - with an
> open source VLE, the users have the freedom to change it to suit their
> own way of working.
Sure, if they can afford to (or want to) employ a developer to do this. In
the case of my last project, we paid for out-of-the-box software (not a
VLE,
a standards-compliant learning materials repository), which meant that we
spent a small amount of money on getting the software company to develop
special bits for us as we went along. We instead spent our staffing budget
on an information specialist with expertise in e-learning (me) to develop
vocabularies, metadata, user interface, etc. involving the user community
from the start; these will be maintained and developed over time with a
similar staff member (not longer me) who will continue to involve the user
community in these important things. We also employed two staff developers
to get the user community (HE lecturers) involved in the development of
content, the formation of an active sharing community, and general
e-learning familiarity and skills development. Both of these things
(particularly the former) are often said by people on these e-learning
lists
to be too expensive/hard/time consuming. I'm not saying these priorities
are
right for every technological initiative; the point is there will be
different priorities and this is why the issue of the true costs of open
source must be surfaced.
Best
Sarah
--
*******************************************
Ms. Sarah Currier
Project Manager, Community Dimensions of LO Repositories (CD-LOR)
Senior Research Fellow, JISC/CETIS Pedagogical Vocabularies Project
Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement
University of Strathclyde
Graham Hills Building, 50 George Street
Glasgow G1 1QE, Scotland, United Kingdom
Tel.: +44 (0)141 548 4573 Fax: +44 (0)141 553 2053
E-mail: [log in to unmask] Mob.: +44 (0)7980 855 801
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