Stephen Downs is a respected thinker in the world of e-learning, and he’s been around it long enough to see an awful lot of money get wasted. Today he gave a talk to the Australian College of Educators and the Australian Council of Educational Leaders in which he challenged the value of wrapping up digital content inside proprietary MLEs.
And if the sales representative comes to you and tries to sell you an LMS [UK translation: MLE] or (worse) an LCMS, ask them why you have to pay them so much money for something the web and web browsers do for free.
If the sales representative tries to sell you online course and lessons, ask them whether it supports random access so students can use it when they want, even if theyre not at school, or ask them where you can access the dynamic feed with daily updated content, or how easy it is to place images from the course content in your blog.
Well, Paperless School is a proprietary MLE, so at first I felt a bit defensive. But then I actually ran a check against the tests that he proposes
why you have to pay them so much money for something the web and web browsers do for free
The Paperless School system is free. What we actually charge for is certain services within it, such as auto-marking. We charge for those on a per-student basis.
ask them whether it supports random access so students can use it when they want, even if theyre not at school
Absolutely yes. It’s hosted on our global server; anywhere you can access the internet, you can access Paperless School.
ask them where you can access the dynamic feed with daily updated content
Here’s the RSS feed for our ICT Encyclopedia, used in our GCSE Applied ICT course and soon to be used in other ICT courses.
how easy it is to place images from the course content in your blog
There’s no dastardly copy protection in Paperless School. Just copy and paste.
It’s worth reading the whole speech.
Yacapaca 