Ant’s view of Ascilite
Hi all,
Ant here – my take on Ascilite was that it was good – lacked a bit of energy but was revealing and interesting in other ways. Like Dave I tend to agree that the Blackboard\Webct push towards eLearning 2.0 is more rhetoric than actuality.
However, all is not lost as we can integrate some of our social networking tools with WebCT. As I have posted before in other forums, Asim has set up a WebCT powerlink to Elgg (our social networking software) so we can continue to work with WebCT for all of our basic course management stuff and also use Elgg for social networking/blogging/wikis/communities.
I think that what universities will use in future in terms of eLearning technologies will be a continuation of the past – a tension from the centre towards consolidation and streamlining (fewer technologies) but a nearly equal tendency from users and innovators towards using other technologies for specific purposes. As these become popular or even critical they will be incorporated, merge with or even supersede the existing technologies.
But don’t fret! WebCT will be around for a while yet people.
Ant
