In addition to the hospital reports on those injured, a police press conference has just announced fatalities: Seven dead in the bomb just outside Liverpool St. (the incident linked to Aldgate and Moorgate); twenty-one dead in the tunnel between King's Cross and Russell Square (Piccadilly Line); five dead at Edgware Road; fatalities also on the bus, but they don't know how many.
The University of Oxford has just chosen the latter as its VLE. I've not used Bodington, but Claroline I've found to be very good already, albeit not as full-featured as WebCT.
As someone starting to use a VLE to teach, they are useful (if nothing else) for integrating content and discussion, rather than hundreds of departmental websites and separate discussion boards, etc. And outside of distance learning proper, they are also dead handy for i) supporting large classes [very difficult to give a class of 180 your individual attention, much as we might wish to] - ii) keeping some kind of rolling discussion going between seminars. But some folk actually prefer interacting this way over f2f contact. And it can cut down on photocopying expenses (no small matter in hard-pressed departments).
As for the integration of systems within universities (library/admin/departments/vle), yeah well that is a problem: turf wars, bureaucracy, short-sightedness, etc. etc. Part of me thinks the 'Managed Learning Environment' will remain mythical...
Slashdot Mirror
In addition to the hospital reports on those injured, a police press conference has just announced fatalities: Seven dead in the bomb just outside Liverpool St. (the incident linked to Aldgate and Moorgate); twenty-one dead in the tunnel between King's Cross and Russell Square (Piccadilly Line); five dead at Edgware Road; fatalities also on the bus, but they don't know how many.
Ian
Two rather more mature open-source projects not mentioned here (I think) are
The University of Oxford has just chosen the latter as its VLE. I've not used Bodington, but Claroline I've found to be very good already, albeit not as full-featured as WebCT.
As someone starting to use a VLE to teach, they are useful (if nothing else) for integrating content and discussion, rather than hundreds of departmental websites and separate discussion boards, etc. And outside of distance learning proper, they are also dead handy for i) supporting large classes [very difficult to give a class of 180 your individual attention, much as we might wish to] - ii) keeping some kind of rolling discussion going between seminars. But some folk actually prefer interacting this way over f2f contact. And it can cut down on photocopying expenses (no small matter in hard-pressed departments).
As for the integration of systems within universities (library/admin/departments/vle), yeah well that is a problem: turf wars, bureaucracy, short-sightedness, etc. etc. Part of me thinks the 'Managed Learning Environment' will remain mythical...
Ian