I tend to agree with the adoption of adaptability, but with teacher expectation 
thrown in on an admin level.

Since we are also replacing our SIS, the LMS portion of the show is in the 
forefront of my mind. I do not want to be "locked in" to one type of 
instructional framework over another, regardless of what platform has to do all 
the required business a SIS absolutely HAS to do. 

If there is a baseline required LMS that all teachers must make an attempt to 
participate in to some degree specified by the district, then this at least flexes 
the muscles and allows them to become used to operating in that manner.

The way I see it, if a teacher approaches me and says "well, I dont want to 
use the LMS, I found something that works better for me" ... then great! The 
thing the teacher then has to do is make sure that they can manage the accessibility of students and parents, in addition to having their instruction 
transparent to administration, say for curriculum mapping, data crunching, or 
overall supervision. This is doable, as I have seen 1 school with no LMS 
function with Moodle, Global Classroom, Edline, Engrade, Google, Edu 2.0, ... 
practically every one ... all at the same time managed by individual teachers.

This way there is a required minimum baseline ... that all teachers must strive 
to meet so that we might get closer to electronic portfolios, even if it is just 
"scanning and tagging" in Google Apps or mapping software. The innovative 
teacher is always going to be striving forward, and we should encourage that, 
but the less technologically progressive still must have minimum goals we can 
help them achieve. 

If you watch the market, you see that there is a mad scramble to integrate 
Google Apps in an LMS framework and also make is accessible to various SIS's 
via the Api. 

In a time of IT budget pressure, it has to work with little effort. Active 
directory > Google Apps > SIS > LMS / Portfolios > Library all have to play nice 
across all OS's. I think we are getting very close to an inclusive, yet adaptable 
framework that still allows a degree of freedom and trust in the teacher's ability 
to choose the right way for them.

Greg

Gregory Connors
Director of Information Technology
Rutland Central Supervisory Union
16 Evelyn Street
Rutland, VT 05701
802.775.4342 x 110 - Office
802.733.4190 - Mobile
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