I think that students need one place to check for things. Even using 1 LMS, student are often overwhelmed by the amount of classes they have. If every teachers uses a different system it gets hard really fast. Plus, a good LMS forces teachers to organize data in a certain way. WHich saves students time.
I have been on both sides of the coin, and I have taken several online classes where the teachers could use a course in online course organization 101. The last think I want as a student is to have to spend 15 mintues find out where the teacher posted the assigment. Her blog? Her website? Her wiki? By Email etc.? A good LMS helps keep all those things in 1 place for students.
The great thing about 1 LMS is that there is a portal page students can log into to find all the important info.
-Amanda
P.S. we use Haiku.
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Gregory Connors
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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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Amanda Bickford