Stephen Downes: the use of online media and services in education
"Stephen Downes is a senior researcher for Canada's National Research Council and a leading proponent of the use of online media and services in education. As the author of the widely-read OLDaily online newsletter, Downes has earned international recognition for his leading-edge work in the field of online learning. He developed some of Canada's first online courses at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, Manitoba. He also built a learning management system from scratch and authored the now-classic 'The Future of Online Learning'.
At the University of Alberta he built a learning and research portal for the municipal sector in that province, Munimall, and another for the Engineering and Geology sector, PEGGAsus. He also pioneered the development of learning objects and was one of the first adopters and developers of RSS content syndication in education. Downes introduced the concept of e-learning 2.0 and with George Siemens developed and defined the concept of Connectivism, using the social network approach to deliver open online courses to three thousand participants over two years."
(Stephen Downes)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
e-learning 1.0: LMSs, VLEs, e-portfolios
"the dominant learning technology employed today is a type of system that organizes and delivers online courses - the learning management system (LMS). This piece of [e-learning 1.0] software has become almost ubiquitous in the learning environment; companies such as WebCT, Blackboard, and Desire2Learn have installed products at thousands of universities and colleges and are used by tens of thousands of instructors and students. The learning management system takes learning content and organizes it in a standard way, as a course divided into modules and lessons, supported with quizzes, tests and discussions, and in many systems today, integrated into the college or university's student information system."
(Stephen Downes, 17 October 2005)
Downes, S. (17 October 2005). "E-learning 2.0." eLearn Magazine, an Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. publication.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
