(Finally accessed the blog and forgot to publish!)
I am not an educator (though always wish I were…) but come from the technology side. I have both computer engineering and business degrees and have spent most of my career years in technology. I have designed systems that are part of a mobile network technology (notably lawful intercept – commonly known as “wiretapping”), worked with MMS (picture and video messaging) when it first started, and helped launch an application to access one’s email or IM on their mobile phone before phone manufacturers started doing it themselves.
Obviously, my early experience is heavily based in what is known in the industry as “value added services” destined for the “end-user.” Over the years of the various applications, it became increasingly important to understand how and thus design for how the user actually uses the product or service. I have attended user studies and it was a learning experience! What may be very obvious to the designer is not necessarily intuitive to the user.
Most recently, I have been working in the “internet of things” space which is where sensors and monitors come together to relay some kind of information to the users of the system; this has included smart cities, ag tech, fleetmatics, etc.
All to say that I am very comfortable in designing, using, and assessing different types of technologies from a work and user perspective.
I joined the MET program to align my two passions of technology and education. I have a particular focus on how technology in education can help girls access education and how more girls can enter STEM subjects.
My goal for this course is to really understand and get my hands on those LMS’ that are available in the education sphere. I have only used this LMS (Blackboard) and note that there are many things that I don’t find very intuitive; I suspect the end-user evaluation may have not been completed in this case. I have heard of Moodle and but have yet to actually try it out.
I am also curious as to what constitutes social software and multimedia in an educational context. I have used many communication tools in the work atmosphere but am eager to see how these are applied in the education world. These are large buckets that may contain many different softwares and I am anxious to see which ones I know and which are new.
As for assessing the softwares, I am confident that my technical background will afford me with the experience to evaluate them as I would for any other job (function, features, roadmap, scalability, robustness, usability, price, support, etc.) however I don’t have the educational criteria to determine which LMS would be a best fit for the learning environment in question. And that is my main goal with this course!
I need to understand the various criteria from a learning perspective and how best to apply them to the technological discussion.
Resources:
https://elearningindustry.com/11-tips-choosing-best-learning-management-system
http://ccweek.com/article-5408-schoology:-choosing-an-lms-that-just-works.html