Sleepless in Vancouver

 If distance is measured by time zones then I’m only 7 hours away although it took 10 hours to fly here – to be 12 hours behind must be as far away as you can get. Even at a distance of 7 hours it’s impressive to think I’m writing this before you are reading it – or are you reading it before it was written? This must be what jet lag does to you.  I can understand that I’m sleeping during my day and trying to function during my night but when I fly back home – what happens then? Hopefully I get realigned.

The conference themes are openness; open source, open content, open doors – everything is open – its the end of cubicle culture – we are all sharing a collaborative global educational network. Now I like my cubicle – I don’t agree that Second Life is a collective experience, the noise of the digital crowd tweeting is getting on my nerves and while I accept there are limitations to the number of variations on a wheel I’m not 100% sure of the difference between plagiarism and creative commons. It seems that while all sharing is equal there will always be some that is more equal than others. Surprisingly few of the big name internet players have signed the The Capetown Open Educational Declaration.  

There must be a term for conference overload? Conflerred? Confrenced? If anyone was secretly hoping Web 2.0 would go away then I’m sorry – it isn’t going to happen. You need to blog – it’s your digital identity and not having one says more about you than any number of tweets can do. Web 2.0 now has its own timeline. Presentations that start by explaining what a wiki is and where the name comes from are so ‘last year’.

This year is the death of the VLE – yes, Blackboard is about the most unpopular word you can mention. Did you know that this monolithic VLE sucks you in, ties you down and once it has you it won’t let go and you’ll never ever be free. As someone who’s used to defending Blackboard on campus, accustomed to finding something good and useful to say about it, I’ve been surprised at the animosity. The whole concept of a VLE is a bit dodgy but you are allowed to say Moodle or Elgg so long as you stress their customisability (and don’t mention that you need a technical support team on standby)

Yawn :-O  night all…..

One Reply to “Sleepless in Vancouver”

  1. Many citizens of the blogosphere are saying that the commercial VLE is dead and just waiting to be buried. But, along about four bells one morning I am sitting in a quiet corner of the university and I hear a knocking that does not stop. So I listen harder and what is doing the knocking but the not quite dead corpse of Blackboard tapping the lid of the coffin. It seems that if there is one thing large monolithic VLEs cannot stand it is being buried before they are dead. Although they do seem to require plenty of scratch to keep them alive.

    (with apologies to the late Damon Runyon)

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