professors and TAs storm the Google headquarters demanding a Google LMS
photo credit: New York Times (February 25th, 2011)
Maybe it's a foible of my generation but if I were in charge of choosing a Learning Management System for UGA I would pretty much refuse to invest much money in it. (Or maybe it's because I'm obsessed with bartering ---Athenians, check out the Athens Time Bank for "indirect" bartering of all sorts!) But with all the budget cuts affecting UGA, wouldn't it be better to put, oh say HALF of the gazillion dollars, that might be spent on a new LMS and hire a small team of expert techie-teachers to train faculty on how to set up a good course management system for themselves using existing free materials. I understand the appeal of having everything centrally located and maybe each teacher's materials could be accessed from one central UGA hosted site but even if not, so what? We have a different textbook and a different classroom for each class, so if students had a different website to go to for each class, it wouldn't be the end of the world. then maybe the school could afford to pay staff (and TAs) a living wage and pay professors the competitive wages they deserve too.
I'm sure there are a lot of reasonable dissenting perspectives I'm leaving out of this idealistic rant so i'm looking forward to hearing some discussion from this. But remember you're talking to someone who has already chosen to use Open Office rather than Microsoft Office.
I wouldn't want to really invest monies into any system either. None of the LMS are perfect, so what? We have to pay for something that's almost right?
ReplyDeleteWhat's Open Office?
i don't know a lot about open office, either. tell me more. also, i'm not too versed in the LMS debate, but i do agree. seems silly to invest lots of money when google already offers just about everything for free. AND they still have $ bazillions $. in my opinion, technology certainly has a place in the classrooms. and in the world in general. but i don't think schools should be investing more money in ever-evolving technology than high quality, old-fashioned, "in-person" teachers and professors are here to stay (and for good reason). schools just invest minimal money but thoughtful time & effort into creating LMS environments as supplements to in-person teaching. that way, students benefit from LMS but the school isn't out $$ when tech changes and something bigger and better comes along in 10 years, rendering the university completely outdated.
ReplyDeleteon a side note: athens time bank is so cool! when you come back to lexington, maybe you can create one here :)
*should read: "i don't think schools should be investing more money in ever-evolving technology than on high quality, old-fashioned, "in-person" teachers and professors WHO ARE here to stay (and for good reason)."
ReplyDelete