Alex Chapin @ Middlebury

Coursekit

Alex Chapin — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 18:58:31 +0000

Coursekit is another new LMS, this one developed by students at U. of Pennsylvania who found Blackboard to be “overloaded” and “badly designed” (see: Wired Campus > U. of Pennsylvania Students Build Course-Management Software).

Currently anyone can create an account and can add at least some classes by searching by course number. I joined MATH 104 (Calculus I), just to see if I could (and I could). Course sites seem to consist of 4 sections, Overview, Calendar, Syllabus and Resources. The Overview section of a course site lists upcoming items including lectures, assignments and exams.

There are a lot similarities between this platform and Middlebury’s Course Hub including:

Personal dashboard of recent activity across classes
Syllabus section
Resource section

Coursekit also includes a Calendar section and a Class Wall where class participants can post comments. Clearly the UI is influenced by Facebook. For other earlier reviews of this new platform, see:

Mashable > College Students Aim to Build a Better Way to Manage Courses
EduGeek Journal > Another New Blackboard Competitor Arrives: Coursekit

Canvas LMS

Alex Chapin — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 02:53:53 +0000

Canvas is a new LMS that just went open source last week created by Instructure, Inc, a company “founded in 2008 with the purpose of disrupting the Learning Management System (LMS) market by setting a new, open standard for education technology.” See
http://www.instructure.com/about-us

Instructure posted a series of screencasts last week on YouTube, see:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CanvasLMS).

The Chronicle quotes Josh Coates, Instructure’s chief executive, describing Moodle as “kind of kludgy” and Sakai as “off in left field a little bit” (see: Upstart Course-Management Provider Goes Open Source). Dr. Chuck, the chief architect of Sakai, posted an open letter to Instructure on his blog, urging the company to infiltrate campuses virally. Michael Feldstein was astonished by the completeness of its features. Inside Higher Ed gave is 7 cheers and 7 critiques. eLearners.com praises it ease of use and excellent design.

Seems to me that Canvas focuses on what it most important in an LMS, assignments and grading and has a well designed workflow for these activities.

OpenScholar

Alex Chapin — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:04:23 +0000

OpenScholar is described as a “full-featured open-source web site-creation package designed for the academic community. It was developed at Harvard using Drupal. A common usage of the platform seems to be for faculty profile sites, but can be used for any kind of personal site, as well as for project sites. It comes with a number of “pluggable content features” including those for blogs, booklets (collections of hierarchically organized pages), events, publications and…. classes. This does not mean that OpenScholar is a learning management system (LMS), but is can be used to distribute class material, such as a syllabus, reading assignments…etc.

LMS Evaluations

Alex Chapin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:40:06 +0000

As part of my work with the Curricular Technology Team, I’ve been reviewing learning management systems (LMS) for use at Middlebury. Currently we are reviewing Sakai, Moodle and Blackboard using an LMS Selection Criteria form developed by Longsight, see:
http://www.longsight.com/lms-selection-criteria

WordPress v3

Alex Chapin — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:32:29 +0000

Here’s the first iteration of a screencast describing WordPress v3 at Middlebury

WordPress Updates

Alex Chapin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:51:54 +0000

Here’s a screencast of a presentation I gave to the Wilson Media Lab Digital Media Tutors on WordPress @ Middlebury and a preview of WordPress v3

Online Course Catalog Screencast

Alex Chapin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:53:34 +0000

I’m working on a screencast explaining how to use Middlebury’s new online course catalog developed by Adam Franco and others in the web development group.

This is the 2nd version of this screencast which is currently being reviewed by others at Middlebury. Comments and feedback by anyone are welcome.

Update: This screencast is now being used at Middlebury College > Academics > Course Catalog

Capture

Alex Chapin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:58:10 +0000

In September I did a LISterine workshop on Capture. That presentation was captured using various devices included an iPod with an iTalk Voice Recorder, an iPhone, SnapzPro, a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder, and an Accordant capture station

The screencast of the presentation included videos of iPhone apps (made up of iPhone screenshots). So I guess some versions of the presentation are captures of the computer projector which displayed captures of screencasts on a web site which in turn were captures of iPhone apps in action that consisted of iPhone screen image captures.

Included here is a screencast introduction on How to do it… (capture that is).

For an unedited version of this presentation that includes screen capture and video of me trying to figure out how to show this stuff, see: Digital Media Collections at Middlebury College

ShadowBox Introductory Screencast

Alex Chapin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:21:19 +0000

Made a screencast introduction to the WordPress ShadowBox theme I developed, see:

The Future of Learning Management Systems

Alex Chapin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:51:45 +0000

Here are slides of a presentation I gave at a NERCOMP seminar on the Future of Everything.