Time to Learn new Tech Class

[Or-Tal Kiriati]

What do you think?
What can you tell?

[Laura Gibbs]

Hi Or-Tal, it has all the mottoes that work for me, but there are no specific examples and when I went to the website it didn't have any materials to look at yet at all. I'd like to know more when they are ready to share some actual sample materials. This video is just advertising, but I did listen to the whole thing in case there was something that was not just advertising. Speaking from experience with the course management solutions we have used at my school (Blackboard, WebCT, Desire2Learn), the propaganda in the advertising for those systems has been quite misleading... but it would be great if all these nice things the people in the Time to Know ad say are true. If they have implemented the program in these Texas school districts, for example, it would be great if the website were not just empty and instead contained examples of student work (if this is a constructivist system as they say, there should be a website full of student work), but the website I found was empty, just advertising (PDFS and this video).

One question I would have is the same question I ask about all course management systems and online curricula - how much of this is going to be on the open Internet, and how much is locked down? Can students publish their work on the open Internet, for example? Is any of the curriculum going to be on the open Internet?

[Or-Tal Kiriati]

This is a good and important question. Open vs. closed learning environments. As you probably know, I am all for open environment and getting more students involved and in conversation about learning materials. The social learning is a material element in itself.
However, if I understood it correctly, this company designed a program to work in classroom and help transfer a lesson in a more interactive and interesting - captive way. This is a platform to be used and managed by teachers. Don't think it is meant for the after school, unless they have some homework feature built in.
Let's invite the entrepreneurs who are making it to answer. :-)

[Laura Gibbs]

Unless it is possible for students to publish their work on the open Internet, sharing their work with other students - both in present time (sharing with other students in other schools right now), and also in the future (so students next year can look at the work of students in past years and be inspired) - then it is not a system that holds any interest for me.

Letting students publish their work on the open Internet does not compromise the copyright of their curriculum in any way that I can see. So, it seems to me reasonable to let students share their work on the open Internet, even if publishers want to control their copyright. And what HUGE BENEFITS that offers for students! The only kind of web-based curriculum in which I am interested is one that allows the students to be creators who are helping to build a better Internet for all of us.

:-)