So first of all, LMS stands for Learning Management System. These are electronic web-based platforms used as a medium for instruction, collaboration, giving, collecting, and grading assignments. There are a lot of different ones now, as enterprising educators have put their expertise to a new focus, and of course some greedy companies have sought a new angle to cash in on education budgets. That said, there are several good ones, and they serve a very important and increasing need in today's learning landscape.
For us in rural Alaska, the need is clear and obvious, as we have students spread far and wide. In order to provide the breadth and depth of education that every person on this planet deserves, we need to step outside of brick and mortar schools. This same type of need is experienced by others as well, such as: homeschooled students, students at very small schools/districts, transient students, companies employee training programs, and of course correspondence students of distance post secondary education.
We use Moodle and it works great. Other big names in LMSs that I have dealt with are Blackboard, Edmodo, Skyward, Alecks. Right now I have a couple of students working on their NCCER Core Curriculum Certification, and that uses an e-learning site through Pearson. It has an e-text, multimedia library, built in quizzes, interactive reviews, concept checks and trade term vocabulary development activities. Now that myself and my students are becoming accustomed to it, it is working out.
Thanks for reading :-)
-Brian
Brian,
ReplyDeletethanks for sharing some LMSs I hadn't heard of! I have some research to do. I also appreciate your views on distance and online learning. With shrinking budgets and larger needs for differentiation and personalization for student learning, we can't really avoid distance and online learning.
I have not heard of several of these learning management systems. But, truly I've only really used Moodle. Building a good Moodle course or any course on a LMS is time consuming, but a real time saver in the long run. I think back how reluctant I was to go to Moodle years ago and now it is something I rarely give a second thought about.
ReplyDeleteMoodle is also the only LMS I have really used. I've been to workshops for Edmodo and one using Weebly as an LMS, both at ASTE conferences over the years. Since Moodle is our school district's primary LMS, it is the one I am focused on this year. I think that if one gets really good at using the tools available in one LMS, others would be pretty easy to adapt to provided they have similar capabilities.
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