Jane Hart's articles and list of free applications for eLearning.

More information at: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?author=Jane%20Hart

A wide variety of free tools are available for eLearning!

Software Applications for eLearning!

MyiCourse.com is a free, web-based, e-learning platform that is "just right" for those
faculty members who want the freedom to create their own on-line educational site, but do not have the budget, servers, IT department support or programming skills to access the typical e-learning solutions.

Our mission is to provide software that helps users create and post their own educational materials, at no cost. We do not believe all of life’s necessary learning is contained within the walls of universities or between the binders of books. We want to democratize knowledge for those who wish to learn. Come help us flatten the world!

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University. This site itself is created using Moodle, so check out the Moodle Demonstration Courses or read the latest Moodle Buzz.  

For more information about Moodle, use this link: http://moodle.org/

So, I've been thinking a bit lately on technology's role in learning, or eLearning, if you will. My goal as an admin is to become the invisible man. Tech should serve users, not the other way around.

I'm an open source advocate and lately have been annoyed with how much 'stuff' old-school software vendors impose on the users of their products. If you really set down and think about the major barriers to innovation, you must consider the so-called 'investment' in 'the way it's always been done' near the top of the list. How many proprietary companies are actively trying to become invisible? Their corporate mission is precisely the opposite.

Several years ago, I got behind the opengroupware.org project in a big way. I thought that immature tech was the reason for the slow rate of adoption of new innovations in the groupware and collaboration space. The second year I presented opengroupware at LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco it became clear that tech was not the main issue. There were two major factors:

1. Decision makers reluctance to try ANYTHING new.

2. Organizations' refusal to address the real costs of the 'way it's always been done'