Why I Left Eduspaces

I recently moved my blog from Eduspaces to WordPress. Eduspaces is built on the Elgg platform, which enables you to create your own social network. The Eduspaces network is devoted to educators, which is a great idea… but it’s not quite there.

Here’s a few things I’d like to see Elgg improve upon:

• There’s no way to separate quality content from the rest. As I said in a comment on the Internet Time forums, Eduspaces needs a way to recommend content. When you log in, you’re normally greeted with a mountain of blog posts. A recent article on Wired talks about how Daily Kos gets around this issue. Users are able to vote, promote, and rank content created by the community.
• I couldn’t see what my “friends” were doing. When you log in to Facebook, you can see that Friend A added Friend B to their contacts list. Friend C joined Group A. Friend D wrote a new blog post…. and so on. Elgg does allow you to view your “Friends’ Blog”, which compiles all of your friends’ posts into one list. That’s a good start…
• After trying WordPress, adding the WordPress app to Facebook, and joining a few e-learning Facebook groups, I really don’t have much of a need for Eduspaces. Most Eduspaces folks are on Facebook, and they’re much more active there (most likely for some of the reasons I’ve listed above).

I hope this doesn’t sound too critical of Elgg. I think it’s a great idea. I like that it’s open source.  I just think it needs some work.

Rapid E-learning Tools + Informal Learning

A few weeks ago, I attended the E-learning Guild’s Annual Gathering in Boston, MA. One of the sessions I attended was the Rapid Elearning Tools panel, in which representatives from Articulate, Adobe Captivate, and Qarbon discussed their existing tools w/ Jay Cross. After the conference, I posted a comment on the Articulate “Word of Mouth” blog, but wanted to expand on my thoughts here.

It was interesting to have someone who is widely considered to be a guru on informal learning exchange ideas with rapid development folks. Wouldn’t it be nice if these rapid development tools could integrate with services such as Blogger, PBWiki, MySpace, Facebook, EduSpaces, etc?

Anyone could give a 10 minute video presentation w/ accompanying visuals and post it to their blog w/ two clicks. Or post a software demo to a social networking profile with a snap. Or post a simulation to PBWiki. (and so on)

Rapid E-learning tools could really take off if they made the “I” in ADDIE so simple that anyone could do it.

Thanks to Mark for the video

UPDATE: After re-reading my post, I realize that I made it sound as if all there is to the “I” in ADDIE is posting content on the web. There’s more to it than that… but a seamless integration between rapid development tools and web 2.0 services would simplify things, no?

Re-posted after abandoning my Eduspaces blog