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Personal Learning Environments
Unleashing the Power of Web 2.0
6/1/2008
Angel Learning. Learning management systems (LMS) provider Angel Learning is poised to jump in to Web 2.0 with both feet, says Angel Chief Products Officer Ray Henderson. Henderson reveals that the company will be adding to the value of its current offerings, but only because officials "carefully considered" how these emerging, web-based technologies are being utilized. "When I hear people talking about ‘Web 2.0,' they're often talking about Google applications, Blogger.com, social networking, and even things like Second Life," he points out. (Linden Lab's Second Life is a 3D, online, open-ended virtual world-- essentially, a social network service combined with aspects of a metaverse-- in which "players" assume roles embodied by avatars, and interact with other avatars. Since it was launched in 2003, Second Life has become an international phenomenon filled with thousands of "residents" who explore the environment and participate in individual and group activities. Second Life residents even buy and sell items and property in the virtual world, on eBay.)
"These are technologies that allow students to engage in activities related to learning, and create evidence of a learning outcome," Henderson continues. "And they offer students a great deal of freedom to explore topics and network with others. I agree that these technologies can provide very powerful experiences. But the challenge we face as an industry is how we combine the power of that experience with the virtues of a learning management system-- things like the organization of, and the ability to assign, work; collect grades; and archive student results for future audit."
Angel's Web 2.0 response to that challenge: The next version of its flagship learning management system (to be released in spring 2009) will come with a bona fide framework for mashups. Henderson says the company will use Google's public APIs to allow seamless integration of external content to its own learning systems. For instance, students will be able to create a mashup with, say, the Google Docs online word processing application, and then submit it to the Angel system directly. He explains: "The system will provide the ‘container' and the place to put the grade, while maintaining the tether to Google Docs." The mashup framework also will include support for mashups with the YouTube video-sharing site and Google's Picasa photo organizer. "Say you're writing a response to a test question-- or, if you're a teacher, building a test question," Henderson explains. "You search for a keyword, find a YouTube video, and then embed the video directly into the document, inside Angel. That content will live at YouTube, but the experience will be brought into the Angel environment. What we're doing is providing more building blocks for students, with existing building blocks from other places; a key Web 2.0 concept."
"The LMS model that has existed for the past 10 years," Henderson adds, "sees itself as something like an enterprise resource planning [ERP] system, in which every form of content is created natively. My vision is that the LMS becomes more of a hub with spokes going out to other environments, and that it provides the containers, structure, and organization for content that is increasingly generated all over the place."
Additionally, Angel has staked out virtual territory in Second Life-- an island it shares with a group called the Second Life Education Community, or SLED. Angel Learning Isle is now open to educators as a testing ground to help them understand how to use a virtual world to create an educational experience. But, Henderson warns, it's still pure research and development. His best advice to others looking to expand their teaching and learning efforts into the Web 2.0 world? "It's a work in progress; keep that in mind and come for a visit."
John K. Waters is a freelance journalist and author based in Palo Alto, CA.
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