Just ran into two weblogs-in-education sites, Sebastian Fiedler’s Seblogging and (linked from there, but I found it before) Will Richardon’s Weblogg-Ed. I’m encouraged not only by their enthusiasm for blogs in education, but also by their informed aversion to BlackBoard. I’m beginning to think of BlackBoard as a litmus test for understanding of the potential for technology in education: if you’re impressed by BlackBoard, you’re not on the educational Cluetrain.
Now, having said that, I’m sue there are some insightful educators who, for circumstantial reasons, are enthusiastic about BlackBoard, so consider this an insta-retraction. But only sort-of; I’m systematically enough dubious about BlackBoard that it would take an awful lot of persuading to convince me that the local circumstances warrant a positive estimate of the courseware’s value (especially at the rates they charge, especially when Blogger non-Pro and Movable Type are available at no charge, and Radio and Blogger Pro are available at extremely low cost).
And to anyone who’s been waiting for me to take up the e-learning topic again, I will indeed return to that after I square away this hermeneutics essay. I also want to tackle another facet of the forgiveness-identity-integrity metablog — but for now there’s a lot of other writing to be done.
DRMA: “I’m Bad,” Katie Webster; “My Hit Parade,” the Beautiful South; “Overture” from Tommy, the Who.