The change management process you mention is a really important one that I think IT people really need to consider - not just for students, but staff as well. I’m guilty of this as much as anyone.

You touched on this inadvertently via one of your Tweets too regarding the educator who feels they don’t have time to keep up with all the innovation going on. That’s completely understandable and represents a huge reality check for eLearning folks like me.

In many ways I think this should get rolled into learning design. I suppose at a uni level this sort of thing might be called a graduate attribute - increasing student comfort levels and digital literacy when collaborating via different modes of communication. Then again, at the uni level we’re starting to see students coming in who are quite comfortable with the new tools, while instructors are not.

So perhaps one of the crucial planning elements, even before the subject matter is covered, becomes the establishment of a culture of encouraged exploration and active collaboration in which all members of the class - instructor and students alike - are encouraged to experiment and develop their own appreciations of what the tools do and how they see themselves using them.

This would inevitably lead into the subject of Personal Learning Environments and Networks, but I’ll save that for another comment I think

Without the digital literacy component the whole equation starts to fall over I think. So in that sense adequate change management is essential.

Cheers,

Mike

Thanks, as always for making me think and putting me on the spot My early opinion (like I said in the post, I don’t think it’s fair to judge too quickly, so I’m sure this will evolve) is this:

1) I see this being used heavily in HS and college, with lighter use on the lower age levels. The use with cell phones is paramount to success. As with any technology, the adoption will be based on the level of tech availability to students, which is why I focus it on HS/university where students have more of the buying power. Anyone who thinks a new app needs to be able to fully implemented on the elementary level is unrealistic. Also, the current K-12 policies of banning all mobile devices could restrict use on the lower levels. I’m thinking more and more that university is the place that will make this big.

2) As a parent and educator, I’m really excited to see the parent notification features that are still in development.

3) At the beginning I think edmodo would be great for class communications and alerts and as teachers/students become more comfortable with it, I think it could work really well for class discussion and collaboration. Implementation with virtual schools and stand-alone online course could do really well.

4) I think the use of edmodo would have to be accepted by students (somehow integrated with facebook? just a thought?) otherwise teachers would be “tweeting” into oblivion

So, Mike, thanks for making me think harder, I always need a push

Cindy -

You brought up excellent questions……..wish I knew the answers! I’ll see what I can find, but perhaps Jeff O’Hara would be the best one to answer the questions of revenue and underlying business model? Maybe we can get him to chime in……….

But the other issue is sustainability. Jen Jones just blogged about this, and discussed our risk of becoming dependent on tools that may not be there tomorrow.

So I can’t help but wonder, is a company a company with no revenue? I in no way wish to denigrate the contributions of Jeff & Nic - kudo’s are in order. I’m just trying to understand if there is an underlying business model for enterprises like this, and if so, what is it?

That said though, the key to a successful curricular implementation would be a proper learning design underpinning the whole thing. How would you go about implementing it in a course? What sorts of activities would you conduct and what would the learning outcomes be?

(I’m not saying that to be sarcastic by the way, I’m honestly interested in how you would envisage using it in practice.)

Please keep the evaluation reports coming - I’ve yet to have my account request approved!

Cheers,

Mike