[benwerd]

This could be awesome.

I'm not sure I like the idea of lessons being electronic in a systemic way. (When I worked on Elgg, originally an elearning app, I declared that I'd stop immediately if I thought people would use it to replace face-to-face lessons.) Nonetheless, this is going to have a lot of very positive real-world applications. Kudos also for a very simple, friendly design.

Here's what I don't like: the use of the word Open for a centralized service that presumably has a commercial business model. Open education is a generic term for a kind of learning where barriers to entry are reduced as much as possible. Think OpenCourseWare, the Open University, etc. The name for this service feels like it's trying to co-opt and take advantage of that movement, even if that isn't actually a motive here. Education is a very emotive area, and a public good, so a lot of people feel it's best suited for free and open source software. Your work is cut out for you to justify yourselves being a commercial enterprise that stores lesson content from teachers, and I'd suggest that calling yourselves Open is not a good first step.

Finally, this became a running joke with Elgg, so I gotta ask you: are you SCORM compliant?

[singlow]

I don't see any reference to downloading the content to use inside of a third party learning management system, so I don't see how SCORM compliance would be relevant. Although, the ability to take the content with you would be great.

One thing I have built in situations similar to this is build a SCORM wrapper that can load the content in an iframe and translate scoring and tracking data back to the LMS. They could do this while still maintaining a fully hosted content model. Many of my clients will not consider an authoring tool for content that cannot be hosted in their LMS.

[benwerd]

The ability to take the content with you, I think, is crucial. A lot of the existing learning management systems have very poor functionality, so it might be neat to use Open as a central control panel for these lessons, and push them to your relevant LMS when appropriate.

[Egregore]

Can you please explain, why do you think that replacing face-to-face lessons is bad?

[michaeldhopkins]

If the lessons replaced are nothing but teacher-to-student lecturing then little is lost. However, all my best teachers employed more of a Socratic method. That method cannot be substituted with a recording. This program could work well with the Socratic method if students come to class to debate and present the material they studied at home.

[Egregore]

Unfortunately a lot of lessons are just teacher to student lecturing.

[pflats]

True, but software isn't going to solve that. (Note: I am a classroom teacher.)

Teacher to student lecturing happens for a combination of three reasons:

1. The teacher believes it's the best way to present the material.

2. Generally, a lecture is easier to prepare (and easier to keep on task) than any other form of instruction.

3. To the average person (and many administrators) a classroom full of children sitting silently in rows, all taking notes, looks "right".

[dhimes]

You mean, if the students did their homework? ;-)

[michaeldhopkins]

Yes, which is the opposite of the proposal to have the teaching at home and the homework in class. But I think any distinctions are not helpful to the students.

In a good class there is no distinction between learning from the teacher and the teacher's assigned material because each is required to excel in critically debating and responding to the other.

[dhimes]

I totally agree. In fact, I am working toward a private beta release of lesson planning software which actually helps teachers build quality lessons.

[michaeldhopkins]

I and my wife are educators among other things and want to try this. Please notify me at @mdhopkins or michael at oblique ideas dot com when you're testing.