Frances Bell

Moodle is a course management system - with added blogs. If you are looking for mainly blogs, I don't think Moodle would be a first choice, for the reason you identified.

You may be interested in this event or in the recent issue of Innovate, particulalrly articles by Downes and Panke.
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Innovate-Live webcasts offer an opportunity to synchronously interact with authors of selected articles in the December 06/January 07 issue of Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info), an open access e-journal published by the Fischler School of Education and Social Services at Nova Southeastern University. These webcasts are produced as a public service by our partner, ULiveandLearn. If you wish to participate in the webcasts, please register at http://www.uliveandlearn.com/PortalInnovate/

All times are New York time. You may use the world clock at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ to coordinate the time with your time zone.

The schedule for the December 06/January 07 Innovate-Live Webcasts is provided below.

January 10, 2007

11:00 AM Eastern
"Participatory Development Strategies for Open Source Content Management Systems" http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=339
Stefanie Panke, coauthor

1:00 PM Eastern
"Enhancing Teaching with Technology: Are We There Yet?" http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=74
Sharon Kopyc, author

2:00 PM Eastern
"Staffing and Supporting a New Online Initiative" http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=406
Alan McCord, author

January 18, 2007

11:00 AM Eastern
"Resolving Conflicts in Educational Game Design Through Playtesting" http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=392
Brian Winn and Carrie Heeter, authors

3:00 PM Eastern
"Discovering Collaborative e-Learning Through an Online Writing Course" http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=277
Sarah Guth, author

Please forward this announcement to colleagues who are interested in using information technology tools to enhance the educational process.

Many thanks.

Jim
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James L. Morrison
Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
http://www.innovateonline.info
Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership
UNC-Chapel Hill
http://horizon.unc.edu

Personally as someone who runs a Moodle site on a volunteer basis, I think it is a bit of a pain to try to support users who have different views but the move toward separation of form and content and the supposed push towards personalised learning environments may change users' expectations. Even the 'transformed VLE ' , see Scott Wilson's PLE diagram may not be what users want in a few years - they may want the interactive content to 'come to them' at their desktop rather in an official PLE - i.e. they may control their own PLE. If there really is a shift in control (e.g. increased use of blogs and wikis) then it may not always be about what 'we' want whoever we are.
When HE provided access to the Internet, things were different but increasingly students have their own broadband access and can exercise more choice about how they stay in touch with each other and their tutors.
Sites like flickr.com, del.icio.us, etc. know how to minimise the learning overhead and they all fit together without big shifts to the user.
I now use a link to del.icio.us tag in my Blackboard course (and would also do so if I was lucky enough to us Moodle for my uni course) so that I can update the web links in del.icio.us.
I think that the point you make about MTV feeds is misleading. What the student does on their own private desktop (effectively this is what netvibes is) is invisible to you. At the 'course', the teacher would link to appropriate feeds, they just may not all be in Moodle.

I wonder how the use of RSS feeds will grow with the increased use of desktop/Internet services such as http://www.netvibes.com/
RSS allows you to keep track of Moodle forums (and all sorts of blogs), only visiting when you want to reply or check out the structure of a thread. In a way, Moodle has already relented on 'users see different structures/views' by allowing users to view forums in different modes, and by the option for users to choose their own theme - what you see is not necessarily what she gets.
I am not entirely convinced by the argument about single user interface.

According to Wikipedia the Nobel peace prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses"
That is a pretty tough call - even for Martin
Perhaps we should be questioning the individualist stance of these terms of reference. UNICEF was a winner in the past but interestingly few women have won see http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article295751.ece
Some of the more bizarre previous winners (e.g. Henry Kissinger) highlight the significance of 'solving' problems rather than avoiding them in a quiet group way. A cynical strategy for winning may be to help create a problem then solve it.
To answer your question Don, here are the categories of people eligible to nominate
http://nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/nominators.html