Multilitteratus Incognitus

OK, this isn't really news, but the news is our all over the interwebs - Google will no longer be developing Wave as a stand-alone product, and will keep the service up and running until the end of the year - it will also provide a way for people to get their data off Google Wave. I have to say that I really enjoyed messing around with Google Wave. I got an early beta invite, I invited some friends, but the mistake was that I invited people that are gadget geeks like me, but we don't normally collaborate! This Wave was really a bit useless for me because the people that I invited were people whose interactions with me would not push me to use the service! Google because open for everyone's use this past spring, but by that time I hadn't really thought of uses for Wave. In a recent comment in InsideHigherEd, I saw that people were using Wave as a replacement for the Bulletin Board System within the LMS (learning management system). What a brilliant idea! I think...

Every year (or at least at the end of a decade) people feel compelled to pronounce certain things obsolete - let's toss them by the way side and move on proclaim the pundits! This year is no different. Recently Inside Higher Ed had their own obsolete learning technologies list - which I obviously completely disagree with. Here's the bird's eye view: Scantron Sheets Overhead Projectors/Transparencies Classroom VHS/DVD Players Course Packs & Course Readers Photocopiers Microfiche Language and Computer Labs Paper Journals and Periodicals So here's why I disagree: Scantron sheets are still useful and relevant. Why? Well, if you're teaching a few classes with 60+ students in them (or even if you're not), you don't always have time to take your questions - which your probably formulated into word, copy and paste them into an LMS quiz module, select the correct answers and make an answer tree out of them. It is much, much, simpler to develop a good multipl...