Forum LAMS Newsletter: Newsletter 34, 16th Jul, 06

By: James Dalziel

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Reflections on recent travel

I've just got back home from two and a half weeks of travel across the USA, UK, Netherlands, China and Hong Kong. It was great to meet LAMS users around the globe, many for the first time! I continue to be amazed at not only the amount of LAMS activity, but the many exciting ways that LAMS is being used throughout the world. For example, it was a great pleasure to see a live version of LAMS V2 beta already in use in central China only a few days after its launch in London (and without any external assistance)!

My sincere thanks to all those who hosted me during my travels, especially:
- the organisers of ED-MEDIA
- the organisers of the EDUCAUSE workflow CAMP
- Prof Diana Laurillard and colleagues at London Knowledge Lab
- Dr Christine Ferraris, Dr Laurence Vignollet and colleagues from the University of Savoie, France (who hosted the ICALT Learning Design workshop and panel)
- Prof Yang and colleagues at Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan, China, and
- Prof Carmel McNaught and colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

I was also pleased to see the increasing interest in LAMS as an example of innovation in e-learning. There is a great hunger for new approaches to e-learning, and my sense is that there are two key innovations shaping the field: (a) Learning Design (including systems like LAMS) and (b) Various e-portfolio/Personal Learning Environment (PLE) approaches. And given these two new trends, it will be exciting to see how they interact - the new LAMS V2 "portfolio export" feature provides one starting point....

LAMS V2 beta feedback wanted

LAMS V2 beta is now out, with full details on new features at http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/LAMS+2.0+Feature+List
and details of how to compile and run LAMS V2 beta at http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Building+LAMS

We're keen to get feedback from the community before the final V2 release in October. The simplest way of providing feedback is by posting comments/questions/bugs to the the Technical Community areas of the LAMS Community.

For advanced bug hunters, see our online bug tracking system at https://bugs.lamsfoundation.org/browse/LDEV

LAMS Conference reminder

A reminder that the First International LAMS Conference will be held in Sydney, Australia from December 6-8th - all welcome! For submission and registration details, see http://lamsfoundation.org/lams2006/

... and my apologies for missing last week's newsletter - it was a hectic and exciting time in China and Hong Kong!

Posted by James Dalziel