Forum Articles and Presentations about LAMS: Re: Presentation on Education IT architectures - including future of LMS

By: James Dalziel

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Hi Jeff,

LAMS is browser based to make it as easy as possible for people to get started with using LAMS - I've seen too many great educational software packages held back by local security restrictions which stop people downloading and installing desktop software.

Nonetheless, we're keen to see the use of both web-based and desktop activities with LAMS. One example I've already seen is using the Share Resources tool to provide mind-mapping files that can be downloaded to the desktop, then opened in a desktop mind-mapping software system, then later students can save the modified file, and upload this back into Share Resources where other students can view it, etc.

If the browser has been set to recognise the relevant file type on download, it can even open the software directly into the browser window - I've seen this work with Word, Excel, PDF and the mind mapping software I mentioned.

The limitation to be aware of here is that browsers have certain security features to stop them from doing too much on the desktop of users - so this may be a limitation in certain cases. In the future, it may be possible to build some special LAMS interfaces (either through technologies such as ActiveX; or a web-services based non-browser alternative to interacting with LAMS - this could be similar to some of the OKI OSID work with desktop applications). However, I think this is some way off, and the simple options I've mentioned above work quite well in practice once they are set up, and students know what to do.

Posted by James Dalziel