Mahara

The User owned technology demonstrators strand from JISC has funded five projects to explore the issues around institution led and user led learning technologies. Its part way through and winds up in March 2009, some of the findings and outputs should be pretty informative for this whole debate that many institutions are wrestling with.

It has arisen in some of the My portfolio workshops that I have been delivering - the extent to which the institution encroaches/supports what is fundamentally intended to be  a user led tool for aiding reflection and lfielong learning.

Many institutions are already dabbling, or some might say encroaching in social netowrking tools. Many sites, such as Facebook and Second Life have very lively education focused forums, flourishing without (or because of??) the lack of tutor led direction