I’ve been working on educational technology strategy and implementation for what feels like as long as I can remember but one thing I have always intended to do was to develop a visualisation of educational technologies in the form of a ‘map’. There are a number of such maps around already. Some of these are very good but they were never quite what I wanted. Specifically they focussed on the product rather than the tool or technology. So you would get a map that nearly always showed the LMS/VLE product at the centre with an eportfolio, some streaming media and some other technologies around the edge. I wanted something that showed the tools but also showed where they fitted in the landscape. Whether they were learning tools or management tools and whether the tools were focussed on the student or the staff member etc. I also wanted to get away from the LMS being at the centre of the tool map becuase the LMS is basically a collection of tools in one product that combine some management and some educational functionality. This isn’t because I am against the LMS as a concept but because I wanted to show that there are alternatives and that not everything needs to fit within an LMS.
I actually found the development of the map quite difficult when it came down to allocating tools to spaces in the landscape. Is the landscape I have drawn the correct one? Are the tools in the right places? Have I selected all of the educational technologies that should be there. Even as I type I realise I have missed what many would consider to be a big one. For this reason I have decided to put version 0.2 of the map up to public debate. The video below gives a brief overview and the original MS Visio file can be downloaded here. You can also click on the image at the top to see it as a full size gif image. It is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike V 3.0 license so you are welcome to use and reuse it as you see fit. Of course, if you do modify it, I’d be delighted if you’d let me know so that we can create something better between us.