Challenge the taxonomy

     For next week, find an example of an educational use of technologies that does NOT fit the
     taxonomy. Create an HTML file describing it and send me the URL and a short title in email.

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Most of the development of educational technologies that I have visited classify according to this taxonomy. I have found, though, that many of the existent web tools to create learning environments, do not fit the taxonomy,  in certain cases as well as the "templates" or "wizards" in tutorials, which limit the design (or construction) of courses or documents.

WWW tools to create learning environments succeed in producing a learning environment, but fail in that the  "creation" or "construction" of that learning interface since the instructor  of the course  has to adapt the content of his course to the interface previously created  by the designer of the tool.Or in the case of templates in some tutorials, or  "wizards" which make the user adapt his idea to the designer's product.

In these cases the users of web tools and the user of "wizards" or templates, will have used the computer as media for inquiry and communication, but the expression and construction will depend on the web designer's decision.

Some of the examples I may quote for WWW tools are: WebCT,  Blackboard, VCI;  in these, you have to limit many of the decisions on the layout of the course, such as the names given to the Table of Contents, or the names of Files or Folders. Also the order in which they appear, and their names, so if you cannot change the headline, you decision on content will be limited, too. Though they are user friendly interfaces that let the instructor lead a Distance Learning course with no further problems, since they do not need to be web experts to be able to deliver a course on the WWW  because these tools really help in their course design.

For the second case I have mentioned, the examples are the Microsoft "wizards/templates" for the creation of documents, including letters, resumes, web pages, etc., which are present in most Microsoft Applications such as Word Processors, Publishers, Web Creation Tools, etc.