"We'll probably take five years to realise it," writes Martin Weller, but "I think this shift to loosely coupled, freely available third party systems will happen. It won't happen overnight, and it will follow a succession model, but I would place money on this being the direction things take." A pretty good overview of the weaknesses of the LMS, and the post has sparked an engaging conversation in the comments. Martin Weller, The Ed Techie November 9, 2007 [Link] [Tags: none] [Comment] Results of First Comprehensive Study of Maine's Pioneering Ed-Tech Initiative Show Promise

The link to eSchool News will probably vanish into uselessness as that magazine clings to an obsolete publishing model by preventing readers from seeing its content, but Helge Scherlund (who has really been performing a service with her links to timely and credible content recently) has been good enough to summarize and link to the actual study. In a nutshell: the research suggests that children in the 1-to-1 laptop program are showing improvements in their reading abilities; "their writing scores have improved on a standardized test since laptop computers were distributed, the study says..." Helge Scherlund, Helge Scherlund's eLearning news blog November 9, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Schools, Books, Research, Portable Computers] [Comment]