Blogs and LMS side by side

Aaron Campbell makes a good arguement for using blogs and other types of social software (e.g. Flickr) in the classroom. I find it also interesting that he makes the point that Learning Management Systems (like Blackboard) and social software can peacefully coexist. This line of thought is particularly appealing to me, because so often those who waive the social software banner in educational settings spend far too much time bashing Blackboard.

Campbell quotes George Siemens from elearnspace to make his point:

Both approaches are needed, depending on intended tasks/outcomes.... Certain aspects of learning should be centralized (particularly enrolment), and others should be decentralized (interaction, content exploration, learner-created content (blogs, wikis), etc.).

Campbell then goes on to talk about his experiences using both Moodle (an open source LMS) and social software in an EFL class:

Moodle was a base from which we organized our class activities and took weekly quizzes on content relevant to our language learning, which for us meant sentence combining, paragraph formation, word choice, expression, and editing previously posted work. This centralized space provided a ‘home-base’ from which learners interacted with the decentralized ‘world out there’ via their sharing on Flickr and Livejournal.

If your interested here's the rest of his post. But you get the basic idea... use the tool that does the job best. LMS is very good at delivering course content, social software is very good at helping students become active and engaged learners.