Michael Feldstein responds on NGDLEs with a brilliant in-depth piece on the complex issues involved in building standards for online learning tool interoperability and more. I wish I’d read this before posting my own most recent response because it addresses several of the same issues with similar conclusions, but in greater depth and with more eloquence, as well as bringing up some other important points such as the very complex differences in needs between different contexts of application. My post does add things that Michael’s overlooks and the perspective is a little different (so do read it anyway!), but the overlapping parts are far better and more thoroughly expressed by Michael.
This is an idea that has been in the air and ripe for exploitation for a very long time but, as Michael says in his post and as I also claim in mine, there are some very big barriers when it comes down to implementing such a thing and a bunch of wicked problems that are very hard to resolve to everyone’s satisfaction. We have been here before, several times: let’s hope the team behind NGDLE finds ways to avoid the mistakes we made in the past.
Address of the bookmark: http://mfeldstein.com/the-educause-ngdle-and-an-api-of-ones-own/