1. What makes anyone think that the video games push (mostly by the iOS platform devices, but Xbox, Playstation and Wii) has anything to do with formal education? 

Well, I don't know if gamification gained any traction, but things like achievements in video games have lent themselves to things like badges. I suspect that my original assertion that it will be marginalized, will remain until someone can quantify and measure the whole process, much like they've tried to do with standardized testing.

2. Why haven't educational institutions really pushed for a mobile learning environment? 

I think there's been some motion here - certainly the open courses are structured so that they are mobile friendly, and the big two LMS vendors (Desire2Learn and Blackboard) are both becoming more mobile friendly, I suspect the resistance comes from the institution's inability to control and verify that a potentially mobile student may not be that student, and the only way to assess a person is still in-person. I don't think it matters anymore, in work most people will use the Internet to research a possible solution to whatever problem they face, so knowing something isn't as crucial as it once was. Knowing something however does allow you to find a solution sooner - making you a more efficient worker - which is what capitalism wants.

3. Will the consolidation of the web conferencing tools that education typically use (Wimba and Elluminate) mean that new companies with new models will arise? 

Well, they haven't arisen yet, but there's a plethora of tools out there to replace Blackboard Collaborate or whatever it's called this week. However, no one has put together the killer app - which I hope is the form the web conferencing takes - mobile native, low bandwidth friendly, and most of all, accessible.

4. Wither edupunk? 

Yup. edu-post-punk should be interesting.

5. What will Pearson as a publishing giant and accredited University mean? 

Turns out, not much. Unless you consider an extremely walled off garden of textbooks in a proprietary LMS with Google Doc integration something.

OK, now that's out of my system, I don't think D2L should have sued but should have just walked away from it - sure it's half a million dollars - but in the long run if the start-up can't handle it, they'll collapse and one of the big LMS players will swoop in and clean it up.

That's not to say that I'm unhappy with Desire2Learn,  it doesn't have any performance issues (much like what Stephen Downes wrote about the Sakai vs. Moodle in the OLDaily) and it's been the best of the lot by a longshot. I wish it was more robust in the web 2.0 area, and a built in collaborative document would be a good way to have student collaborate (without their LiveRoom add in), but it's easier to use than Blackboard and WebCT and is web-based, which is a plus for those who don't want to download the client for FirstClass.

Certainly Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle and other modern LMS's allow a creator to exert some control over how content looks. You are somewhat functionally trapped into a frame where content is held with some of these systems, but in many cases those are constraints that you can work with (against?). As an educator you might also have other issues restricting the look of your content; headers are a certain color, color schemes might be imposed by your institution, usability experts tell you what icon to use for a link or even font size might be restricted.

As an educator you have a dual purpose as well, you need to make your content accessible as well. So that means you should consider things like contrast of color, whether your font size is large enough for the visually impaired and whether your images have alt tags to ensure a screen reader can convey the description properly to a user. In fact, your institution might be under law to make your content accessible.

Frames in and of themselves pose problems for stringent accessibility rules, so your LMS might already be screwing you. It's quite possible it's screwing you anyways... never mind that ugly thought...

It's not particularly difficult to make a website accessible. It can be tricky to make it aesthetically pleasing and usable. Seeing as I've brought up visually impaired users, I would be very very remiss to not mention this other blog article about 10 Tools for Evaluating Web Site Accessibility especially for color blind users. While these are for websites, you can use most of these tools within LMS's as well. The Firefox extention (#1 in the linked article) is excellent, and has identified a couple areas that I need to be aware of in my own work. Of course, this doesn't really speak about aesthetics. Well not explicitly anyways.

Aesthetics are pleasing the eye - which can be difficult to hit the centre of the target everytime as we all view things differently. I often get asked, how can I make something look good? Practice is my default answer, but when pressed I will concede that you can't go wrong with the classic black, white and grey. Add an accent color of (one of) red, blue or green and your e-learning space will look professional. If you have a predetermined header, or logo, grab one of the colors as an accent from that. Simplicity is key. It's when people start to get fancy that sometimes people run into trouble.

And in the spirit of the Open Ed conference that's going on in Vancouver - my remix of the Blackboard logo is satirical - feel free to reproduce but be aware that your rights might be different than my rights. Blackboard logo is a registered trademark of the Blackboard company.

Towards the end of the discussion veered towards the tool having no influence on what you're teaching, rather the tool is influenced by your personal philosophy of teaching. It's a bit of a chicken or the egg scenario - does your philosophy influence what tools you use or does the tool influence your philosophy? I tend to think that tools are neutral, until you use them. The tools you then use, and how you use them, inform others of your worldview and philosophy.

For instance, you are teaching at a distance, and have some choices as to the tools you use. Of course, this all presupposes that you have a choice.You weigh the value of a distributed set of social networking resources (twitter, google docs, blogs etc) against the value of putting everything in an LMS (D2L, Blechboard, WebCT, Moodle). On the one hand, you might want your students to have a central point of entry is convenient, useful, simple. You can give PowerPoints, additional notes, and other resources that you find in the LMS and be relatively certain that students will find them and maybe even look at them. From a pedagogical standpoint, this is more of a Behaviourist standpoint with a nuturing element. Most LMS's model this sort of instruction - sure there's workarounds to allow more collaborative tools, but if you want students to mark each other, you as the instructor still have to enter marks. The instructor role puts you in a role of power over students, which is not a really new concept.

By distributing learning, you allow for serendipity to drive your course content somewhat, but you can guide learning by participating in the distributed nodes wherever they exist. By choosing a less centralized mode you are revealing that you are more of a constructivist, or will to engage in constructivism at least.

The argument is that it's pedagogy that's driving those decisions. I tend to agree... but then the question arose "Is a teacher who uses Moodle more open than one that uses Blackboard?"  To which I responded "I suspect so, but one tool does not inform about us fully." (If you want the full context, click the link above and zoom to the 55 minute mark, I'm Jon K.) I wanted to take a bit to expand on that, my thinking was not clear enough to say what I should've said - "No." Comparing Moodle to Blackboard is like comparing Firefox to Internet Explorer. They are both LMSs and serve the same function - as a central repository of information - which implies that any other information about your course is secondary, or less useful.  Sure, one is a better tool to use than the other (politically?) and one may have features that you value over the other. They in the end serve the same purpose.

On another note, if I'm going to keep sticking my foot in this hole, I'm going to have to brush up on my McLuhan. Maybe some McGoohan too, just to put me right round the bend.