An interesting conversation has been going on over the last week on the role of LMS or PLE (personal learning environment). Leigh started the conversation with this post: Die LMS die! You too PLE! . His central contention is that the internet itself (blogging, wikis, tagging, etc.) is a sufficiently rich learning environment to meet his needs...an LMS or PLE is not needed. Dave Cormier responds with a more moderate response, stating (or at least implying) that real world implementations of PLEs are useful (some great comments follow at the end of the post).
I have criticized LMS' in the past (Learning Management Systems: The wrong place to start elearning). I think they can be atrocious tools for learning - the control rests in the hands of administrators and software designers - not learners and teachers. I believe that learning happens in a networked manner (both in our brains and in the creation of external networks of people, content, and technologies). I don't think that LMS', in their current incarnation, are sustainable. However, I do believe they will continue to be a part of our future. I have yet to encounter an elearning initiative that was not heavily peppered with LMS talk. The decision makers like LMS'. The future, I hope, will provide a more balanced view of learning that includes teachers and learners.
Learning is multi-faceted. Leigh is describing one aspect or approach. I find that when we take a reactionary stance against an existing structure, we are in danger of overlooking the good parts. Some aspects of classrooms are great. We need them. The online world is most effective when it leads to physical presence (I've experienced this as a learner and consultant, but the truth about telecommuting presents this same idea). As I've stated previously, when we begin to use language to include intricate aspects of a topic (versus the exclusionary aspect of most reasoning in educational technology - i.e. "it's good because it does this"..."that's bad because it does this"), we can move toward whole/integrated technology and learning implementations. Each tool (classroom, online, PLE/LMS, decentralized, asynchronous, synchronous) has it's time and place. The appropriate tool needs to be selected for the appropriate task.