WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
A few months ago I came across Nuvvo which promised to allow teachers to be able to create online courses which students could then sign up to. The reason I didn’t start using it straight away was the fact that it wasn’t free - you either had to cover the monthly charges yourself or pass them onto students. However now, in addition to this pricing model, Nuvvo allows the creation of free courses, where both teachers and students pay nothing! Now that it’s a bona fide option for the average teacher, let’s have a closer look…
It integrates a blog (which you can customise to your heart’s content and can be commented on by students), a messaging system, your Skype username, and easy-to-use content management system (with WYSIWYG editor), assessment modules (from multiple-choice to subjective answers), and more. I suppose it’s a bit like Moodle, except you don’t have to install it yourself and it’s a bit easier to use!
Nuvvo’s worth having a play around with to see if it’s likely to suit you and your students. One downside, I suppose for school use is the fact that students have to sign themselves up for the course. It may be more useful, therefore, for post-compulsory education.
Elgg is a bit different than Nuvvo. It’s an open-source ‘learning landscape’ that allows you to either sign-up for a free hosted account or install it on your own website.
Elgg is focused on the learner, rather than the teacher, creating a web presence similar to what I what I’ve previously mentioned about Personal Learning Environments.
It’s still in its early stages of development (v0.4 will be released on 21 Jan.) but elgg certainly looks to have potential, creating communities of learners. I think this is the way that education should be looking - not using ICT to replace current practice but to do things that are genuinely innovative. One university has already deployed it campus-wide and I should imagine in the near future many more universities will be looking to roll out similar systems for their students.
The system gives you ‘tools’ to create some kind of learner space. It’s a bit difficult to describe it’s potential - a kind of mix between a Personal Learning Environment and Social Learning Environment. It’s a blogging platform, RSS feed aggregator, podcasting platform, calendar, resource repository, community builder, and more. That’s why it’s called a ‘Learning Landscape’! I’ll be really interested to see how people start using this Elgg as it seems to have great potential… 
Both Nuvvo and Elgg are discussed on EdTechTalk #32 which is available as a podcast or can be listened to online. According to one of it’s developers, Elgg will eventually allow direct recording of podcasts (like Odeo) and integration with Moodle. 
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Hi Doug,
Nice post. Lays out the issues in a clear, easy fashion. While there are a couple of specifics i might take issue with(elgg is actually fully functional 0.4 or not) i really like your approach and will be stealing “worth having a play around with to see if it’s likely to suit you and your students.” for the show. cheers. dave.
Hi Doug. Loving this, thanks for the post. We’re certainly in good company mentioned alongside Moodle and Elgg. Glad you’re finding Nuvvo useful.
Thought I’d offer a quick tip: Instructors can invite students using our Invite Students feature on the Enrollments page of a course. Students can join themselves, it’s true, but it also works the other way around. Hope that helps; I can see how that would be important.
Great looking blog you’ve got here. Keep up the good work!
Dave.
Well, my goodness! It’s great to be blessed with such luminaries commenting on my humble blog. Still, it goes to show the collaborative power of the ‘net, which is something we must harness for coming generations…
All these sound interesting - I haven’t come across Elgg and it does sound a bit tricky to explain to non-technical users. I shall certainly install it and give it a try.
I do wonder whether it is trying to do too many things though - too many elggs in one basket?
I shall try it out and see what is has to offer. Must admit though that our use of Moodle so far has only scratched the surface - Moodle is incredibly powerful and has an massively growing user (and consequently fan) base.