Teachers

Teachers have their material everywhere. Some is on their local drives or on a cloud service, some is on a Learning Management System (LMS), some is on the web (resources they use or want their students to use), some is on paper.

Most material teachers put on their school’s learning platform originates from a MS Word file, which is transformed to a PDF. This is a pity because students are confronted with lots of files that are usually neither sequenced nor have an overarching structure. It is too bad because in using PDF files teachers are limiting themselves. PDF files are closed off documents, there is no interactivity, no videos or simulations and updating these files is cumbersome. (Portability is mostly a plus for PDF files but they cannot contain any new kind of (interactive) contents.)

Teachers do not have the IT knowledge to set up their own (complex) websites. (It’s possible to get a blog website or a front website but the possibilities are limited and not focussed on educational needs.)

From the society’s point of view, teachers should be digital, be able to use upcoming technologies and embed them into their teaching. Unfotunately, many basic tools are not given to them. Getting help is also not possible as there are no consultants (Educational Developer / Instructional Designer) available. It is utopian to expect from a teacher to be a good educator, to know about his/her field, keeping up to date and be an IT amateur.

Small Businesses

The first step of a small business is a file server or Google drive. At some point they will set up a Wiki of some sort. Content on Wikis will be employee related material (rules and regulations, manuals, employee handbooks,…). The problem with Wikis is that the ones who fill them with content are usually not very motivated, and the ones who should look at them and read them usually do not find what they want, the content is not beautiful to look at, and there is no overarching and internal structure (that non-IT people would be familiar with).

Small companies offering any kind of continuing education or courses put their employees (learning & developmemt) responsible for these into the exact same position as the teachers are. They lack the webspace with functionalities for their content.

Self-employed Persons or Single Member Companies

These people need to share content with customers. They usually do this with flyers and PDF files. They are limiting themselves to static content (text and images). They could however share their content online, enriching it with new media and interactivity.

For all internal files (except for files with calculating/processing functionalities, e.g. Excel, databases, or accounting data), instead of using a file server or cloud service, they could manage all their content on the Web from the start.

In General

People use too many PowerPoint presentations for their content. It is not very versatile and truncates content in many ways. People need to move to the Web and regain control over their content obtaining more possibilities than with standard desktop software.