Here is yet another e-learning website with nothing new except a bit of AJAX fairy dust sprinkled on it, some Web 2.0 wording and claims of breaking new ground. It amazes me that it will (already seems to be) get the kind of hype they are looking for.

I don't want to completely rip apart Nuvvo as I'm happy for any eLearning companies to do something useful on the web for education but lets look at a few things.

I hate to break Nuvvo's bubble but we used AJAX in 2000/2001 with QuikkTutor (an online tutor service). It should be of no surprise that Brent Ashley, who I will now claim is the father of a particular method of "remote scripting", was on the development team at QuikkTutor. His Javascript Remote Scripting (JSRS) library was being built at around that time.

Another first for Nuvvo is the use of Skype. Technically that may be correct (even that I doubt) but it certainly isn't the first learning system to use voice over the Internet. We were using voice in 2000/2001 with QuikkTutor. Sure, it wasn't Skype (since they didn't exist) but it was voice over the Internet with headphones and a microphone (imagine that). We were just getting into using SIP with one of our voice providers back then as it was relatively new. For those of you who would like a very small Internet history lesson, there were many many companies similar to Skype that have come and gone over the years and voice over the Internet has been around in some way shape or form since at least the 90's.

I can go on about there being no business model here, how their LMS is not conducive to learning on the web etc, but it is not my job to give out free consulting. If they would like to hire me for some advice I'm available.

Don't get me wrong, I like what I see with Nuvvo, its just that its about 1/10th (if that) of what is required for a decent eLearning play and a drop in the bucket with what QuikkTutor had 5 years ago.

I get more and more confirmation every year on how far ahead of our time we were with QuikkTutor.