Archive for: June 2006

Randy Metcalfe from OSS Watch gave an overview of Open Source Software using the recent decision by the Open University to chose Moodle as its VLE platform. The aim of OSS Watch is to help institutions think …

With Professor Richard Winter at Ultralab today discussing the implications of his work on patchwork texts (Guardian article) and how it is interpreted by the Ultraversity project.

Some key lessons for me:

The notion of reflection is better …

Yesterday evening I drove 30 miles to an IKEA outlet near Nottingham. One of the things I bought there was a selection of plastic containers (Tupperware style), very useful and at £4 …

A nice little feature about Ultraversity written by Stephen Hoare of the Guardian . This short quote sums it up well “This month the first cohort of 150 students will …

Many people wouldn’t have a clue where the city of Leicester is nor what it has to offer being a smallish city in the Midlands of the country of England. Reasonably …

Hosted by cetis in Manchester.

These are personal impressions and I apologise in advance if I have misinterpreted or failed to credit anyone’s pet idea or hate!

Thoughts for would-be teachers in this online learning environment!

1. Pedagogically, it is important to understand that teacher intervention is not the tool itself, but what flows through the tool!

2. Understand and reach out to your learners, inhabit the world in which they live - blogs, MySpaces, iChat, Skype, etc.

3. Value who your learners are now so that they believe you want them to ‘grow’ in the future.

4. Be the person you want your pupils to be - model desired behaviour (Stephen Downes).

5. Development of technologies such as foaf to include resources and activity descriptions could utilises PLE as a ‘lightweight’ approach to the flawed learning design approach.

Thoughts for would-be experts in PLE!:^)

1. A general agreement that a PLE isn’t a ‘thing’, that is not a piece of software but a philosophical starting point that has gained some recent currency because of the rapid changes in technology and society at the early part of the 21st century. This is not without difficulties though, as through the act of discussing PLE we were drawn into the reification of the concept as an object:^)

2. Huge tension between the institutional ownership of learning (broad definition) and the individual’s ownership of their learning. This includes artefacts produced, data surrounding student choices, student participation in learning activities and platforms, etc. For Universities, this data is potentially a valuable commodity in terms of their quality assurance processes, compliance, and potentially for predictive purposes. However, why not make this data more widely available so that the learner might use it to make informed choices and others to plan better.

3. The dividing line between a PLE and an e-portfolio was thought to be very blurred. Discussion around repository for an individuals work centred around the old chestnut of faith in the power of common standards making interoperability and thereby transfer of content between institutions and other providers of e-portfolio a reality - pie in the sky optimism in my opinion. A second position expressed was keep the provision of such services out of the hands of Universities, schools, etc as they are institutionally incapable of understanding the implications for individuals and of taking decisions that support the development of PLE - my opinion.

4. Significant debate around where PLE relate to formal and non-formal learning. There is a risk that the formal learning will hijack PLE for their agenda of delivery, compliance, assessment, etc.

5. Stephen Downes inspired the diagram below of the kind that my old boss Stephen Heppell was very good at constructing and explaining when trying to get across to people significant or paradigm shifts. None of the ideas are new, but it is one approach to summing up the rationale behind PLE - please add any thoughts.

6. Stephen D identified four ‘tests’ of a PLE system encompassed by the overarching idea that I have paraphrased as - personal empowerment and capacity: the ability to be successful! I have remembered and interpreted them as does a PLE promote:
I. autonomy of the learner - the ability to make informed learning choices
II. diversity in acknowledging different forms of skills and knowledge and learning environments
III. openness - symmetry of power relationship and the use of tools
IV. connectedness - interaction between individuals and groups

7. PLE will necessarily evolve first outside of institutions and then perhaps between institutions.

8. Don’t start with the institutions - the issues become very complex and a PLE initiative/project will quickly drown.

9. A PLE is the tool used to organise oneself on the web and the management of identity is the key issue. Plugins to standard browsers should readily handle this - the browser announces your chosen ‘persona’ and then manages the ‘harvesting’ (pulling back and display in a standard way.), re-mixing, and ‘planting’ of data using RSS technology.

10. In its simplest, and perhaps most realistic form, it is simply a tool that manages links, API, single sign on, RSS Relationship between the online learning environment and real world.

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These were my thoughts on the reasons why we need PLE submitted for consideration before the PLE meeting Download file

Any UV researchers particularly those working in schools and who want help with resources should head over to this website ttrb offered by the TDA, funded by Microsoft. The online e-librarian is a free service, use it!

This …

Another bit of fun, this time from From Cluster Maps. “See at a glance where your site’s visitors are located: instantaneously, even when the numbers are enormous! Visitors don’t need to click on anything: just viewing …

Playing with the integration of NetNewsWire and MarsEdit (found at the same site) which allows the grabbing of content via RSS feeds, working on them in an editor, and then the re-posing to a Blog - a key attributes …

Courtesy of Website as Graphs brought to my attention by Josie’s - EdTechUK