PLE vs VLE

Three of my third year B.Ed Primary education students, Adam Skill, Danny Houton and James Carhart, have created a most excellent video to accompany their paper for the Plymouth e-Learning Conference next month. It gives more than a nod in the direction of the Lee LeFever Plain English videos, but it's still quite original in its own way as you will see....



The paper is titled: Integrating Personal Learning Environments into the Primary Classroom and goes beyond web tools, and even personal learning networks. It examines what happens when children are allowed to choose the ways they wish to learn and what tools they want to help support their learning. It was a bold project, and there are some interesting conclusions to be made. Here's the abstract:

The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a concept that describes how learners create and sustain their study through individualised tools and resources. Each PLE by its nature is unique, with each individual choosing their own preferred approaches. Moreover, there is disagreement about the concept of PLEs and controversy over the term ‘personalised’ (Johnson & Liber, 2008). Here we will argue that PLEs are not restricted to web based tools, but can include personal experiences, conversations and other resources such as newspapers, television and radio. Many traditional school environments are based on trial and error, experimentation and discussion?" all of which can be encompassed within a PLE, with computers used as a medium to connect ideas and produce quality presentations for assessment. Collaboration with other learners is also made easier through the use of personal web tools within the learners’ PLE.

In this presentation we aim to explore these ideas and enable teachers to begin thinking about how they can tap into a range of approaches to implementing PLEs in their classrooms. We will also discuss how children can be empowered to manage their own learning goals through the use of PLEs.

To explore the notion of personalisation, we went into three primary schools, where we used two contrasting teaching modes with each class. The first mode was didactic and teacher-led and the second mode was learner-centred, offering the learners their own choices of activities and resources.

From the data gathered we show how children responded to each mode of teaching and their opinions and preferences for each approach. We pay specific attention to the ability groups within each class, and discuss how preferences contrasted within each group. We discuss how individual learner preferences and personal agency can impact upon the ability of children to become more proactive in their learning. We conclude by arguing that the use of PLE approaches can support individual learners to achieve their full potential.

Reference
Johnson, M. and Liber, O. (2008) The Personal Learning Environment and the human condition: from theory to teaching practice. Interactive Learning Environments, 16 (1), 3-15.