Web feats 2: Slideshare

Yesterday I published the first of my Web feats - the social bookmarking tool Delicious. Today, I want to talk about another of my favourite Web 2.0 tools: Slideshare.

Sharing wasn't just something we were all taught to do as kids. It also has a place in professional life and in the spirit of the social webm, has become something I do naturally each time I create a new slideshow. I have even shared my slides before I present them (but usually only on the same day - I don't want to give too much of the game away!) I first discovered Slideshare about 2 years ago when I was looking for somewhere to store all my content. I quickly discovered that once my slide shows were posted on Slideshare, people came in to view them, and sometimes even commented on them. I found this to be a rich source of feedback from people who are equally as passionate about my subject as I am. The great thing about Slideshare is that if people are interested in your slideshow, they can show it in a number of useful ways. They can 'like' or 'favourite' your slideshow, download it for easier reading, or even embed it into their own blog or website using the coding the site provides for each individual slideset. Recently other widgets and tools have started appearing on the Slideshare site, including the tool that allows users to share a link on Facebook and Twitter, or embed it into a blog post if it's powered by Blogger or Wordpress.

As with all social web tools, Slideshare has a rich social dimension - you can create your own network using its tools by following people back who are following you or who leave comments. You can also find people who have similar interests to you and subscribe to their feeds so that when they post up a new slideshow, you will be the first to know. Slideshare is a very useful tool to guage the mood of the community - some of my slideshows have attracted 3000 views in a single day. When that happens you know you have hit a nerve. It's good to share.

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Web feats 2: Slideshare by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Web feats 1: Social bookmarking

There are many social web tools that I have adopted into my every day practice. It might sound a little daft for me to claim that I couldn't do without them. I suppose that without them, I would still be able to teach, research and otherwise just about function, but I might also go stark raving mad too if I couldn't use them to make my life a lot easier. Over the next few days I want to list my top social web tools (my Web feats) - the ones I probably couldn't do without... Here's the first in the series: Social Bookmarking.

I first began to use Delicious about two years ago when I stumbled upon it while digging around for some way to store and organise my best internet 'finds'. There are a number of other social bookmarking services available including Diigo, Connotea (academic users), and Citeulike (for referencing) and recommender sites wuch as Stumbledupon, Reddit and Digg. Not everyone likes it, but Delicious is my favourite bookmarking tool because not only does it store away all of my favourite websites (it asks for the URL, a title and some key words), it also has a neat social dimension to it - and it's a lot less messy on the screen than most of the others too. When you save a bookmark on Delicious, it is likely that someone else (and sometimes if it's a very popular website - many other people) has also done the same. A number in a coloured square appears on the right of the bookmark showing you exactly how many other people have saved the URL you have just bookmarked. Click on the number square and you will see all the other people listed in chronological order. Click onto any single user and you will see all of the other websites they have saved. You can choose to visit these websites, bookmark them, tag them and even connect with the other user. I find this an incredibly useful function - it allows me to connect into a ready made community of interest to find people who are interested in the same stuff as me. When you find someone you would like to connect to, you can add them to your Network using the apropriate linked function, found on the top right of the screen.

Delicious also allows me to see who has bookmarked my own blog posts too, as shown in this example. So Delicious can be a very useful tool not only for organising and storing links to your favourite websites, but it's also a very useful way of connecting with people who have similar interests to you.

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Web feats 1: Social bookmarking by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Web feats

I'm away on my family holidays for the next two weeks, and I am fairly sure that where I'm going there will be no wifi Internet connections. That's probably a very good thing, because it will mean that I won't be tempted to continue working, and I can have a well needed rest. Yet I also suspect that I will probably begin suffering from web withdrawal symptoms after... well, a few hours really. No Twitter, no Facebook, no Google searching for stuff I really want to know more about. How many others are in that position? Am I an internet addict? Who knows? I don't think so, but I enjoy using it whenever I can, and miss it when I can't. But I need a break and so there you have it.

I'm also conscious that there is a readership for this blog (already this month over 10,000 views have been recorded), and so, during the time I'm away, I have arranged for some of my new blog posts - a series of 7 called 'Web Feats', about the most useful social media tools for learning - to be time released during the next two weeks. So keep watching this space and don't touch that dial, as they say in television land. I hope you enjoy reading the posts, and will also keep sending in your comments. Keep participating, and adding to our knowledge of the web and how it can enhance, extend and enrich learning. That's what this blog is all about. So, please keep coming back. I won't be here for the next two weeks, but my robot will look after you.

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Web feats by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Capturing the moment

Photographs are very powerful things. I was looking through some old photographs this week, from my youth group days. An old friend was good enough to scan them and post them up to Facebook so we could all share the memories. I still remember the teenagers I spent time with, as they were then, frozen in time. I have lost touch with many of them, and I probably wouldn't recognise some of them now, but my memories of them then, as they looked then, evoke all sorts of emotions. The picture of me on the left was taken around 1980 (from another photo collection), capturing a personal moment in time for me. I wonder what happened to that old combat jacket?

When I trained as a photographer back in the early 70s, everything was done manually, in a dark room, with developing and fixing tanks, enlargers and various grades of printing paper. Photography took time. We had to learn all about lens apertures, parallax errors, film speeds and polarising filters. With the introduction and rapid take up of digital photography, a lot has changed. Photography is now more or less instant. It is now so much easier to create, edit, and share images over social media. Sites such as Picasa, Flickr and Facebook are full of shared images, many that have been posted to the web within seconds of being taken. The social web is an instantaneous, rich and fertile environment for sharing memories, capturing moments in time and preserving them for ever. Even the British Monarchy has this week widened its digital footprint by publishing a number of previously unseen images on its new British Monarchy Flickr site.

Never before have we been able to make the statement - this is me! - in such an emphatic and meaningful manner. Digital photography, when linked with social media, can offer endless opportunities for people to engage with each other. The discussion over the old photos of my youth group posted on Facebook last week has prompted a flurry of comments, tagging and sharing from us all - and although many of us had lost touch with each other - the images have brought us back together again, wherever we are in the world. That is priceless.

There is an undeniably emotional - and even spiritual - dimension to this kind of shared imagery. Capturing moments in time that will never be again. Sharing them, and talking about 'the old times' is not just about nostalgia, and remembering a time that once was. It's also about celebrating the 'here and now', marking the event, because it will quickly be gone. It is about recognising that although time is a constantly onward moving stream, we are able to share our common thoughts, emotions, hopes and aspirations as we encounter each other within it.

'You cannot step into the same river twice' - Heraclitus

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Capturing the moment by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

What if they threw a party and none of us came?

Academic publishing is changing. Has to, because the old model of academic publishing is sadly outmoded. As Brian Lamb said recently at the Open Educational Resources Symposium, it seems perverse to hoard knowledge in any form, particularly in the light of the current economic crisis. Why should knowledge be a commodity? Why should publishers charge so much money for access to important ideas, new findings and vital knowledge that can make the difference in people's lives? Before anyone points out the fact that paper based journals cost money to produce, edit, review, print and distribute, I want to make the following points: Most academic journals are run by academics on a voluntary basis - those who review for my journal don't get paid a penny. They receive a free subscription to the journal, (and of course the kudos of working on a journal run by me - priceless!) but that's their lot. The real costs come in the production of the paper version. What if the publishers all went over to solely online publishing? How much could costs be reduced then?

Some publishers, particularly those running open access journals, are reversing the business model - and offering all contents free to any reader online, whilst the authors pay to have their work published. This model has come in for some criticism of course, because there is then great pressure on the editors to publish as many submissions as they can, so the journal can optimise its revenue stream. This criticism has been countered by said journals imposing more rigorous peer reviews. One of my recent open access journal articles (which I did not pay to have published btw) was peer reviewed by no less that 5 experts for the excellent journal Future Internet. Other business models involve advertising and/or sponsorship. Some, such as the highly successful International Review of Research in Open and Distance Education (IRRODL) and the Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education (TOJDE) are supported by parent institutions or organisations (as is the case with EURODL - the European Online Open Distance Learning Journal run by EDEN).

Whichever way we go to ensure academic publishing is economically sustainable, there is a growing movement to ditch traditional publishing because it is prohibitive, discriminatory and increasingly outmoded. Many of my academic colleagues are now refusing to publish in standard publications, preferring to throw their lot in with the open access journals.

Some are turning their back completely on the hard nosed, monetizing operation that is global publishing, and are instead using free tools such as blogs and other social media services to publish their work. They argue that they can reach a larger audience more quickly, and in a more interest driven and user-centric manner. There is no waiting for peer review, no publishing contracts to sign, and no production fees to pay. They argue that peer review comes later - and in a continual stream. Rather than as a barrier to overcome, peer review through comments and feedback directly to the author, becomes more open, honest and accessible for all to read and learn from. I can see their point, as increasingly, I am publishing my ideas and research up here on this blog, so everyone can see it and access it freely, rather than waiting for it to be published in a reputable peer reviewed journal a year or so down the road, when it is out of date. I agree with Brian Lamb that we should not hoard knowledge, nor should we restrict it, by charging others for the priviledge of reading it. Further, academics should not be constrained by the old economic models of publishing that still prevail. We should make our knowledge freely available to anyone who wants to read it using free and open services. That is the 'prime directive' of the open access, open educational resources movement. The powers that be don't like it, and neither I assume, will the publishers if everyone starts doing it. What if they threw a party and none of us came?

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What if they threw a party by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Blurring the boundaries

I'm increasingly conscious of the blurring of boundaries between formal and informal learning contexts. We spend much of our time in formal settings such as classrooms, training rooms and 'on the job' training, to learn the stuff that gets accredited through academic or vocational qualifications bodies. And yet, this generally accounts for only around 20 per cent of our lifelong learning time. The remaining 80 per cent of lifelong learning occurs as a result of informal, and often random kinds of learning experiences (Cofer, 2000).

It's not an 'either/or' equation, and I don't want people to think I am advocating doing away with schools and formal learning. The two complement each other. Much of random informal learning suits the human mind, because it differs so much to linear forms of learning that predominate the formal learning environment of school, college and university. Non-linear pathways map neatly across the topography of the human brain with its galaxy of connections. And yet we need the discipline of formal learning so we are able to organise our thoughts and think rationally and critically. Random forms of learning, or to use Deleuze and Guattari's term - rhizomatic learning - are often serendipitous. Jay Cross (2007) called it 'rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance'. Sometimes, by going off on a hyperlinked tangent, learners come across websites that they would never have encountered any other way but through random jumping across cyberspace. But this is of course, a very hit and miss kind of learning, and often, informal learners can waste a lot of their time, and become hopelessly sidetracked away from what they are actually interested in.

Through the use of new and emerging technologies, this may all change. Creating, organising and sharing content within a defined community of interest is the way forward, and all of these are achievable through social media. I have previously outlined my views on what a personal learning environment should contain - its functional components, or the anatomy and physiology of a PLE. Every learner has one. With the added power of the smart mobile phone, informal learning can now take place anywhere and at any time - the web in the palm of your hand. With new semantic based technologies, predictive software, augmented reality and geomashups increasingly available, informal learning will not only be less haphazard, it will also be more intuitive and intelligent, delivering what the learner wants, when and where they ask for it, based on previously learned patterns of behaviour and use.

All of this won't replace the teacher, nor will it replace the formal learning contexts of school, college or university. One of my favourite quotes of the moment is that 'Doctors save lives, but teachers make lives'. What the technology will do, is supplement, extend and enhance lifelong learning for those who have access to the technology and are able to use it. And there's our next challenge.

References

Cofer, D. (2000) Informal Workplace Learning. Practice Application Brief. NO 10. U.S. Department of Education: Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education.
Cross, J. (2007) Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance. New York: Pfeiffer & Company


Blurring the boundaries by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

New spaces, new pedagogies

I'm kicking off the new academic year by presenting a keynote paper at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday, September 2nd. The session is entitled Innovative spaces of learning: debating their origin, nature and pedagogical significance, and is a sub section of the main RGS conference. Others speaking in the session include Derek France (University of Chester), Ruth Weaver (University of Plymouth) and Wendy Woodland (University of the West of England). Here's the abstract for my keynote:

New Spaces, New Pedagogies: Harnessing the Power of Social Media in Education

A rapid emergence of social media – the so called ‘Web 2.0’ – has opened up new opportunities for participatory learning in all sectors of education. Students now have the capability to create and share their own content through blogs, wikis, video- and photo-sharing services such as YouTube and Flickr. They can easily connect into and maintain contact with multiple communities of interest, gaining access to experts using social networking tools such as Myspace and Facebook. They can organise their own resources through free and easy to use tagging and social filtering tools. In this presentation I will argue that this rapid rise of user generated content is blurring boundaries between novice and expert, and challenging the traditional notions of knowledge, ownership, privacy and identity. In tandem with this, the proliferation of personal devices such as iPods and smart mobile phones is enabling students to move beyond the boundaries of the classroom into ‘any time, any place’ learning. In the light of these developments I shall explore new teacher roles, examine new learner expectations and explore some of the new learning territories that are emerging beyond the walls of the institution. I will offer some examples of how Web 2.0 tools have already been harnessed to support professional mentoring and to promote deeper engagement in learning through collaboration and reflection. I will discuss the concept of the personal learning environment and its potential to enrich student experiences. I shall speculate on the potential impact of emerging technologies such as augmented reality and touch screens and their potential in shaping the future of education.

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New spaces, new pedagogies by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Opening doors

This just in from JISC: Speaking ahead of next week's Open Educational Resources symposium, Brian Lamb from the University of British Columbia urges higher education to show leadership in difficult times. “Given the crises in economics and the environment, and the many challenges we face in modern society, it seems perverse to hoard knowledge in any form. We have an urgent need to harness all the ingenuity and expertise that we can, and higher education must show leadership in this respect,” he argues.

Lamb’s argument is particularly topical as the government’s digital champion Martha Lane Fox is taking up the challenge of getting more people online. We need to ensure people are finding quality content once they get there and a strong motivation for people to engage with the internet is learning. JISC’s and the Higher Education Academy’s programme on Open Educational Resources is driving a contents revolution in the UK, working with UK universities and colleges to share educational materials freely online and make them available to anyone world-wide, whether they are informal learners, students or academics.

JISC’s Executive Secretary Malcolm Read comments: "Open Educational Resources are one of the building blocks of digital Britain in the twenty-first century. JISC and the Higher Education Academy are supporting our universities and colleges in releasing high quality materials as a part of an international open layer of scholarly and academic resources with enormous benefits to students and society."

The International Open Educational Resources Symposium in London on 23 July 2010 showcases the work of the pilot programme and demonstrates how the UK is working towards the sustainable development and delivery of Open Educational Resources.

David Sadler, Director of Networks at the Higher Education Academy, says: “This event will share the experiences of the pilot projects which, since early 2009, have been working to make thousands of resources freely available through the UK OER programme, leading to a more positive student learning experience. Other institutions will be able to learn from their many successes and hear how the teams overcame significant challenges, to provide truly open educational resources, both across institutional programmes and across subject communities.”

Lamb, the Manager of Emerging Technologies and Digital Content at the University of British Columbia’s Office of Learning Technology, is one of the keynote speakers at the symposium alongside Mary Lou Forward, Executive Director of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. He concludes: “Many claim that the Internet represents a revolution in human communication, one with profound effects on how we produce, consume, share, and value knowledge. If that's the case, higher education has an obligation to show leadership. We need the web to be something more than a place for shopping and videos of dogs on skateboards, and open educators have an opportunity to make a real difference”.

To register for the International Open Educational Resources Symposium on 23 July 2010 please go to www.jisc.ac.uk/ukoer10

You can follow this conference on the JISC Events Blog: http://events.jiscinvolve.org/UKOER10

An online Open Educational Resources infoKit is available with information, advice and support for those with an interest in releasing open educational resources to the educational community - https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/Home

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Opening doors by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Web x.0 and beyond

I'm amazed and delighted at the huge response to my slideshow Web 3.0: The Way Forward? which started out as a brief analysis of current thinking on how the web might be extended beyond social tools into a more smart and responsive personal environment for learning. Before long it was an invited presentation given to a small gathering of enthusiastic teachers at a Vital Meet seminar. As I write this post, just 4 days after posting it up onto Slideshare, the slide set has already received 5,500 views and has been embedded into at least 20 other blogs and websites. Web 3.0 is clearly a topic that catches the imagination of many people in education and beyond. I like Stephen Downes' comments on my use of the term Web x.0 in the diagram adapted from Nova Spivak:

"The idea of Web X is that it combines web 2.0 (social web) and web 3.0 (semantic web) to create what I have called .... the semantic social web. But it's more than just that, because it takes these and moves them off the web and into your hand. And more than just that, because it's the web of data, the geoweb, augmented media, the 3D web, and more. The eXtended web - the web, extended from the internet, into your life".

This was an acknowledgement of a trend I had tried to highlight in my slideshow - that intelligent content and tools can now be operated from your mobile phone while you are on the move. I believe we will see this trend continue, with geomashups and augmented reality applications becoming more common place, enabling learners to navigate not only content on the web, but their actual, physical environments too.

George Siemens also weighed in with a response:

"The development of the semantic web, linked data, and open data, coupled with location-awareness, recommender systems, augmented reality, data overlays, and similar developments is having a dramatic impact on how people interact with information and each other".

He also is particularly focused on how these tools can be used to improve learning.

So it's not only Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 we need to consider, but extensions beyond these into a truly integrated, fully responsive and entirely personalised learning environment that fits into the palm of your hand. This is my vision for the future, but as I continually warn - predicting the future can be hazardous. I wrote about this problem in a recent post entitled 'Seeing the future'. The U.S. Mayor who in 1880 announced that one day every town in America would have a telephone was right, but also so far wide of the mark, it's almost laughable. So when people ask me when we will see all of these tools being used for learning, I simply smile and say - "we'll see". We know the tools exist (see: The Future is the Web) we just don't know when they will become economically viable enough for institutions to begin investing in them wholesale. Perhaps they never will. Perhaps it will be down to individual learners to purchase their own devices and applications. Perhaps this will be another aspect of the 'do it yourself' personal learning environment ethos we are all talking about.

Web x.0 and beyond by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Web 3.0: The Way Forward?

Web 3.0: The way forward?

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

There were some interesting presentations at the Vital Meet seminar tonight, held at St James' School in Exeter. Chris Fuller (Follow him as @ChrisFullerisms on Twitter) spoke about Moblogging and argued that blogging while mobile fits into the ethos of a lot of young people. They enjoy living in the 'here and now' so would probably benefit from posting their observations and thoughts on the move rather than wait until later. Dan Roberts (@ChickenSaltash) reported on how his School, Saltash.Net in Cornwall is using a number of Web 2.0 tools to promote collaboration and creative approaches to learning in school. Peter Yeomans (@ethinking) from my own Faculty of Education at the University of Plymouth provoked some interesting discussion around the problems of trying to encourage undergraduate students to collaborate in online learning environments. Alistair Fitchett, an Assistant Head teacher at Tiverton High School in North Devon, gave an excellent opening talk on how his school is harnessing the power of new technologies to create excellence in learning. The team from The Welsh Connection, including St James' own Stephen Farmer (@StephenFarmer) spoke on how they were using a number of open source web tools to connect schools across the South of Wales and the West Country of England. I won't forget the pronouncement of the trio of awesome - Moodle, Elgg and Mahara. (I know that will please a number of people I know, not least @Networking_lady)!

My own presentation was entitled Web 3.0: The Way Forward? in which I attempted to paint a picture of future emerging technologies for learning. It's a very difficult task, because often we are wide of the mark when we try to predict technology trends. However, I called upon a number of my recent posts, such as e-Learning 3.0 and Anatomy of a PLE to illustrate what I think may happen in the next year or two, and how the Semantic and Pragmatic aspects of the Web, coupled with smart mobile devices may extend, enhance and transform the learning experience. I hope you find the slideshow useful and very much welcome your comments.

Related posts:

The eXtended Web and the Personal Learning Environment: Rita Kop
X Web: George Siemens
Web 3.0: The Way Forward? Stephen Downes


Web 3.0: The Way Forward? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Physiology of a PLE

Yesterday I posted my views on what I think are the essential components of a Personal Learning Environment - the Anatomy of the PLE. Today, I want to examine some of the functionality of PLEs - the physiology if you will - what is it that learners need from their PLEs? The slide to the left represents the three main functionalities I believe are the most important functions learners need for lifelong learning in a digital age. You will note that the functionality is exclusive to the personal web tools (PWTs) I outlined in yesterday's post. However, given that the context of the PLE is much wider than the web tools a student uses, it is possible to apply creation, organisation and sharing of content to a wider range of practices including analogue content, such as newspapers and magazines, realia (visits, real experiences, encounters, conversations) and other non-digital materials. Whether these remain analogue, or are in someway captured in digital format remains the choice of each indivdual lifelong learner.

There are other functionalities of course, but I believe that the essence of the physiology of most PLEs is represented in the diagram presented here. A fourth component, communication - which includes sharing, discussion and dialogue in both synchronous and asynchronous modes, can be represented as an overarching circle within the Venn diagram.

Such key functions of the PLE (Personal Web Tools component) can be managed through a number of tools, and learners each have their individual preferences, all of which ensures that each PLE will be unique to that individual learner. Some of these tools are represented here in the second figure, but these are by no means exhaustive, and of course, many are interchangable for different tasks and purposes. Note that the e-portfolio sits across all functionalities, and is the most likely tool to be provided by the institution. There is plenty more I could say but I will leave that for another blog post. I hope that these concept maps provide a more detailed set of ideas which provide a clearer view of how and why PLEs can be created, developed, managed and used by learners.

Physiology of a PLE by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Anatomy of a PLE

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) do exactly what they say on the can - they are personal to each individual, created by them, owned by them, used by them within their lifelong learning. Originally a counterpoint to the institutional Managed Learning Environment (iMLE or 'VLE'), PLEs are becoming a much talked about concept, and were the prime focus of the recently held PLE Conference in Cornella, Barcelona. Delegates at the conference could not agree whether PLEs should remain the sole domain of the learner, or whether in some way they could be incorporated into institutional infrastructures. Some argued strongly for sole student ownership, vehemently opposed to any institutional meddling in a personal learning environment. Others held the position that PLEs should have some insitutional provision incorporated within them. Still others thought that PLEs should be part of the institutional infrastructure, brought within the protective envelope of the university fire wall. Many located themselves in middle ground positions. My personal view is that students own and create their PLE but that the iMLE also has something to offer them, even though it is highly problematic in its current form. I am arguing that many students tend to avoid using the iMLE because they either find it difficult to use, or irrelevant to their daily learning needs. It is a clash of concepts, no bridge seems possible, and the problem appears to be intractable.

I have been working with Manish Malik (University of Portsmouth) for some time now to try to reconceptualise PLEs, so that they are locatable within both informal and formal learning contexts. At the Barcelona PLE Conference we unveiled our ideas in a position paper, which we also share here on this blog. In previous posts I have argued provocatively that institutional VLEs present a number of problems for individual learners, not least the walled garden effect, which presents a great barrier to student freedom and creativity. I have played devil's advocate, role playing at high profile events to promote debate, engaging fruitfully with many knowledgeable peers, and in the process I have had some great fun. Now it's time to change direction a little and challenge the unhelpful binary of PLE versus VLE.

Firstly, we need to understand the true nature of the PLE - its anatomy. What does a PLE look like? What are its essential components? How does it differ from institutionally provided systems? Is there any common ground, and if so, how can this be harnessed? All these questions and more are yet to be answered, but in our view, the PLE is wider than the Web tools students use to create, find, organise and share content. It is also wider than the Personal Learning Network (PLN) of people and content that each of us generates when we learn informally or in formal contexts. This is represented in the first slide above.

In this representation of the PLE, we try take a more consiliatory perspective beyond the unhelpful binary discourse of 'PLE vs VLE'. We propose a hybrid approach. Essentially, we argue that students require structure and scaffolding when they first venture into digital learning environments. No-one is a digital native, no matter how much the Prensky theory is talked up. Yet the average institutional Managed Learning Environment is by nature dull, uninspiring and difficult to navigate. Web 2.0 tools (Cloud Learning Environment) are more attractive, easier to use and free, but are unprotected and vulnerable. Further, the content sent to the application ends up becoming the 'property' of the Internet company and is difficult to delete, a target for data mining. Whilst CLEs will not fully address all of the tensions between iMLEs and PLEs, we argue that they provide a tentative bridge to provide the best of both worlds in terms of affordances and interoperability. We would be very interested to hear your views on this proposal. Tomorrow: Physiology of a PLE

Related posts

Response to Anatomy of a PLE: Mark Smithers

The Dichotomies in Personal Learning Environments: Ismael Pena-Lopez

Mapping the PLE Sphere: Ismael Pena-Lopez

The ILE and FLE in Harmony: Ryan Tracey

Anatomy of a PLE by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

PLE bargaining

The first conference on PLEs took place in the humid but tranquil Cornella area of Barcelona this week. For two days, the 'unconference' event hosted delegates from all over the world at the silubrious and very impressive Citilab Cornella. Those attending the PLE Conference found themselves quickly immersed in discussion, dialogue and debate over the nature and ethos of the personal learning environment. For me and many others who attended (both physically and virtually) it was probably the most connected event we have experienced. The Twitter stream alone went wild, and by midday on the second day there had been over 5000 messages inserted into the #PLE-BCN hashtag stream. Every session, including the breakout sessions, was streamed live over the web, and many people participated from outside the event. Many of the photos of the event are already up on Flickr at this site. A great set of photos by David Alvarez is also available here.

The unKeynote was quite a feature of this event. Day one kicked off with Alec Couros and Graham Attwell performing a double act in which they managed to engage just about every member of the audience in some way. We discussed issues such as the definition of a PLE, the tensions existing where binary representations of institutions vs individual provision of web tools is used, and the future of learning in the context of personalised pedagogies. Assessment and accreditation of learning were discussed, as was the curriculum. Ilona Buchem (on Twitter @mediendidaktik) has written a useful summary of Day 1 and Lisa Harris offers her personal reflection of the event. In the unKeynote speech by Jordi Angel and Ismael de Pena (all in Spanish with live mobile translation) on Day 2, the speakers promised chaos. What they got was chaos and also a tinge of anarchy, as the entire audience ran around and voted with their feet in a quadrant of options a the back of the room. The conclusion of this exercise? We couldn't agree. What we did agree on though, was that the PLE is 'all about me' - it's what each of us personally creates around us as a means to support our lifelong learning. A number of questions were posed such as: should the PLE remain outside the institution. The super edupunks were at loggerheads with the conservatives, and there were many, many shades in between. Some preferred to remain in the centre of the quadrant to be counted in all four camps. It was fun, dynamic, and thought provoking all at once. I think the picture above by the wonderfully effervescent Joyce Seitzinger (follow her on Twitter as @catspyjamasnz) epitomises the experience.

When I have more time I will try to capture some of the true essence of this astounding event. But right now I have to pack for a flight back to the UK, so I will blog later. Hasta la vista!

Image source

PLE bargaining by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Loss of control

I'm attending the International Network Conference (INC 2010) conference in Heidelberg today, so this is an opportune time to talk about its most famous son - Johannes Gutenberg.

When I first started teaching I thought my role was to transmit knowledge. I was caught up in the cycle of teaching-learning experiences I remembered from my own formative years. I was essentially perpetuating the kind of teaching style I had myself been exposed to. We teach as were were taught. It took me some time to realise that a) I could also learn from my students, b) that I wasn't the font of all knowledge and c) that there were other, more effective techniques available than simply lecturing. I developed a number of interactive and participatory resources where the students were given the control over the process, and I was forced to stand back and facilitate. It was uncomfortable for me to stand back and not intervene, to try to take control. But I had to do it, and in adopting this new style, I believe I became a more effective teacher.

Sitting here now, in the heartland of Germany, in the place where a literary revolution once took place, I am reflecting now on how teachers still try to maintain control in the classroom. Here are some of my thoughts on the notion of teacher control:

Once upon a time, the lead pencil was an expensive and rare tool. Not many people used it, because not many people had the skill to do so. Pencils were kept chained up in libraries where there was restricted access. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg turned over the apple cart. What had been the preserve of the priviledged few - the nobility and clergy - was suddenly thrown open to the masses. The emergence of universal, mass produced and accessible text instigated a movement for mass literacy, and a communcation revolution ensued. The priviledged few lost control over literacy, and the world of learning had been blown wide open. Knowledge grew rapidly and as it did, so people began to learn how to question the status quo, and social movements gained momentum. The printing press was a disruptive technology - it changed forever our way of life.

Why do we still use ICT suites in schools? Do we have pencil suites? No - we used to have chained pencils before the advent of the Gutenberg press, but when everyone started to learning to read and write, chained pencils were massed produce, came down in price, and were accessible to everyone. The chained pencil was no more. People carried pencils around in their pockets. The same is now happening to computers - the personal computer is now handheld or laptop based, and they are being carried around by students wherever they go. There is a new literacy revolution going on. Students are using portable, wifi connected devices in the classroom (whether they are allowed to or not) and connecting in new ways that are alien to their teachers. Teachers are losing control of the small preserve they thought was safe. They hang on to the ICT suite because it is safe. They feel they can maintain control if all the technology is in one place, and is able to be booked for special sessions. Only thing is, ICT and computers are not special, anymore than the pencil is special. Both are merely tools that can be used to promote and support learning, and both must be freed up so that students can use them wherever and whenever they are.

The ICT suite locates computers and ICT in a setting that is restrictive and constrains creativity. It shows students that they have to go to a particular place and space to 'do computing'. It also constrains some teachers, who might spontaneously wish to bring a computer mediated activity to their session, and can't do so, because they need to 'book the ICT suite' in advance. I could go on, but I won't. I will simply say this: Teachers are losing control now just as the nobility and clergy did in Gutenberg's time. They just don't know it yet.

Image source

Loss of control by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

From HEL to Weinheim

You won't believe the view I have here from this terrace so here's a photo to capture at least a little of the beauty and serenity of this spot. It's a poor substitute for actually being here and experiencing to the birds singing and the peacefulness. I'm staying with Sigi Jakob-Kuhn and her husband Manfred, in Weinheim, just outside Heidelberg, in Germany. You can follow her on Twitter as @networking_lady, and she also has an excellent blog of schools using technology, called School Networking which you should take a look at if you work in schools too. I first met Sigi in Salzburg two years ago when we were both attending a conference there run by the Salzburg Research Foundation - we hit it off, and have been in touch ever since. So when she found out I was taking part in this week's International Network Conference (INC2010) - which for the first time is being hosted outside of Plymouth, in Heidelberg - she invited me to sat with her before the conference.

Last night I flew in from Helsinki and was driven in an open top convertible by Manfred, who I think believes he is the inspiration for Sebastien Vettel (look I'm joking, OK - he drives more like Michael Schumacher), from Frankfurt airport and arrived windswept but happy in Sigi's hillside house. We talked late into the night about all things digital and pedagogical. Sigi's school teacher friend Ulrike Montgomery was also there, and we enjoyed a very stimulating conversation over a few glasses of wine. Sigi has some great ideas about how to incorporate e-portfolios such as Mahara into the formal learning environment. One of her slideshows (presented at a recent German Moodlemoot is linked here). The common theme seems to be teacher resistance to change, and Germany seems to have its fair share in the classroom. Although Moodle is used as a centralised tool by many schools, teachers don't seem to like it, and the same applies to interactive white boards, which if used at all, tend to be teacher tools rather than student ones. It's the same wherever I go in the world. Although there are pockets of excellence where these tools are used appropriately, interactively and with the student in mind, many teachers still see them as mere extensions to the overhead projector or traditional resources set. They are not. They extend, advance and enhance the learning environment if the student is placed in the centre. Use them as presentation tools, and they lose their potency.

Today we are going to explore the town of Weinheim, where I have previously been with some of my Atlantis students (we visited a brewery here last October with staggering results). Then tonight I am off to Heidelberg to get ready for tomorrow's conference.

From HEL to Weinheim by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.