Everyone has one

Everyone has one - a personal learning environment, that is. Just look around when you are next sat on a bus or train, and you will see people sat listening with earbuds or using their mobile phones. Some will be reading books, or Kindles. Others will be discussing current affairs with their friends, or reading newspapers. It's quite simple. We all learn. We all use tools to help us learn. Personal learning environments or PLEs, are the collection of tools (not just online) that enable us to connect, create and share content with our own communities of interest and practice. Mine will be different to yours, because my choices and preferences about what and how I learn are different to yours. And what you choose to use personalises your learning, making it uniquely yours.


Today at the Personal Learning Environment conference in Southampton, delegates debated whether students actually have the competency to build their own PLEs. A Twitter discussion ensued, but ultimately, I think the wrong question was asked. Why should we question whether students have the competency to build their own PLEs, when in fact most learners already have their own PLE structure of tools sorted out when they arrive at university. As they gain more knowledge of their subject, broaden their personal learning networks and gain access to more content, so they modify their PLE to accommodate all the necessary storage, tagging and co-creation of content that ensues. Graham Attwell, in a recent keynote at the EDEN Dublin conference, made the profound statement that 'competency' is a socially and culturally constructed concept that has many interpretations. So the question is problematic on at least two levels. It depends on what you mean by competency.

The question that should have been asked was: Do students have the necessary skills to apply their informal PLEs in formal learning contexts? In other words, do they have the ability to use the loose aggregation of Web 2.0 tools (iGoogle, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube etc) to help them to engage more deeply with their learning? Do they have the prerequisite skills to apply these tools in a manner that gives them an advantage in their course of study? When I was an undergraduate, I used all kinds of tricks to short cut my study and buy me time. These included getting my hands on next year's course materials from previous students, and finding out what the assessment questions were likely to be when I finally sat them. It worked, and I emerged with a first class honours degree. Doesn't work for everyone, and that's why university staff should not attempt to impose tools onto students. Each student certainly has the competency to build their own PLEs and to decide what their tools and preferences for learning are. They are experts in them, after all.

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” - Dr Suess.

Image source by Denise Parker


Everyone has one by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Angels in the architecture

There was an interesting question from the floor during the Plymouth e-Learning Conference 2010 final plenary session. I think it took all those of us on the panel by surprise, but it was nevertheless a question well worth asking. The question went something like this: Will the panel give us their views on whether the internet constrains or liberates spirituality?

The panel gave several different answers, because let's face it, this kind of question is best answered subjectively. Everyone has a personal view on faith and spirituality. I was last to answer, and was searching for a phrase to use. It came quickly to mind in the lyrics of a song by Paul Simon. In the song 'Call me Al' he sings:

He looks around around,
He sees angels in the architecture,
Spinning in infinity,
He says Amen and Hallelujah...

The term 'angels in the architecture' apparently derives from some architectural speak: "This maintains wiggle room as projects advance toward completion, often creating 'an angel in the architecture' to serve as a countermeasure for situations in which 'the devil is in the details.'" From this I was able to form another argument... Flexibility is the designer's best friend and Web 2.0 is surely a flexible, open architecture with a lot of latitude for self-expression and creativity.

I didn't quite know at first where I was going with my angels reference, and wasn't completely aware of the above source at the time, but it seemed appropriate as a response to a question on spirituality, and it crystallised as I spoke, so it must have been subliminal. The angels are not feathered beings of light in this context - they are the affordances of the technology - the interpretations of flexiblility imagined by the user. I developed by answer by quoting from Richard Clark, who argued that all technology is essentially neutral - 'mere vehicles' - in his own words, which simply deliver learning resources to the student, wherever they are. I agree with Clark that all technologies are mere tools, which can be wielded for positively or negatively - that is, for 'good or evil'. My answer to the plenary question was therefore that any person can harness any technology for good or bad, and that includes either the promotion of good spiritually and the building of faith, or as a destructive force to undermine spirituality. A lot of content on the web does appear to be particularly soul-less, and this can be harmful to one's spirit. The angels in the architecture for me are the perceptual expectations each users approaches the tool with. These affordances are the attributes of the tool the user thinks s/he can use for his own purposes. Affordances are an important concept to grasp if we are to better understand how our students use tools such as social networks, blogs and wikis to connect, create and learn. The architecture of Web 2.0 tools is open, the devil's in the detail, but the angels are still flying around...

Image source by Thomas Hawk

Photos of the Conference can be found here and here is James Clay's podcast Don't Feed the Pelicans



'Angels in the architecture' by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Tools of my trade

For a while now I have been thinking about the impact Web 2.0 has had on my life and my career, and often wherever I am speaking, I talk about one or more of the tools I have listed below. Here they are - the 10 Web tools I could not possibly do without...

Facebook - I tried several other social networking tools before Facebook, including Myspace and Bebo, and toyed with LinkedIn like everyone else. Although I'm a little tired of Facebook now, I still use it to keep in touch with friends and to send occasional messages. I got hooked on Farmville for a while, but it became a time-sink for me, so I have now kicked the habit. Facebook has a lot of potential to be harnessed as a learning tool, but there are questions over whether such an informal tool could, or should be used in formal education.

iGoogle - I use this tool to organise my weblinks and other content. It's simple and easy to use, and keeps all my important tools, including currency converters, news feeds and language translators in one convenient space.

Wiki - I use this tool (usually Wetpaint or Wikispaces) as an open, collaborative space for my student groups to work with. Several exercises are built into and around the communal use of wikis to create content throughout a module, and students generally get to grips with it very quickly and produce some valuable content, which they can return to time and time again.

Google Scholar - I come back to Scholar time and time again, often several times in one day, particularly when I'm doing some literature searching for an article, or simply to see who has cited who on a particular topic. You can track through the history of an article, and get a full picture of its influence and impact.

Flickr - I keep all my favourite photographs on four Flickr accounts such as this one and this one. Again, as with all Web 2.0 tools, Flickr allows people to share their content, and receive comments back from viewers. You can also join groups that have a similar interest to you, and exhibit your photographs to a specialist audience.

Delicious - Once I have found the stuff I want to keep, where better to store a link to it than on Delicious? If you haven't tried it yet, you will find that it is quite easy to use, and all you need do is to copy and paste the URL you wish to keep into the appropriate box. Once you store it, you can return anytime to access the content, and you can also see who else has stored it, search through their favourites, and find related stuff that is just as interesting to you.

Slideshare - I love this tool, because it enables me to keep all my slideshows, and also other documents, such as published articles (usually stored as pdf files) in one place. I can share them with anyone who is interested in seeing them, and can track the number of people who view them, receive comments from them, and converse with them through the discussion tools on the site.

Blog - My blog (Learning with 'e's') is probably my most powerful tool for reflecting, learning and professional development. Right here is the space on my personal web where I put down all my thoughts, ideas (some of them half-baked) and questions and share them with my personal learning network. The comments I receive back from you and other readers are invaluable to me, often cause me to think again, and provide me with further fuel to go away and create more ideas and content. Don't forget to comment today :-)

Search Engine - I almost always use Google, but increasingly other search engines are on the horizon for me including Bing and Yahoo. The concept of a search engine is not new, but we now tend to take it for granted, and it would be an impossible or extremely time consuming task to try to find what you are looking for in the huge storehouse of knowledge and content that is out there on the Web without the humble search engine.

Twitter - For me, Twitter is the ultimate tool for social networking, because its simple and easy to use, concise, and yet has a substantial power behind it. Many people don't get Twitter, because it takes some effort over a period of time to build up a critical mass of contacts within your personal network, but once you get over that hurdle, it is amazing how much content you can receive and send. Used in combination with other tools such as bit.ly (a URL shortener), Echofon or Tweetdeck, it is a deceptively powerful web tool.

I use all of the above tools fairly regularly, and most on a daily, or even hourly basis. Without their combined power of connection, sharing and amplification, it would be impossible for me to do my current job. In fact, I would go as far as to say that my current job would not exist without these tools. They are the tools of my trade. What are your top ten?

Image source

Up Pompey

When I was a lot younger I was a guitarist in a rock band. We were touring in 1982, and one of our bookings took us to play in the main hall of Portsmouth Polytechnic. It was a time of great celebration in Portsmouth (known by sailors as Pompey), because the Falklands War had just ended, and all the naval warships were returning home. After the gig, the band went down onto the seafront for something to eat before the long trek home, and I decided I would try a doner kebab for the first time. So there we were sitting in the back of our Transit Van, perched on the speakers and amplifiers, chomping away in the dark. I wasn't aware that there were any rules to eating doner kebabs, so I just chewed away at the pitta bread. Suddenly I was aware of a burning sensation. In the dark, I found a pile of steaming hot meat, coleslaw and chilli sauce in my lap. I had eaten away the underside of the pitta bread, and it had all dropped out.

Look, it's no laughing matter. It could have been fatal - the lethally hot chilli sauce could have eaten right through the denim of my jeans and caused untold damage to my future prospects. Driving home from Portsmouth to Plymouth covered in grease and chilli sauce was extremely uncomfortable. Time has moved on. Portsmouth Polytechnic is now the University of Portsmouth, and I still play the guitar, but I now try to steer clear of eating doner kebabs, particularly in the dark in the back of a transit van.

I'm back in Portsmouth this week as an invited speaker at the university. I will be hooking up with old pals Emma Duke-Williams (world famous in Portsmouth for her portrait of me as 'multi-me') and Manish Malik (with whom I have just written a paper on Cloud Learning Environments). Remember 'Wisdom of Clouds'? - Manish wrote that as a guest blogpost. I will be speaking on the topic of 'Learning 2.0: Web 2.0 Tools in Education', which will essentially take the form of a workshop and seminar. The session will take place on Wednesday 31st between 15.00-16.30. There will be some games and exercises for people to do, and some questions and answers time too. I hope to explore some of the possibilities and potential of tools such as blogs, wikis, microblogs and aggregators, and will also explore mashups, social tagging, and concepts such as 'wisdom of crowds' and folksonomies. I'm going to try to place all of this in the context of higher education, student engagement and communities of practice. It will be a tall order, I'm sure, but I'm confident it will be OK. After all, I have survived a direct hit from a doner kebab, and that's serious stuff.

Image source

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.

A Web 2.0 wonderland

Instead of simply recommending some Web 2.0 tools to you in the traditional way, I thought I would do something different. It's the festive season after all, and if that's not a licence for a bit of fun, then what is?

So here are the links to some tools some of you already know about and may have been using for some time, and perhaps a few tools you have not heard of, or would like to try out. Many more Web 2.0 tools can be found with links on the Go2Web20 Website.

And here's a little Christmas gift from me to you.... I had fun creating it, and I hope you have fun reading it and exploring some new tools.

An API New Year to all!

'Twas Brizzly, and the Stixy Hyves
Did Plurk and Tinker in the Waze;
All Moomeo were the Blogger posts,
And the Jing Googlewave'd.

"Beware the Jabbify, my son!
The apps that bite, the widgets catch!
Beware the Joomla blog, and shun
The Posterous Bricabox!"

He took his Skrbl sword in hand:
Long time the Meehive foe he sought—
So rested he by the Twitter tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in Qwiskish thought he stood,
The Chatterbox, with eyes of flame,
Came Mixin through the Digsby wood,
And Yoople’d as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The Skrbl blade went Flickr-Flock!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went Twalkin back."

And hast thou slain the Chatterbox?
Come to my arms, my Bebo boy!
O Delicious day! Yahoo! Yuku!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas Brizzly, and the Stixy Hyves
Did Digg and Dropbox in the Wayn;
All Memoove were the Blogger posts,
And the Moof Feedjit Scribd.

(With a tip of the hat to Lewis Carroll)

Image source

Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.