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"The Personal Learning Environment concept is relatively new and is often used interchangeably with Personal Learning Network. The earliest reference is attributed to George Siemens in his 2004 paper, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Downes and Attwell have also popularised the concept with Downes describing the PLE as "a tool that allows for a learner (or anyone) to engage in a distributed environment consisting of a network of people, services and resources" (2006, p23). Semantically, a personal learning environment and a personal learning network differ, with a network referring to connections and the interaction between them, and an environment referring to a broader definition that includes more passive tools and settings. The network and its broader socially constructed environment are interdependent, constantly shaping each other and unable to be separated."

"My suggested assumptions in MOOC include: * people would learn in a self-directed manner * Knowledge is distributed * Knowledge is negotiated * Knowledge is emergent * Knowledge is rhizomatic (thanks to Dave's video posted - refer to How to be successful in MOOC?) * Learning is capacity to construct, navigate and traverse across networks * personal learning networks would be a far better way for people to learn * people like to learn via social networks * people know how to connect (people have the communication, literacy and critical literacy skills) * people know how to use the technology to connect * people are self motivated (intrinsic motivation) * people like to accept challenges, chaos and complexity is just part of the learning process * people don't need to follow a course or qualification for learning to be effective * Learning is emergent, and is based on connections, engagement and interactions * Learning is open * Identity in networked learning is based on individual's "participation, interaction" in the networks, and is reflective of ones involvement in the media, it's dynamic, adaptive * Individual and social learning is emphasised - cooperation * Sensemaking and wayfinding are important"

"Dave's five points about PLEs PLNs for PLENK2010 Here is my adaptation… * Point #1: I use the term personal learning network (PLN) to refer to all of the following: professional learning network, personal learning environment, learning management system, course management system, etc. A node that makes up a PLN can be a person, group, institution, online community, software program, etc. And it's personal if the learner (and not a teacher, trainer, expert, etc.) has control over which nodes to connect with and what type of interaction the learner prefers to have with each node."

"There has been lots of discussion this week about whether Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and/or Personal Learning Network (PLN) are the right terms to describe what this is all about and some recognition that this a semantics issue. According to Rita Kop PLE is a UK term and PLN an American term. Dave Cormier questions whether the term personal should be used at all. Stephen Downes points out that personal is an OK term if you think about [Personal Learning] Network as opposed to [Personal] Learning Network - and similarly for PLE. I like that - but for me, the words are not as important as the process - although I can see that the process needs nominalising for ease of reference. If I am going to think about introducing the idea of PLEs/PLNs to my colleagues or students then I will be talking about the process and the implications of this process for learning rather than what we should call it, i.e. why it might be preferable for students to learn in environments/spaces of their own choice rather than be confined to an institutions VLE/LMS."

Most of this material comes from Blumberg, P. (2008) Developing Learner-Centered Teachers: A Practical Guide for Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Please cite this reference if you use material from this website This site contains links to presentation or workshops I have done at various places over the past few years. These presentations provide more information about learner-centered teaching and offer some insights into how I conducted the workshops. All workshops have an active learning component either through small group discussions or individual reflection questions.

8 Online Discussion Response Techniques Posted by: wiredinstructor in Course Design Reflections, Technology Integration, Top Posts, UW-Stout, Virtual School, e-learning, research, virtual high school Online discussion is the heart of a community of practice oriented e-learning course. However, it can be difficult to know how to respond. It's a good idea to think in terms of value added responses. What can you add to advance the discussion? I like to post the following list at the top of discussion forums in my online courses. It's a good reminder and a handy reference! Here are some suggestions to guide you as you respond to each other in discussion forums.

The Revolution in Social Software is Finally Here Rich GordonRich Gordon 1:26 PM | bio | Comments: 3 Social software -- technology that enables interactions among multiple people -- has existed for almost a half century now. (Clay Shirky, in a widely linked essay on this topic, traces the roots of social software to the PLATO system, built at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s.) I'm using the term "social software" because the more popular "social media" increasingly feels like an oxymoron. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Digg aren't media. Media refers to one-way communication -- like publishing or broadcasting. Today's social sites are, fundamentally, computer programs -- software that determines what users can (and can't) do, and that establishes structures through which people interact.

"Social Media Guidelines Social media tools have allowed people and organizations to go beyond the physical boundaries of location, language, culture, and other limitations to connect and collaborate in powerful ways. We strongly encourage the Feinberg School of Medicine community - faculty, staff, researchers, students and alumni groups - to engage, build a network of like-minded scholars, stay connected, share information, and help us promote the medical school's goals and vision. Social media technologies, such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, are primarily communication tools. They create opportunities for us to take part in global conversations and reach out to the broadest possible audience. Your professional activities online and off-line reflect both on you and our organization. Therefore, it is important that any members of the Feinberg community engaging in online dialogue are informed of established guiding principles and available tools. The Office of Communications provides the following guiding principles to raise awareness of current best practices and help members of the Feinberg community participate within social media channels. For additional employee code of conduct information, please refer to the Faculty handbook (pdf) and the Staff handbook (pdf). "

Towards a Process for K-12 Students as Content Producers Beyond the Blog - Leveraging Wikis for Curriculum & Instruction I am frequently asked to clarify what I mean by "students as producers of content", and how that would fit into a school district's curriculm. This outlines in brief fashion an approach doing just that using wiki-based collaborative writing technologies. Our primary use of wikis in the district started out with collaborative curriculum content production. It's what we've been referring to as our "Currwikulum process" for a few years. We crack ourselves up, and can only imagine Elmer Fudd as our spokesmodel.

Social Software Introduction When the web was originally introduced to the world it was seen as a means of dramatically improving the way in which people communicate and socialise. Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, saw it as a place where people could share information through a series of hyperlinked pages. "In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute." (Tim Berners Lee, 2005) Unfortunately, although the web became an excellent repository of information, it became a place where only technically adept users and organisations would author content. The arrival of new services (often referred to as 'Web 2.0') has helped to remove many of the barriers preventing users from participating. Thanks to this wave of new services we have seen a massive rise in the uptake of web authoring and collaboration. The term this new wave of social activity has been given varies i.e. Social Software, Social Media and Social Computing. The key word is 'Social'! Social software tools, such as blogs, wikis and bookmark sharing services, offer exciting new ways to communicate and collaborate online. Their potential is already being keenly explored in teaching and learning, but they also offer considerable possibilities for research and the business and community engagement (BCE) sectors within higher and further education, since their flexibility and ease of use are particularly well-suited to collaboration across different sectors. As a recent article explained, "The advent of social software has brought a new culture of sharing, and this time around, people are willing to give up some of their knowledge..." (Tebbutt, 2007). Furthermore, social software's increased emphasis on multimedia, as well as text-based content, means that universities can find new ways of harnessing and making their knowledge and research accessible, thus creating what has been described as "a new form of acade

Introducing Edupunk by Leslie Madsen Brooks Jim Groom recently coined the term "edupunk" to refer to a scrappy, DIY spirit in some sectors of educational technology. Edupunk, he writes, is opposed to capitalist co-optation of the labor of educators and progressive educational technologists. He highlights "a scary reality that often gets overlooked (or is it intentionally downplayed?) in educational technology,"

Almost the first thing that gets built when anything needs management is a good measurement system. It allows tuning, enables detection of deviations from norm, and gives feedback on the effect of changes and initiatives. Communities of practice are complex creatures, and thus their measurement is not simple. The number of perspectives that can be used is enormous. At the same time, the availability of data for each of them is very different, and the temptation to use subjective management impressions is high. So the history of CoP management is full of references to indicator-building, to attempts at significant reporting, and to a wide variety of more or less objective measurements. But we have not found a coherent, complete set of measurements that could be used to consistently evaluate not just one CoP, but a set of them, and eventually even to benchmark different ones, along most of the lines that can be affected by management. So we've attempted to put forth a simple, practical list and brief explanation of straightforward indicators that can be implemented in most CoPs, and especially in those with an online component. The first result of it is the linked white paper, but it should not be the last one.

The Meyer and Land Threshold Concept "The idea of threshold concepts emerged from a UK national research project into the possible characteristics of strong teaching and learning environments in the disciplines for undergraduate education (Enhancing Teaching−Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses). In pursuing this research in the field of economics, it became clear to Erik Meyer and Ray Land [1−6, 7−12], that certain concepts were held by economists to be central to the mastery of their subject. These concepts, Meyer and Land argued, could be described as 'threshold' ones because they have certain features in common." Glynis Cousin, An introduction to threshold concepts Over the past five years this concept has been embraced by many disciplines outside economics; indeed the above quote is from Glynis Cousin's excellent short introduction to the concept written for earth scientists. The threshold concept has been seen as a valuable tool, not only in facilitating students' understanding of their subject, but in aiding the rational development of curricula in rapidly expanding arenas where there is a strong tendency to overload the curriculum (Cousin, [1, 13]). This web page will describe, briefly, the characteristics of a threshold concept and list selecteted references to the work of those examining its value in the engineering and computer sciences, the physical and biological sciences, economics, accountancy, mathematics and statistics.

The present and future of Personal Learning Environments (PLE) - 9 comments This post is recast from an assignment I completed about four months ago in a Masters Degree course entitled Innovative Practice and Emerging ICT, in which I investigated what PLEs are meant to be and where they might be going. It was originally part of a class wiki. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Towards a Definition 3. Driving Forces 4. Developments to Date 5. Barriers 6. Future Potential 7. References 8. Web Links Introduction A definition for the term Personal Learning Environment (PLE), remains elusive. Conception about what should constitute a PLE depends on the perspective of the commentator. For example, the priorities for a PLE are different for a tertiary student, a university administrator, an instructor, a working professional, or an adult who persues an eclectic path of lifelong learning. Metaphorically, an individual may engage in a learning process that is either more acquisitional or participatory (Sfard, 1998). There are inconsistencies across these positions about what a PLE should do. But whether constructively and defensively, interest in PLE appears to be growing. At the time of writing this introduction (August 2006), no particular product or service exists that can definitively be categorised as a PLE, although some prototypical work is in progress. An inclusive, authoritative account about PLEs does not yet exist. Only a handful of articles have appeared in the academic and public press about PLEs since the term gained currency in 2004. This article has been compiled after tracking recent conversations in the blogosphere and following social bookmarks.

"The main scientific problems investigated in this article deal with technical evaluation of quality attributes of the main components of e-Learning systems (referred to here as DLEs - Digital Libraries of Educational Resources and Services), i.e., Learning Objects (LOs) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). The main research object of the work is the effectiveness of methods of DLE components quality evaluation. The aim of the article is to analyse popular existing LO and VLE technical evaluation tools, and to formulate new more complex tools for technical quality evaluation of LOs and VLEs based on requirements for flexible DLE, as well as to evaluate most popular open source VLEs against new more complex criteria. Complex tools have been created for the evaluation of DLE components, based on a flexible approach. The authors have analysed existing tools for technical evaluation of LOs, and it was investigated that these tools have a number of limitations. Some of these tools do not examine different LO life cycle stages, and other insufficiently examine technical evaluation criteria before LO inclusion in the repository. All these tools insufficiently examine LOs reusability criteria. Therefore a more complex LO technical evaluation tool is needed. It was considered that this new more complex LO technical evaluation tool should include LO technical evaluation criteria suitable for different LO life cycle stages, including criteria before, during and after LO inclusion in the repository as well as LO reusability criteria. The authors have also examined several VLE technical evaluation tools suitable for flexible DLE, and it was investigated that these tools have a number of limitations. Several tools practically do not examine VLE adaptation capabilities criteria, and the other insufficiently examines general technical criteria. A more complex VLE technical evaluation tool is needed. Therefore the authors have proposed an original more complex set of VLE tech

"ast week, one of my media course (ed PD) classmates talked about the ongoing struggle to help students make sense of the flood of information online. She cited a negative experience with wikipedia, which resulted in an energetic exchange about the merits (and challenges) with open online content. It's not about "authority" nor should it be As a long time defender of the open web and open content, I wanted to point out that the educational bias towards "authoritative" or "received" sources, though relevant, is also highly political/ideological - especially in relation to emergent sources of knowledge (i.e., Open Content). Ideological in the contexts of: 1) who has access or control of the means of knowledge power and production 2) who endorses or authorizes those voices and 3) "what" forms are accepted as "valid"."