PLE (Personal Learning Environment)
Scaling up Technologies for Informal Learning in SME Clusters
Learning Layers develops a set of modular and flexible technological layers for supporting workplace practices in SMEs that unlock peer production and scaffold learning in networks of SMEs, thereby bridging the gap between scaling and adaptation to personal needs.
By building on recent advances in contextualized learning, these layers provide a meaningful learning context when people interact with people, digital and physical artefacts for their informal learning, thus making learning faster and more effective.
Building on mobile learning research, we situate learning into physical work places and practices to support situated, faster and more meaningful learning.
Learning Layers provide a shared conceptual foundation independent of the tools people use and the context they are in.
Learning Layers are based on a common light-weight, distributed infrastructure that allows for fast and flexible deployment in highly distributed and dynamic settings.
We apply these technologies in sectors that have been particularly hesitant to take up learning technologies, i.e. health care and building and construction.
Involving two representative and large-scale regional SME clusters allows us to involve end users in co-design of the system and later scale up the approach to more than 1,000 learners within 4 years.
By inviting a larger set of stakeholders to adapt and build on our solutions and through research in sustainable business training models, the project will generate significant impact by boosting the ability of regional innovation systems to adapt to change and thereby remain competitive, on the individual, organisational and regional level.
We demonstrate the impact in the two chosen sectors, but widen the scope to other sectors and regions towards the end of the project.
PLE Conference 2012- Papers
The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) Conference, which took place simultaneously in Aveiro (Portugal) and Melbourne (Australia) last September, was intended to produce a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences and research around the development and implementation of PLEs – including the design of environments and the sociological and educational issues that they raise.
On this website, you can find all the papers that were produced for this occasion.
PELeCON 2013 - The 8th Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference
Digital Learnscapes: Meeting Future Challenges. We live in a period of change and uncertainty. Many are bewildered by these changes and find it difficult to keep up, particularly in the education and training sectors. The ability to anticipate and prepare for change is the mark of innovative educators, as is the skill of harnessing new and emerging tools to promote good learning.
At Pelecon 13 we want to provide learning professionals with opportunities to explore, discover and discuss new approaches, new technologies and new ideas to enhance, enrich and extend their own professional practice. There will be particular emphasis this year on simulations and games, personal learning tools, new pedagogies and practices, learner and teacher voice, and digital literacies.
Mobiliser la confiance pour soutenir la créativité en matière d’apprentissage en ligne : une étude de cas
Le présent article porte sur l’exploitation de données en temps réel pour aider les enseignants à évaluer la confiance des apprenants et à la gérer dans le long terme. L’étude ici décrite s’emploie à élucider la façon dont la confiance peut être mobilisée pour soutenir la collaboration créative en matière d’apprentissage en ligne.
Elle le fait en partant du point de vue de l’enseignant et en examinant l’implication des apprenants dans des situations concrètes, dans le cadre desquelles des apprenants de pays différents travaillent ensemble (à distance) et articulent leurs tâches et leurs compétences d’apprentissage. Cette ligne de recherche vise à mettre en lumière les points faibles du groupe, afin de renforcer la coopération et l’entraide en son sein.
Nous estimons que comprendre comment évaluer la confiance des apprenants et la gérer permet aux enseignants d’intervenir auprès des apprenants (si besoin) et de leur fournir un soutien actif, en renforçant ainsi leur autonomie et leur envie de s’engager de manière créative au quotidien en faveur du renforcement des compétences et de l’innovation. Les principaux résultats observés jusqu’à présent font état du degré d’influence de la confiance des apprenants sur leur comportement.
Ces résultats mettent en évidence trois grands aspects concernant l’observation de la confiance et son rôle dans la mise en œuvre d’actions positives et de soutien ; il s’agit d’observer : (a) la façon dont les apprenants perçoivent les intentions d’autrui dans un contexte donné, (b) les changements dans la participation des apprenants à une activité spécifique (niveau de coopération) et (c) les sentiments des apprenants quant à l’utilisation des moyens de communication à des fins d’apprentissage (réactions, intentions d’utilisation et utilisation réelle).
Enabling the agile Construction of Personal Learning Environments: An Introduction to Graasp
In the framework of the ROLE European research project on Responsive Open Learning Environments, EPFL has developed the Graasp social media platform. It is now deployed and validated in Swiss universities with the support of SWITCH.
In this talk, the motivations and the key concepts associated with Personal Learning Environments will be discussed. The importance of providing fine privacy control and enabling agile aggregation of resources gathered from both the cloud and institutional repositories will be highlighted. The lessons learned in various pilot learning activities will also be presented. In addition, the participants will get a short introduction on how to construct their own PLEs with Graasp.
PLNs and PLEs - It's the 'Personal' bit that counts the most
A discussion of what the terms Personal Leaning Networks and Personal Learning Enviroments mean and why they are such effective tools for educators professional development by Graham Stanley.
I was writing a comment on an interesting blog post by Cecilia Lemos about what having a PLN has done for her, when I realised that this comment deserved to be expanded a blog post of its own, so here it is!
For some time now, I've been concerned about how some people are using this term, which stands for 'Personal Learning Network' and which developed out of the concept of PLE (Personal Learning Environment).
Shelly Terrell has said she prefers the term 'Passionate Learning Networks and others refer to Professional Learning Networks, but for me, the whole point about the term is that it's 'personal'.
The term PLN is bandied about so much these days it's starting to lose its meaning. Another thing I hear a lot now is people talking about 'the PLN' , which is fine when people are referring to 'their' PLN, but not if they have a big social club in mind that people are either part of or not. This is not a PLN. A PLN is something people have to build and which takes time to nurture and develop. It is also and involves active participation and hard work. It's not just about pressing a button and joining a Ning.
Where did the term PLN come from? You can find a great discussion about this on a blog post by Alec Couros, but I'll also share what I have come to understand about the differences here.
First of all there was the idea of PLE (Personal Learning Environment), which was a reaction to the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) represented by platforms such as Blackboard or Moodle. The VLE is all very well, but the big problem with it is that it is usually institution owned. You join when you are a student or employee of an organisation or institution and then when you leave (because you change jobs or stop studying at a particular university, etc) then you will probably have to leave the VLE. This usually means losing all of the learning content you have contributed and becoming divorced from the people you have connected with. Not ideal as it means you have to start all over again somewhere else.
A PLE, on the other hand is owned by the teacher or student and is all about 'small pieces loosely joined' (i.e. a collection of tools that work for you. Soon after the popularisation of the PLE, people started to realise that it wasn't about the tools (i.e. the environment) it's about the people you choose to connect to to enable learning to occur (i.e. your network). So, the idea of a PLN was born, and by all accounts we have David Warlick to thank for this.
Perversely, I have subsequently seen organisations trying to hijack the popularity of the term PLN and use it for what really is a VLE - I went to one presentation at a conference where the presenter talked about how her university was building a 'PLN system' to help their students - what they were in fact doing was building another VLE (i.e. a learning environment that was owned by the university) - bizarre,and totally missing the point!
The benefits a teacher can gain by building a PLN and how best to do it are the reasons why a group of us have started the aPLaNet project - to raise awareness of what this can do for teachers who are reluctant or who don't know how to begin. If you think you can help us by becoming a mentor to new teachers or you are a teacher that would like to build your own PLN, then please join us here: http://aplanet-project.org.
This blog post was originally published on http://blog-efl.blogspot.com