PLEs and MLEs

clipped from blog.core-ed.net I have been working with an extension of these ideas, in particular, how the evolving understandings about personal learning environments relate to understandings about the ‘managed learning environments’ that schools and educational institutions are developing and working with. A managed learning environment is a term used by JISC in the UK, and is explained on Wikipedia as: A {learning management system] can be considered a sub system of a MLE, whereas MLE refers to the wider infrastructure of information systems in an organisation that support and enable electronic learning on a wider scale. Personal Learning Environment that is “owned”, managed and maintained by the individual learner, and Managed Learning Environment that is “owned, managed and maintained by a school or insitution. Both of these systems have legitimacy – it isn’t simply a matter of choosing between one or the other. Schools/insitutions must develop systems that help them to successfully manage the provision of teaching and learning services to their students, while students on the other hand are increasingly choosing to “live their lives online”, and want to be able to integrate all aspects of their learning lives within a personalised interface/environment. In my view, this sort of environment will essentially be an aggregator of the various services and applications that an individual learner chooses to have in their PLE.