Mapa conceptual de Stephen Downes traducido por Potachov

Spanish version of Stephen Downes’ “groups vs networks” diagram.

clipped from www.downes.ca

 

Feeling skeptical about elearning

clipped from vignettestraining.blogspot.com “If he be a man engaged in any important inquiry, he must have a method, and he will be under a strong and constant temptation to make a metaphysics out of his method, that is, to suppose the universe ultimately of such a sort that his method must be appropriate and successful. —E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (1925)” The article essentially questions the fallacy that many earnest scientists fall into thinking that their method defines their patients or the areas of their study. In the adoption of tools and technologies in learning and training, many pundits fall victim to the same fallacy. Some examples are: 1. Learning Styles – that people can be categorized into some buckets on learning styles. 2. PLE – Personal Learning Environment, the new idea that people must now master their own learning as a consequence or as enabled by abundance of open learning technologies.

 

Web 2.0, Personal Learning Environments, and the Future of Learning Management System

This ECAR research bulletin details the arguments emerging in the blogosphere and elsewhere both for and against the learning management system. It examines whether the LMS is destined to continue as the primary means of organizing the online learning experience for university students.

—–

Citation for this work: Sclater, Niall. “Web 2.0, Personal Learning Environments, and the Future of Learning Management Systems” (Research Bulletin, Issue 13). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar

 

PLEs, e-portfolios and communities

—–

Posted in Gabinete de Informática on 2008/04/24

 

More reflections on PLEs

The PLE. With a PLE, the user seeks to manage all the information he is confronted with – all the knowledge on the internet, in fact. Given the vast amount of data out there (of varying degrees of reliability) the individual has to develop the skill of being able to find and manage the right stuff. This is the central issue for a PLE. I agree wholeheartedly that the PLE is a necessary development and his approach is highly effective, if still somewhat ad hoc.

The PLS. Our focus is very different. Rather than trying to manage all the knowledge an individual might wish to manage, we start from a specific content area and build a ready-made learning system arto help him manage that. The user accesses the PLS as essentially a complete solution to a specific problem rather than an ad hoc kit. Our solution includes:

• The social software. This is simple, straightforward and configurable. It relies on a single piece of saftware and it enables much of the personalization.

• The content. There is no reason why we cannot use content other than whaty we produce ourselves, but for now, we do it ourselves because we understand that system and the users.

• The community. The specific focus for each PLS (whether Chinese, or French, Spanish, etc) allows us to create communities specific to that PLS, since all the people on a given PLS have the same goal. (You can’t do this with a PLE.)

—–

Posted in Learning about Learning on 2008/04/27

 

Different approaches for building PLEs

[...] we can also consider the possibility a new design which represents not just a refinement of the VLE but an entirely new design pattern [...] using a combination of existing devices (laptops, mobile phones, portable media devices), applications (browsers, calendars, newsreaders, instant messaging clients) and services (blogs, wikis, social bookmark services)

This text has been extracted from Wilson, S.; Liber, O.; Johnson, M.; Beauvoir, P.; Sharples, P. and Milligan C. – “Personal Learning Environments: challenging the dominant design of educational systems”

—–

If the VLE shrinks to become a much simpler container which makes use of standards and brings together and organizes the capabilities of a wide range of tools around a particular learning context, then it is much more likely that this new minimal VLE can be modified to become a PLE [...] The difference between a PLE and a VLE then becomes very blurred, perhaps inconsequential – what matters are the learning context, who owns the learning contexts and where the learning contexts are stored [...] This idea opens a potential path forward in flexible VLE system design, one that can naturally evolve into PLE systems.

This text has been extracted from Charles Severance’s “The coming Functionality Mashup in Personal Learning Environments” article.

 

Why I love PLEs and hate VLEs

Attended a great talk by Terry Anderson and it really made me think deep about the strength of PLEs. Tens of millions of people have PLE (Personalised Learning Environment). Hardly any of them see it that way – but that’s their strength:

• MyYahoo – 50 million
• MyMSN – 12 million
• Google personalised homepage – 10 million
• Netvibes – 10 million

The personalised homepage with calendar, alerts, links, feeds, news, to do lists, weather, stockprices, gadgets and knowledge sources is fast becoming the norm.

Why do I like them?

Well they conform to my needs as a person and learner, I don’t have to conform to the system, it conforms to me. It gives me a sense of freedom and control as opposed to the sense of big brother surveillance I get with VLEs or other top-down content management systems. A VLE is course-centric and teacher-centric about push and top-down control and dissemination.

Content is no longer institutional – it’s increasingly abundant and free.

As we’re now witnessing the death of the compliant learner, learner control and freedom are essential. The contributing student is the future and PLEs along with web 2.0 can do the business.

—–

Posted in Donald Clark Plan B on 2007/03/20

 

Debate about PLE

Nice to see some discussion around the PLE concept. Leigh Blackall takes the most critical position, and Dave Cormier examines Leigh’s position. Meanwhile, Stephen Downes notices the commotion…

Why do we need a PLE when we already have the Internet? The Internet is my PLE, ePortfolio, VLE what ever. Thanks to blogger, bloglines, flickr, delicious, wikispaces, ourmedia, creative commons, and what ever comes next in this new Internet age, I have a strong online ID and very extensive and personalised learning environment. [Leigh Blackall]

I think that Leigh’s logic here is solid insofar as his ‘I’ is concerned. This is true for me as well, and for most of the people that are likely to be reading this blog. The majority of people will NEVER have an internet presence. Community environments like elgg allow for them to be noticed, and interacted with, by their peers. It’s a safe, controllable environment, away from the chaos and uncertainty that is that rather long list of tools listed. The PLE and to a lesser extent the VLE/LMS provide some security, some much needed structure and most importantly guaranteed interactivity. Technorati is claiming 21 million blogs or so (i have 4 or 5) where will the interactivity be when there are 200 million or 2 billion. A PLE like elgg allows for focus. [Dave Cormier]

So while I whole heartedly agree with the PLE and Scott’s reasoning for rejecting the LMS/VLE, I can’t say I’m with them on their alternative. In my view, the VLE, LMS and PLE are the same. A suggestion that the Internet, and informal networked learning are not enough. That people still need to come to school to learn. That people need to distinguish learning from life, that people need to download and install an application that will solve their learning needs. [Leigh Blackall]

How do we teach appropriate behaviour on the internet? How do we pass our cultural values on to the wired generation? In these PLE/VLE environments, where we guide by example, where we lead… where we teach. [Dave Cormier]

The problem is that “the internet” is a network using a collection of different protocols and applications. This can be very confusing to people. I think we need to look at an app that uses the internet as it is, yet hides the complexity from the learner. Something like what a feed reader does. [Anónimo]

—–

Posted in Teach and Learn Online on 2005/11/13

Posted in Stephen Downes’ Web on 2005/11/24

Posted in Dave Cormier’s Educational Blog on 2006/03/01

 

Do you want an LMS ?

I should be working on content for my presentations at DevLearn in October that look at what’s next in eLearning. However, the “what’s next” question has become more challenging recently as we’ve seen the rapid growth of simple and easy to deploy tools displacing more complex systems.

On Creating Passionate Users they had a great picture that captures how many of us feel about LMS products:

As the number of features increases our satisfaction level begins to go down because of the complexity of getting it to work for us.

What often happens when systems become very complex is that they begin to get replaced by simpler systems. This is exactly what’s happened in the Content Management space. Wiki’s have exploded onto the scene. They only do about 10% of what a typical CMS will do for you. But, they are so dang easy to get going and use. So, they’ve supplanted the low-end of the market. It forces the CMS products to seek ever higher features to continue to differentiate – a vicious cycle.

I believe we are poised to see this happen in the world of the Learning Management Systems (LMS). They are rapidly growing features that are far beyond what anyone needs. If you look at what’s going on any of the major players, they are adding features and major functional areas at an amazing pace. There are definitely some low-end LMS products that are easy to get up and going. But that’s not really what’s going to replace the LMS. They still require you to think and act in terms of “course” and “training” which is slowly becoming the wrong way to think.

Furthermore, if you step back and take the perspective of a learner, an LMS is simply one of many content sources and there is no advantage to me as a learner of having to go through and register for the course.

Of course, this raises the question – well if we don’t really want an LMS, then what’s the replacement?

I think that folks who are in the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) space have a much better idea of what will come next. In fact, many of us have all created our own Personal Learning Environment by cobbling together using a variety of tools (RSS Reader, Bookmarking, Social Networking, Desktop Search, Web Search, Personal Learning Blog, To Do Lists). I’m not 100% sure that we’ve quite got this right, but it’s certainly much more meaningful to me as a learner than an LMS.

Scott Wilson helped by providing a post with more detailed visualization of this:

That’s what makes me think that something more along the lines of a PLE will begin to come together to replace it.

—–

Posted in eLearning Technology on 26/07/2006

 

Web 2.0 y educación en la UOC

Absolutamente recomendable, desde la distancia, el IV Seminario Internacional de la Cátedra UNESCO de e-learning de la UOC Web 2.0 y Educación que se ha celebrado esta semana en Barcelona. Magnífico el trabajo de Ismael Peña-López comentando las diversas presentaciones y también aportando unas breves conclusiones.

Me permito fusilárselas aquí. Están adaptadas, según comenta él, de las de Julià Minguillón, el subdirector del IN3 de la UOC (en el texto original están en inglés y, ya que las copio, me permito traducirlas en forma libre, por lo de aportar algo):

• La web están cambiando(nos): desde la información centralizada hacia un modelo distribuido y personal, en un entorno conectado y omnipresente.
• Aprendemos en cualquier parte gracias en gran parte a los nuevos dispositivos móviles y en tanto que estos existen los espacios de aprendizaje deben adaptarse.
• Las instituciones están muy atrás respecto a los usuarios, pero ¡ojo! no todos los usuarios son 2.0 todavía (añadiríamos que ¡ni mucho menos!).
• 2.0 es: mucho más que tecnología, un cambio cultural, hacer cosas nuevas con herramientas nuevas (y no cosas viejas con herramientas nuevas), crowdsourcing, innovación y creación
• La persona es el centro del proceso de aprender, de su red. Su espacio de aprendizaje es crucial para agrupar y dar sentido al conocimiento que está disperso en torno a ella, fuera de las paredes de la universidad.
• Pero hay que gestionar la sobrecarga informativa y hay que hacerlo a una increible velocidad. La web semántica, los filtros sociales, la tecnología, pero también ¡profesoras y profesores! deben ayudar.
• Una de las habilidades cruciales para gestionar toda esta información es la de “rip, mix, burn” (abrir, mezclar, quemar) los contenidos, agregando datos de fuentes diversas y abriendo de nuevo esos contenidos vía licencias abiertas. Y, por supuesto, ahí hace falta trabajar con metadatos y tecnologías abiertas.

—–

Posted in Consultoría Artesana en Red on 2007/10/20