Flexible Learning Environs

This is a little distraction the “virtual” is supposed to be the environment  and the learning is supposed to be assumed. Like PLEs the element of being virtual is not easily defined.  The use of the term VLE in this subject is supposed to refer to the “online”  nature of the teaching and learning. That teaching or learning can be in many forms – as we have seen in text or in sound or video or in group or personal interaction. Virtual just means “online” and here differentiated from personal online because virtual should be designed in this subject to cater for a group as opposed to personal or private (but also online or virtual)learning. Do not forget however that  personal learning can also be shared learning and can involve groups too. So there is a fair bit of overlap – and maybe even confusion over the real difference between each? Are you confused do you have a clear idea of the difference ? Can you describe the difference in the comments here or back in your own blog spaces.

The idea that you can download and  listen to podcasts through your own head set might suggest that a podcast is a quintessential personal learning environment (PLE) – but the definition of a PLE in terms of its educational value – the fact that one of the reasons for developing a PLE is that it  customised to your needs means that a podcast that is broadcast to a largish group for educational purposes may mean that it could be defined as other than “personal”.

It is possible that a podcast could bedefined educational as  more a virtual learning environment rather that a PLE – so more like a virtual classroom – that largish groups might listen to rather than a personally enviroment customised to personal needs.

Maybe there are circumstances where  podcasts are personal – can you think of any – comments here linking to your own blog or PLE where you flesh out your ideas.

Again like RSS podcasting tends to be defined by its technological detail or capability – but for educational purposes we may need another definition to really get a sense of what they are.

Glenda says in her blog she felt that the idea of listening over and over again to the recording of a lecture was a bit last century.

What educational theory best describes or applies to the lecture podcast as the font of wisdom? What other educational approach might a podcast be used for and how?

Technical terms like RSS sometimes lead to purely technical explanations -

Establishing applicability to teaching and learning might seem straightforward but a definition of RSS that includes references educational ideas and educational theory or educational approaches to learning is not generally the way RSS is referred to in discussions of RSS.

RSS can be be explained in terms of convenience of access. That is  feeds come to the learner and are easily accessed from a single site. This is really a technological capability and although making things convenient to learn is not irrelevant it is not the only value of RSS.

Additionally it might be argued that any site especially an educational site  needs to attract and have an audience to return or  maintain their interest – so a constantly updating environment  fed automatically by chosen sites will  mean that returning to the site will engage and motivate any audience including students because they will be  able to access fresh content there.

I am wondering if there is adeeper educational theory that supports this RSS feeds into blogs or websites or particularly feeds into online personal learning spaces.

One theory might be if the feeds are from other student blogs – similar to what we are doing then we are folllowing principles of “group learning”.  Perhaps the organisation and choosing of feeds is related to active learning?

Maybe there is a hint of constructivism in RSS feeds for persoanl learning environments?

Can RSS be only justified educationally on the basis of  a psychological need for novelty?

Your ideas in the comments here are welcome – post a link in the comments to your thinking on this in your own blog or PLE.

One of the really nice things about feeds is that if a blog has a feed available that feed can be sent along with others to a Personal Learning Environment – so long as that environment is on the web.

For example the feeds from all the student blogs in this subject are now being sent to this group blog using a number of different widgets.

If you look across to the right in the middle you can see snippets from the most recent posts under the Student Blog Feeds heading in the centre column of this blog and if you click on any entry there you will go to the full post. There are either two or three recent entries listed for each student blog.

Underneath that set of student posts is an amalgamated or aggregated list of posts that is randomly displaying any items from any of the student blogs in no particular order, and underneath that again,  is another  listing that is just showing the titles and sources of the 10 most recent posts from all the student blogs, there are other variations of feed displays below those ones.

These different listings use different feed aggregator tools – I have only picked the free versions and the versions that do not require too much code or server requirements.

Further over on the far right are listed the most recent posts from the student group blog at the LMS.

This means that without having to actually visit each site i can get a rough idea of what is happening will all the posts. This is a great way to keep up to speed with ideas and developments in areas of interest but obviously in the context of a class is an excellent way to keep tabs on what your students are doing and what they are posting about.

In wordpress and blogger the rss dosplay widgets (small bits of hidden on site code) are included in the admin settings to allow easy set up for displaying feeds

Unusually in the edublogs environment like this one – although built on the wordpress environment the templates available do not, as far as I can see include the widgets that set up the code for RSS feeds – without going to the paid for version.

The lack of widgets built in to edublogs obviously does not matter as we can access some free bits of code and incorporate thme into the edublogs environment using the text widget.

I will build a little video tutorial later to demonstrate this.

Edublogs is really built on the WordPress interface so setting an edublogs blog up is very similar to the WordPress process watch the video below to see how. Once you have blog set up you should set up your profile page (watch the video here to see how) and send the address of your blog to the LMS group blog so you can exchange comments with others in the class.

There is a new NING network we can use for the subject and i will invite you to at

http://flexiblelear.ning.com

There is not much there at the moment but similarly to this blog we could set it up to allow for contributions from everyone and see how it could be used as a starting point for a PLE or VLE

Now some of you are familiar with various network support tools including NING networks but others might want to sample the possibilities – even for the PLE assignment – but maybe also for the VLE assignmetn

setupwordpressaccount.swf

There are a number of ways to start a personal learning environment (PLE).

One starting point is to think of  what you are starting and a way of thinking about a PLE is that it is a way of keeping track of what you are finding out for this subject and recording it in a regular way.

This is not so different to starting a learning journal perhaps many are more familiar with a learning journal in the hard copy form – as a diary or a set of notes that you write to regularly.

An online form of a journal or set of notes is a blog and as a starting point it is relatively easy to build a blog to be a place where you keep notes and ideas and regularly update what your current plans or thinking is.

A blog is a way of can be used to record online and  electronically what your ideas, findings and thoughts are on any topic and on any timely basis.

Blogs can be completely personal by setting them up so that only you can access the blog and what is left there  – but it is easier to set up a blog that is at least in the initial stages, open to everyone to read and maybe comment on what you post there.

Hopefully in this subject the interests of sharing any  blog you set up will be set up as a public site – where others read and can comment.

Making a PLE that is more private is relatively easy too you can change the settings on the blog or if you wan to be off line – you can set up a word processing document that you add your thoughts to periodically and save electronically to your own computer.

What are the positives and what might be negatives in making a PLE private and only accessible to one learner?

What are the negatives in making a PLE public?

Are there things other than blogs that might be useful as starting points for a PLE?