My interest in virtual learning environments had led me to spend more time in web dev creating freelance web sites for businesses – see Floating Bridge
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Google offer a range of online services that not only function as self contained applications but also easily integrate into websites. Popular applications include;
As an example, I have included a Google Reader RSS feed in the menu of this blog. This paradigm shift away from “one man band” type solutions toward a highly modular inter-connectivity of online services (often refered to as the “cloud”) is becoming increasingly widespread. In addition to Google’s suite of applications, services such as the Ecwid shopping cart, Delicious.com bookmark manager, Flickr.com photo gallery and Polldaddy.com, among many others, also contribute to the host of cloud services available. As examples, I have included Delicious shared bookmarks, a Poll Daddy poll and a small Flickr excerpt in this blog)
This paradigm extends into the learning environment space, a notion captured by Ted’s comment that:
In terms of an educational experience, Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) refer to the aggregation of set of online tools which enable learners both greater control over their own learning experience and a conection to an online network of resources and other contributors. Instead of centralized, instructor-controlled learning, PLEs are distributed, learner-controlled, network oriented and often have social connections that the individual chooses.
For this reason, any definition of a PLE is a nebulous one – although it can be agreed that PLE’s should in one fashion or another support learning ideas / systems.
While useful for social networking, twitter also offers a useful medium for collaboration – for example, updating status on group projects. Unfortunately, Twitter is not yet compatible with Gravatar so you will need to create a redundant profile if you already have one with Gravatar!
Click below to follow me on Twitter.
Thereby, it can be appreciated that Twitter offers a system around which Social Objects (SO) engaged as Learning Objects (LO) could be used to support education through providing the social networking framework necessary to create and exchange SO/LO packages. Alternatives such as the prevailing Facebook, Ning and pending Google Wave services offer similar opportunities for SO/LO exchange and collaboration. I personally find the potential for Google Wave fascinating as a merger of Email/Blogging type communication built around extensible social networking elements which could in my opinion easily become THE most widespread online social networking framework in the near future.
or the in depth longgg version ..
Gravatar is a great way to create an online mobile identity.
Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums.
You can see my Gravatar on the top of the right hand menu of this blog. It appears along side any posts / comments on this blog as well as any others compatible with Gravatar.
Millions of avatar images served billions of times per day (29,015 requests per second!)
I have found it useful to maintain a central wiki repository where I am able to share teaching resources with others from my learning area – check it out: http://mtch2009.wikispaces.com/
Wikispace.com provides a free service, popular with educators, for creating a Wiki.
For those of you coming into contact with Learning Management Systems, it is worth being aware of SCORM standards. SCORM stands for “Sharable Content Object Reference Model” and refers to a set of technical standards for e-learning software products in order that online learning content and Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are able to communicate with each other through SCORM compliant packages. SCORM does not speak to instructional design or any other pedagogical concern, it is purely a technical standard. To find out more about SCORM visit their website: http://www.scorm.com/
Having looked into a number of free video / audio capture software options in order to create our instructional videos, including WINK and CAM STUDIO (two popular free options) we ran into a number of issues
- Lack of MPEG or AVI video export options – too often only SWF (Flash), which is not compatible with Youtube (WINK) – note that YOUTUBE does not support flash video (we also tried a number of YOUTUBE like services which supported SWF video, however in the end we were not happy with the quality of rendering these offered)
- Limited recording time for free versions (MANY OF THE NON FREE VERSIONS APPLY THIS TO DEMOS)
- Poor quality rendering (CAM STUDIO)
We settled on a payed product called Jing which provided just the functionality we needed with a slick interface at a yearly subscription fee of $15US which we found reasonable (SNAGIT was a close contender however it was unable to support video capture on the MAC version!). Please let us know if you come across any useful alternatives!
Find below a tutorial video we captured using jing and uploaded to Youtube
I have found JOOMLA to be an excellent Content Management System (CMS) in developing business related websites, one thats adapts well to educational applications incorporating VLE elements. Joomla is an OPEN SOURCE initiative allowing designers to build websites through adding content and functionality upon the basic structure provided by the Joomla CMS framework. Close to 5000 Joomla EXTENSIONS offer a wide range of configurable functionality that can be integrated with the Joomla CMS, most of which are free of charge! Another great aspect of Joomla is that it allows non technical users (such as teachers) to add and change content without having to write a single line of code!
A popular Open Source alternative to Joomla is Drupal.
Using Joomla, I recently created a website for a local not for profit educational organisation called Nestoras College – Check it out!
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Remembering the goal is to provide a collaborative virtual learning environment, Blogs and Wiki’s provide for a similar kind of service, differentiated primarily by the layout and organisation of content. Simply put, Blogs lend themselves better to explorative collaboration in more of a free flowing discussion style, while Wiki’s typically encourage a more structured categorical accumulation of data. However that being said, it is possible to use Wiki’s in a Blog like manner and vica-vera! Therefore, I do not like to look at Wikis and Blogs as apples and oranges, rather, related forms of websites on a spectrum that should be selected based upon learning or business requirements. Take a look at the table below as a guide to the different characteristics of Wikis and Blogs.
Wiki vs Blog - sites on a spectrum
While this blog aims to explore technologies surrounding Virtual Learning Environments from a funtional perspective, I would like to highlight the importance of creativity in education as one of the critical driving forces in support of VLEs
‘Then don’t use compulsion,’ I said to him, ‘ but let your children’s lessons take the form of play. You will learn more about their natural abilities that way.’ (Plato – The Republic, 380BC)
Plato – The Republic had some very interesting things to say about not only Plato’s ideal government / man but also the education system necissary to support these ideals.
Read more about what Plato’s Republic has to say about Education is his ideal world – http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/dillon/education_plato_republic.html
Virtual & Personal Learning Environments 
