Sonja T's List: PLE

• Social software, personal learning environment and the future of education

• The introduction of social software allows the exploration of different  learning pathways, and learning through exploring, wandering and funding the way.  Social networking tools allow learners to make connections, to  take individual choices about the direction of their learning within personal learning networks. Learning is based on bricolage – on making creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand, regardless of their original purpose.

   

  Teachers and trainers have a new role as mentors and guides to scaffold and support learning.

   

  In terms of the future development of educational technology we need tools to help explore pathways, develop connections and to take control of own learning. This is turn requires a greater degree of engagement between developers, educational technologists and practitioners.

   

  Education systems need greater flexibility to provide learners with their own space, to work at their own speed and at their own level, to define their own knowledge areas and make their own connections. Institutions can take the first steps in this by unlocking their resources and opening up their VLEs, by providing more and different ways of accessing services and by focusing IT support on services rather than systems.

   

  The emergence of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is an important  step in this respect. PLEs can provide tools to help learners make and sustain connections, to help learners organise, scaffold and take responsibility for their learning and to manage and handle learning content. PLEs can also provide tools for recording and representing and sharing the learning ‘bricolage’
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  The emergence of new patterns and forms of learning based on social software provide a great opportunity to extend learning opportunities and to embed learning in every day work and living. At the same time it poses a challenge to educations systems and institutions who no longer have a monopoly on knowledge development and transmission.

• Welches Potential haben neue Eingabe- und Steuergeräte, wie wir sie unter anderem von Videospielen wie dem Nintendo Wii kennen? Können solche Schnittstellen die kontextualisierte Steuerung unterstützenund damit das Verständnis und die Speicherung von Wissen unterstützen?
• Wohin gehen die Entwicklungen beim affektiven Computing, bei am Körper tragbaren und anderen mobile Geräten und bei haptischen, multisensorischen Eingabegeräten? „Cloud Computing“
• Was bieten Table-Top-Systeme für mehrere Nutzer, Netbooks, Roomware und ubiquitäres Computing? Liegt die Zukunft in einer immer enger vernetzten Umgebung? Im Mittelpunkt stehen zudem Geräte und Anwendungen mit denen Nutzer aktiv werden können (recommending, reusing, responding) und aktuelle Entwicklungen bei „Responding-Systemen“. Wo stehen wir bei Methoden der Bild- und Gestenerkennung? Was gibt es Neues beim „location-based learning“
• Trends in der Personalisierung wie der Nutzung adaptiver und intuitiver Systeme, semantische Tools und Systeme der Datenerfassung, Plattformen und Lernumgebungen.
• Mash-ups für den Bildungsbereich: Wie reagieren Anbieter auf Forderungen nach deren Integration? Wie steht es mit der Nutzung intelligenter Agenten in E-Learning-Anwendungen? Können virtuelle Agenten Inhalte und Anwendungen sammeln und diese als dynamischen und personalisierten Mix dem Lerner zur Verfügung stellen?

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• Explosion of Access to Mobile Devices
   Today’s K-12 students are carrying “multiple computers in their pockets and backpacks” everyday.  Highlights from the data include:  almost 40% of K-2 students have their own cell phone, about half of students in Gr 3-5 have their own MP3 player and almost 24% of middle and high school students are carrying around a smartphone or PDA.
• 21st Century Skills and Gaming
   Students say that the incorporation of gaming technologies within instruction will help them better develop skills in critical thinking, decision-making, teamwork and creativity.  How do they know that?  From their own “learning” experiences with all kinds of digital and online games outside of school.  Over 2/3 of all K-12 students are regularly  interacting with some kind of electronic games, averaging 8-10 hours a week in game play.  The devices vary greatly by user profile however.  Girls are most likely to enjoy computer based games; younger students thrive in a cell phone game environment.  Gaming is not just for high school boys anymore!
• • 21st Century Skills and Gaming
     Students say that the incorporation of gaming technologies within instruction will help them better develop skills in critical thinking, decision-making, teamwork and creativity.  How do they know that?  From their own “learning” experiences with all kinds of digital and online games outside of school.  Over 2/3 of all K-12 students are regularly  interacting with some kind of electronic games, averaging 8-10 hours a week in game play.  The devices vary greatly by user profile however.  Girls are most likely to enjoy computer based games; younger students thrive in a cell phone game environment.  Gaming is not just for high school boys anymore!
   
  • Technology and Student Social Activism
     While the majority of social network fans are using their MySpace or Facebook sites for standard communications (email, IM) 10% of students in grades 6-8 told us that they have created a special interest group on their personal website about an issue that they were interested in, 15% have participated in an online poll about world issues and 17% regularly use the Internet to research local or world problems.  Activism and technology goes hand in hand even in middle school today.
• The New Face of Personalized Learning – the Free Agent Learner
   The #1 trend we saw in 2008 from our Speak Up data analysis work and our focus group discussions with students all across the country is the emergence of the “Free Agent Learner.”  This Free Agent Learner is un-tethered to traditional school institutions, is engrossed in developing their own content for learning, regularly creates new communities for knowledge exchanges and social interaction, and is an expert in data aggregation to drive experiential learning.  The Free Agent Learner believes that he or she must be responsible for their own learning destiny since their school is not meeting their needs, and is empowered by a wide variety of emerging technologies to do so.  The Free Agent Learner is as we write and speak defining the new face of education for the next generation and still, with few exceptions, our schools do not even realize this new style of learner exists – at least not yet.   Welcome to 2009!

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