MySoreHead

In my previous post Constructing a Personal Learning Environment with WordPressMU, I didn't spend time explaining why we're doing this and why you may want to do the same.

What is a PLE?
A PLE is a fancy name for a set of complimentary webservices which facilitate online learning. This is in direct contrast with the Content Management System (WebCT, Moodle, SharePoint) which try to achieve the same goal through a single service that does everything.

By selecting webservies that use open standards (common open APIs and RSS), select the best blogging system, the best forum, the best social bookmarking service, rather than being stuck with what our chosen CMS offers (or doesn't offer). Also the best can be different for different students, maybe "the best" is not the right words? Insert the "most suitable" instead. The most suitable blogging system for you , may not be the most suitable for me and with a PLE it doesn't matter because open standards allow different sites and services to exchange information and work together.

Digital Portfolios
At Concord, we're using blogging with our Secondary students for our digital portfolios. Previously we've used PowerPoint and FrontPage but this year we're blogging. Digital Portfolios facilitate reflection on learning and the celebration of learning. Digital Portfolios are used to showcase the range of learning experiences and provide evidence of learning; they are taken home at the end of the year as a record and memento.

Students select media (photo, video and work samples) and write text and use categories and tags to organise their content. Unlike traditional digital portfolio, web based digital portfolios are seen as a living document that is published to the school community as it is worked on, rather than just at the end of the year as a completed whole product. Blogging as a digital portfolio also offers the opportunity to use alternatives to text, including photo blogging, podcasting and video blogging. Blogging also invites others to respond to the work of others, to provide feedback, supporting evidence and encouragement.

Aggregated content
Tags, categories, group memberships and other meta data (such as date created) allow content created through social websites and webservices to be aggregated in meaningful ways. More on this in the next post.