The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environm

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Stephen Downes April 18, 2007

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Online Learning Has been around since 1995 or so Really grew with the World Wide Web

Has advanced tremendously

Many positive developments in the last few years worth sharing…

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Open Source Applications Learning Management Systemssuch as Moodle, Sakai, Bodington, ATutor

Development and CommunityToolssuch as LAMS, Connexions, ELGG, Drupal, WordPress

Supporting Softwaresuch as Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Audacity

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Open Educational Resources MIT s OpenCourseWare projectand the OpenCourseWare Consortium

Open University s Open Courses

OER initiativesHewlett, Wellcome, OECD, UNESCO

Creative Commons and CC materialsin Flickr, Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia, Wikiversity, etc.

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

New Environments Multimedia explosionpodcasts, vodcasts, YouTube, Slideshare, more

Mobile computingmobile phones, PDAs, etc.

The 3D webSecond Life is a start, we will see more of this

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Access… One-to-one computingsuch as the Maine laptop project, now spreading rapidly

One Laptop per Child has launched – computers in Nigeria Wireless access3G networks, WLAN…

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

The Internet of 2007

It looks like nothing before…– – – – Like open source Like Social Networks Like blogs and blogging Like wikis and collaborative writing – Like tagging and Digg and…

It looks like Web 2.0Stallman

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

The Concept… Learning is centered around the interests of the learner This learning is immersive – learning by doing The computer connects the student to the rest of the world

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Game Based Learning

Types: Branching, Spreadsheet, Game, Lab…http://www.downes.ca/cgibin/website/view.cgi?dbs=Article&key=1116274375

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Workflow (Informal) Learning

Types: Community of Practice, Environment, Visualization… /

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Online Learning at the Crossroads On the one hand – we have developed tools and systems intended to support traditional classroom based learning

On the other hand – we could (should?) be developing tools and systems to support immersive learning We should be developing for dynamic, immersive, living systems…

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

First Iteration: User-Produced Media Blogs and Blogging

Podcasting and Vodcasting Game mods and other multimedia

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Web 2.0: The Learning Network The e-Portfolio lives in the intersection between the worlds for education, work, and home A model for e-Portfolio as a learnermanaged construct Key requirement is easy-to-use tools and hosting services*

*E.g. the “e-Portfolio-as-blog” approachScott Wilson: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/entries/20050523083528

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

The Idea of the PLE…

http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/ple/resources/edf.ppt

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Plex Personal Learning Environment Example

http://reload.ces.strath.ac.uk/plex/

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Collecting and Filtering RSS

http://www.downes.ca/mygluframe.htm

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

RSS Writr

http://www.downes.ca/editor/writr.htm

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Edu_RSS Viewer

http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?action=viewer

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

Edu_RSS 0.2

http://www.downes.ca/edurss02.htm

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

The Challenge…

How to find the right resource… at the right time for the right person

The Future of Online Learning and Personal Learning Environments

The old way – use descriptions

/Papers/ITS%202000/ITS%202000.htm

Dublin Core Learning Object Metadata