Blogs as personal learning environments
James Farmer
Deakin University
Incsub.org
This presentation examines the potential and existing applications of blogs as Personal Learning Environments (PLEs).
As digital natives have begun to enter our higher educational institutions and non-digitally native staff have increasingly begun to engage with teaching and learning through the web, existing Learning and Courseware Management Systems (LCMSs) have failed to meet the expectations of either party. However, in the decentralised technological corners of institutions staff have been exploring new possibilities of teaching and learning online that not only significantly improve upon those offered through institutional systems but also match their socially constructivist pedagogical beliefs.
This presentation contrasts social and ‘anti-social’ software in its current use in higher education, explores existing applications of these technologies in teaching and learning online and proposes a future model of a PLE based upon blogs, aggregation and associated technologies.
View the screencast (12:03); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.
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Tags: Blogging, Personal Learning Environments, RSS, higheredblogcon
April 7th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
What about FERPA in light freely-accessible personal learning environments? Specifically…is there a need for educators using personal learning environments to specific what contributions should be posted and which should be make only in a protected environment where only the instructor and classmates can access? Until CMS’s get to a point where they have integrated personal learning environments into their infrastructure, what recommendations do you have for educators seeking to protect the privacy of students?
April 7th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
Hi Jason: You make an interesting point about FERPA. Generally, I speak to my students about “web presence” and the potential ramifications associated with blogging. Really, the only way to promise privacy is to use WebCT or Blackboard discussion forums, but this closes the student off to many potential intellectual engagements outside of the particular class.
April 7th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
Am not that familiar with FERPA but I would add to what I’m saying in that I don’t see any reason why this kinda model can’t work behind closed doors, in fact in quite a few K-12 environments I’d quite possibly encourage it!
Having said that I’d also argue that we’re not doing kids any favours by not introducing them to internet literacy and how to communicate responsibly online… and walled off areas don’t help there.
BTW organisers you need to install the WP subscribe-to-comments plugin pronto if you want some good discussion to happen in these spaces
April 7th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Subscribe-to-comments plugin added. Thanks for the prompting, James!
April 8th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
As you can see the discussion has exploded as a result
April 9th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
James,
I am intensely interested in the idea of PLE as a profesisonal development tool for K-12 education. I am doing quite a bit of research on the topic now for an independent study I am doing with Gene Roche at the College of William and Mary. I would love to talk with you sometime to brainstorm your model further.
I have you in my Skype contacts — I am snbeach. If you see me on– give me a shout out and let’s talk.
Sheryl
April 9th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Defo, perhaps in the week after this though
April 9th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
I found your screencast quite affirming. I am in the process of marking the final assignments for a course which met 2 hours a week, used a wiki for course information, scheduling interviews, and posting students’ work, and a community blog on Elgg where the students could set the level of public or private for their individual posts.
For $5.00 U.S. a month our Wikispaces wiki could have been made private. And Elgg (for free) allows the students to post the MP3s they created, so we could all listen to them at our convenience.
BTW, the sound on the last minute, minute & a half of your screencast cut out - don’t know if that’s your screencast or my iBook.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:39 am
Maybe there are other ways around the FERPA fears than building passwords and walls… Start a class that will use blogware with an activity of creating an online “character” / avatar if you will. Is there a real reason, students need to post under the own name, when the teacher and fellow students can keep a private roster of who is who?
After all, when you are online, your representation is always some sort of distorted reflection on yourself, why not teach students to create online personas?
For example, if you ever come across a character named “Biff Cantrell” on the web, then that was most likely me. Bff alone has downloaded several hundred copies of Flash plugin and dutifully registers every time. He even has an electronic portfolio.
Sometimes “big” problems need rather small solutions.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
i just posted a much longer response on my blog, but the gist of it is that i actually like web-based forums even though i hated them as they were implemented in Blackboard. i have found phpBB forums to be so much better than the forums in Blackboard.
and, i’ve used blogs for many years now as well. and, the feedback i get from students is that they enjoy the community built in the forums over the various other tools that we use (including blogs).
like i said, i explain much more on my blog, but i wanted to add a comment here to say that i think forums can be much more than the representation they appear to have received in the 12 minute screencast.
April 11th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
Thanks Sean, it’s great to have an alternative perspective and I really appreciate your comments.
Not that I necessarily agree
There’s a lot I could go over but in the first instance I’d like to ask a question and get what your thoughts are on a publication of mine.
Specifically, if forums are as valid as blogs as a communication medium how do you explain the doubling every 5 months of blogs as opposed to the shrinking use of forums (besides their application in online gaming / tech support)?
And this is the publication, comparing blogs and discussion boards in more length, I’d love to hear your perspective (and please feel free to post it here, I feel that this adds depth to the presentation):
http://incsub.org/blog/?p=3
Thanks again for your comment.
April 12th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
i do want to respond to your article once i’ve digested it and given it a bit of thought later tonight or tomorrow, but i’ll offer a theory on the growth of blogs versus discussion forums just briefly.
blogs are very new and numerous websites give people the ability to make a blog for free. in the late 90s, we saw a huge growth in free websites and free hosting (e.g., homestead, angelfire, ) as well with various sites giving away web space. the money dried up and the free websites largely dried up. but, for a while the growth was huge. and, most people didn’t know how to use a generic website that typically had a template that was a one size fits all. blogs are more defined. you write a journal online (that’s quite simplistic, no doubt).
so, blogs are growing rapidly as the phenomena is coming to light and the access to blogs is growing easier and easier. i think a lot of blogs created are dying a short while later, fwiw. and, sites like myspace and xanga surely have increased the exposure to blogging as these sites attract new users with their social networking abilities. most people want to be liked and want to be popular . . . the internet is one way to create a persona where the user can reinvent who they are. a person could easily create a myspace account and use the blog to highlight their humor or any other characteristic. they could post photos that are selected to minimize deficiencies and promote the best features of their looks, etc. you become who you want to be and that’s an amazing power.
i don’t know that discussion forums are dying and perhaps you address this in the article. i would guess that more and more instructors are trying Blackboard (or similar tool) each semester at institutions around the world. and, more and more are testing out and trying the discussion forums, so i’d bet their use is still growing rapidly. that doesn’t mean that i appreciate what these instructors are doing as i really despise the forums in Blackboard, fwiw.
the question that i’ll explore more after reading your article is how these various tools best fit into the learning environment. please note, i am not against blogs; rather, i think blogs have a valuable place in education and i personally enjoy using them in my classes. i also believe that web-based discussion forums have a valuable place in education and that individual teachers may have a use for one tool over another. and, i recognize that i have limitations in my own implementation of these tools that could affect my thinking, but i also try and recognize how others use these tools differently than i do. that being said, i’ll read through your linked article today and see what i think. thank you for starting a nice discussion. to be continued . . .
April 13th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
i read through most of the article now and i just don’t agree with the premise being made. i looked closely at the underlying research and other items cited and i would be happy to share some notes with you via email if you’d like.
in some cases, i could not easily find items that were cited (e.g., Garrison & Anderson, 2003 — a book that i don’t have), so i sought other literature that was available from the same authors. and interestingly enough, Anderson (2004) has an online book with a snippet that sums up my thinking on forums versus blogs:
Thus, the challenge for teachers designing and organizing the online learning context is to create a mix of learning activities that are appropriate to student needs, teacher skills and style, and institutional technical capacity. Doing so within the ever-present financial constraints of formal education systems is a challenge that will direct online learning design and implementation for the foreseeable future.
http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/pdf/TPOL_chp11.pdf (p. 279)
Some instructors will find blogging tools to be a better fit for online communications and some will find discussion forums to be a better fit. To each his/her own, eh? ;~)
April 15th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
Thanks for your thoughts Sean, while I certainly agree with you that different tools are appropriate for different tasks (I’ve tried to outline what it takes to use blogs successfully in education here: http://incsub.org/blog/2005/blogs-anywhere-high-fidelity-online-communication) I think that there’s a certain pedagogy / dynamic inherent in discussion forums (or to give them their correct name ‘bulletin boards’) which I don’t find conducive to learning.
However, I guess my complaint isn’t so much with the tools as the way in which they’re user (or attempted to be used). When I’m teaching online I’m looking for in-depth, engaging and authentic communication and while you can force that out of a DB in some circumstances, IMO (and to steal a phrase from a blackboard-er) you;re hammering nails with a saw. Blogs, effectively used, just work better for that.
April 15th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
” When I’m teaching online I’m looking for in-depth, engaging and authentic communication . . .”
on that, i agree wholeheartedly. i want to use every tool i try effectively or i learn how to use it better or i drop it. i’ll read your most recent link and hopefully learn to implement blogs even better because i am no doubt missing something. my current implementation is very hard to manage (with 60+ students) and hard to evaluate from my perspective. but, i know i must be missing something, so i’ll read up. thanks for the efforts and energy you bring to promoting effective technologies into the classroom.
cheers!
May 20th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
As someone in Sean Lancaster’s class (found the link through his blog), I have to say I enjoy forum use in the class. We are only a couple weeks into the semesters and there are hundreds of posts in the class forum. It is so easy to find a comment and reply. I cannot imagine searching through 20 blogs to find out what everyone thinks on the class topic. I feel sorry for the Mr. Lancaster who has to find and read all of our blogs that are spread throughout the net. That does not mean that blogs do not have a place in education. They are a great way for anyone to be able to post their ideas, in their way. People can do this without having to worry about moderators editing them or dozens flaming the post. But I think forums are much more like a classroom environment then blogs and that is important to preserve in the online setting.