April 3-7, 2006

Many thanks and congratulations to the presenters who helped get this week’s dialogue going, and to Jean-Claude Bradley of Drexel University and his team for their work in organizing the week. A huge thanks, as well, to those who have offered comments for presenters and blogged about the event. If you enjoyed these presentations, you won’t want to miss the screencasts and articles that will be part of the Library and Information Resources track starting April 10, 2006. -DK

Presentations posted this week
>>Monday, April 3, 2006: Podcasting and Screencasting
>>Tuesday, April 4, 2006: Blogging Examples
>>Wednesday, April 5, 2006: Blogging Studies
>>Thursday, April 6, 2006: New Approaches to Teacher and Curriculum Development
>>Friday, April 7, 2006: New Approaches to the Learner

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