HighPoint Symposium Workshop 4: Building and engaging with personal learning environments

Having been involved in elearning in general and the implementation of a commercial Virtual Learning Environment together with the staff development activities associated with it, I can say with some confidence that this approach has problems as well as advantages. The most important things that I have learned in my years working with elearning and its tools are that:

1. Good educational design is important
2. The best ideas come from the practitioner not an elearning advisor
3. Once an initial idea for a design is established it can be very simple to implement
4. It doesn’t have to be difficult or overly technical

Because of the plethora of tools and technologies available to us and the power of the 'semantic' web to present and represent them to their publics we can now construct much more personalised resources quickly and easily. In this session I will illustrate how it is possible to simply construct a resource using these tools and technologies and in doing so will argue that these more flexible approaches will be more appropriate for the modern learner in the future. To do this we will look at the following:

1. Mapping a Learning/working environment –
1. Activity – mapping exercise
2. Choosing how to ‘e’ – identifying and selecting tools
1. Activity – which tools to use?
3. Constructing a presence that works – putting it together
   

At the conclusion of the session participants should have:-

A clearer picture of what they do and how to make learning more personalised.