Saturday, August 19, 2006

ELGG Spaces and PLEs

FYI acronyms are here to stay, and why not? More investigation today on ELGG as a learning tool and potential software for K-12 education. Good news, ELGG are about to launch ELGG Spaces where any one can sign up and have a tailored environment for their organisation. This means we could sign up as a school and have a worry free and stress free (for our IT Manager) PLE maintained by ELGG Spaces. Given that ELGG provides for passworded and private viewing options to all online material this development has great potential for organisations that have limited technical support and/or limited server space and are worried about security for students.

As for PLE, Personalised Learning Environments, I found a great article by Graham Atwell. Graham is part of the community at the University of Brighton who are implementing an ELGG environment. His article explains why PLEs are so appealing and the social and educational ideas underpinning development. He discusses lifelong and informal learning, ubiquitous computing, social software and educational technology. I particulalry like his what a PLE might look like
and the personal list of software tools he uses. He also discusses the advantage of ELGG providing many of the needs of a PLE within the one interface.

Another find today is a paper by Miles Berry, ELGG and Blogging in Primary Education. Although written in January 2006 and a little behind in recent ELGG development it is an excellent overview of the experience and practicalities of implementing ELGG for primary education. Miles is a prolific writer and advocate of social networking and educational technology tools that make sense to students and teachers.

Dilemma of the day.......I want to start using ELGG with my students. Should I wait for ELGG Spaces to be ready?? Should I get 30 or so students to sign up with ELGG as private accounts? One main consideration this week is the need to supplement and eventually replace the existing digital portfolio program. Rather than Manilla weblogs I think ELGG could be a great substitute. I am reading the eportfolios community online at ELGG which is leading me to different people also experimenting and trialling. Regina
Lyakhovetska
(from UBC, what is this?) has shared information about the International Peer Program and use of ePortfolios with ELGG.

Finally, I have put some work into my ELGG PLE, In Touch with a Flat World. I welcome your observations and comments.

Technorati Tags:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Julie,

> from UBC, what is this?

This is the University of British Columbia located in Vancouver Canada.

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Hi Julie,

Am trying to get to your article ELGG PLE, 'in touch with a flat world', however link is taking me to a blank. IS there anywhere else I can find it?

Thanks

Julie Lindsay said...

Hi

yes, it is on eduspaces and they are being taken over by TIGlobal....we all have to wait for this to happen then it will be opened up again. Thanks for dropping by my blog!