Web 2.0 and PLE

I wrote a paper for a masters course and I thought it was good enough to post excerpts. I posted it on my blog at Athabasca University's Me2U site. Here are the links:

• Web 2.0 (http://me2u.athabascau.ca/thomass/weblog/1199.html)
  
  
• Personal Learning Environment (PLE)
  (http://me2u.athabascau.ca/thomass/weblog/1200.html)
  
  
• References (http://me2u.athabascau.ca/thomass/weblog/1197.html)
  

My conclusion is that advances in Web 2.0 technologies are making the development of PLEs more of a possibility, but harnessing everything into one centralized portal is a challenge that will need to be met to make it a reality.

I would like to see PLEs take advantage of the approach of sites like Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) and applications like Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/) that allow a user to add or remove applications/add-ons to improve functionality. It should also be flexible enough to allow learners to utilize it in formal, educational, settings, but this would be difficult from the institution's perspective.

A Future Vision of the K-12 system

Predicting the future is like trying to pin jell-o to the wall, but expressing a vision might be more realistic. I had a discussion with an acquaintance the other day about the k-12 school system and it started me thinking again about the future of this system and its' ability to respond to advances in technology. Here are a few of my quick quips about what I would like to see develop for the future:

* Every school needs a dedicated technology person. This should be someone in the school that deal with all issues regarding technology (e.g. classroom, administration, networks, computers and more). It's time to let teachers teach; after all it is what we do best.
* We have to integrate the technology more thoroughly into schools to take advantage of the way our students use it in their lives.
* We have to diversify the composition of our classrooms to utilize technology. In one classroom, there could be students attending by being physically present and technologically present. A teacher would teach to online students at the same time as teaching to students attending in the regular classroom. Why does it have to be separated?
* All students would use tools (like blogging, podcasting, wikis, chat, and others) to help learning.

I’m tired of the ad-hoc approach to dealing with technology in our education system. Many proven technologies remain on the fringes and never get fully implemented. This is not technology for it’s own sake, but a recognition that we are in the information age that depends on technology to function. Are we really exploring and utilizing the way that the current generation uses technology? What is so different from a classroom in the present day and one a hundred years ago?