Category Archives: Pedagogy

Supporting Learning in the Workplace

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Today is the last day for submissions to the Personal Learning Environments Conference being held in July in Barcelona. Here is my abstract for the conference, based on work Pontydysgu are developing through the EU funded Mature project. I will try to post a longer version in the next week or so.

Central to the idea of the Personal Learning Environment is it can assist learners in bringing together and reflecting on all their learning be it form formal education programmes, from work or from home. This would include both formal and informal learning.

According to Jay Cross, around 80 per cent of learning in work is informal. Yet much of the focus for work based learning is on courses, rather than practice. Apprenticeship systems usually combine learning in vocational schools with practice in the workplace but there are often problems in linking up theoretical school based learning with work based practice.

Researchers into organisational learning have focused on how workplaces can be designed to facilitate learning. Barry Nyhan (Nyhan et al, 2003) states “one of the keys to promoting learning organisations is to organise work in such a way that it is promotes human development. In other words it is about building workplace environments in which people are motivated to think for themselves so that through their everyday work experiences, they develop new competences and gain new understanding and insights.”

Yet without support for learning, organizational change may not be sufficient. Vygotsky (1978) has pointed to the importance of support from a More Knowledgable Other to support learning in a Zone of Proximal Development which which is the gap between the “actual developmental level” which a person can accomplish independently and the “potential developmental level” which person can accomplish when they are interacting with others who are more capable peers or adults.

The paper will report on work being undertaken through the EU IST programme to develop a Personal Learning & Maturing Environment (PLME), embedded into the working environment, enabling individuals to engage in maturing activities within the organisation and in wider communities of practice beyond organisational boundaries. The work centres on the design a ‘mini learning activities (Conole, 2008) utilising Technology Enhanced Learning to support learners in a Zone of Proximal Development. These activities will utilise multi media including infographics and Technology Enhanced Boundary Objects (Hoyles at al). Although the mediation of a MKO may be seen as being embodied within the technology, learners will also have access to support through an organisational people tagging service. The PLE applications will be available to learners both through desktop and mobile devices.

References

Barnes S.A., Bimrose J., Brown A., Hoyles C., de Hoyos M., Kent P., Magoulas G., Marris L., Noss R., Poulovassilis A. (undated) Workplace personalised learning environments for the development of employees’ technical communicative skills, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Conole G., Dyke M., Oliver M., Seale J (2004) Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design, Computers & Education, Volume 43, Issues 1-2, August-September 2004, Pages 17-33 21st Century Learning: Selected Contributions from the CAL 03 Conference

Nyhan, B. Cressey, P. Tomassini, M. Kelleher, M., Poell, R. (2003). Facing up to the learning organisation challenge. Vol. I. Thessaloniki, CEDEFOP

Vygotsky L.(1978) Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Using media for e-portfolios and Personal Learning Environments

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Another quick article in the ‘rethinking e-Portfolio and Personal Learning Environments’ mini series.

One of the problems in Technology Enhanced Education, I am coming to think, is that new media are very different from traditional paper and book based media. And as Friesen and Hug (2009) argue that “the practices and institutions of education need to be understood in a frame of reference that is mediatic: “as a part of a media-ecological configuration of technologies specific to a particular age or era.” This configuration, they say, is one in which print has been dominant. They quote McLuhan who has described the role of the school specifically as the “custodian of print culture” (1962) It provides, he says, a socially sanctioned “civil defense against media fallout”  – against threatening changes in the mediatic environs.

So what is appropriate content for an e-Portfolio may not be that required by our education systems and institutions, Much of university education is based around essays. Research is still judged by publications in scholarly journals.

Essays and journal content do not make for inspiring web content, however good. Indeed like most other people, I simply print out papers I want to read. But more importantly such paper oriented publications lack the richness that the web can bring, through linking, through the use of multi media, through links to people and increasingly through location specific enhancement.

This problem is not unique to education. As the Guardian newspaper reports, it is also a pressing issue for publishers nervously awaiting the arrival of the iPad and wondering how to produce materials for both print media and for use on a mobile device.

The Guardian interviews Wired editor Ben Hammersley who says “Digital convergence pushes content to more and more devices, but for the requirements of each can be very different. For example, location data can be important for reading stories on the iPhone, while linking is essential for web publishing, and typography has to change for publishing on a tablet computer.”

Hammersley is developing a new content managements system to overcome this problem. Called ‘Budding’ , the system appears to be based on mark up code to allow multiple use of texts.

“Having to learn to write in markup isn’t an imposition, any more than having to learn shorthand or telegraphese. And as with learning any new language, you gain a new soul: writing in markup would allow you to embed code” Hammersley explains on his blog.

“The ability to embed code within a story gives us whole new realms of possibilities for journalism and publishing. Digital platforms are connected and location aware, so why not use that? At the moment the answer is “because your infrastructure won’t let you,” but if it could, the potential is extraordinary.”

In another blog entry he says: “One of my basic points is that having lots of metadata means you can do lots of really nice stuff when you transition from print to online, or print to multimedia. But that metadata needs to be captured and stored as close to the original author as you can. The moment when you can write this stuff down and store it is fleeting, and once it has passed, it has passed forever, for profitable values of forever at least.”

And according to the Guardian: “Budding should also provide an archive for writers as the project aims to transfer the writing and editing online to the cloud, and export it from there to multiple formats such as Indesign or blogging software.”

This sounds very much like part of a Personal Learning Environment to me: a tool which can allow us both to capture contextual learning where and when it happens and to repurpose it for presentation in different media, including on-line through an e-Portfolio and in written formats for essays and scholarly publications.

The only draw back I see is the mark-up language – would academics, students, learners use mark up. Maybe they would, if there was enough obvious gain. And maybe we could develop a simple menu allowing the markup to be added from a visual editor. After all, word processors juts use a menu system to add mark up to text (and a long time ago with Word Perfect the mark up code was written).

Ben Hammersley says he is going to offer Budding free to authors. I’ve signed up for a trail. But could we work out a mark up code for a PLE or e-Portfolio?

References

Friesen N and Hug T (2009), The Mediatic Turn: Exploring Concepts for Media Pedagogy, In K. Lundby (Ed.). Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences. New York: Peter Lang. Pp. 64-81.

McLuhan, M. (1962), The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Rethinking e-Portfolios

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The second in my ‘Rethinking’ series of blog posts. This one – Rethinking e-portfolios’ is the notes for a forthcoming book chapter which I will post on the Wales wide Web when completed..

Several years ago, e-portfolios were the vogue in e-learning research and development circles. Yet today little is heard of them. Why? This is not an unimportant question. One of the failures of the e-learnng community is our tendency to move from one fad to the next, without ever properly examining what worked, what did not, and the reasons for it.

First of all it is important to note that  there was never a single understanding or approach to the development and purpose of an e-Portfolio. This can largely due be ascribed to different didactic and pedagogic approaches to e-Portfolio development and use. Some time ago I wrote that “it is possible to distinguish between three broad approaches: the use of e-Portfolios as an assessment tool, the use of e-Portfolios as a tool for professional or career development planning (CDP), and a wider understanding of e-Portfolios as a tool for active learning.”

In a paper presented at the e-Portfolio conference in Cambridge in 2005 (Attwell, 2005), I attempted to distinguish between the different process in e-Portfolio development and then examined the issue of ownership for each of these processes.

eport

The diagramme reveals not only ownership issues, but possibly contradictory purposes for an e-Portfolio. Is an e-Portfolio intended as a space for learners to record all their learning – that which takes place in the home or in the workplace as well as in a course environment or is it a place or responding to prescribed outcomes for a course or learning programme? How much should a e-Portfolio be considered a tool for assessment and how much for reflection on learning? Can tone environment encompass all of these functions?

These are essentially pedagogic issues. But, as always, they are reflected in e-learning technologies and applications. I worked for a whole on a project aiming to ‘repurpose the OSPI e-portfolio (later merged into Sakai) for use in adult education in the UK. It was almost impossible. The pedagogic use of the e-Portfolio, essentially o report against course outcomes – was hard coded into the software.

Lets look at another, and contrasting, e-Portfolio application, ELGG. Although now used as a social networking platform, in its original incarnation ELGG stared out as a social e-portfolio, originating in research undertaken by Dave Tosh on an e-portfolio project. ELGG essentially provided for students to blog within a social network with fine grained and easy to use access controls. All well and good: students were not restricted to course outcomes in their learning focus. But when it came to report on learning as part of any assessment process, ELGG could do little. There was an attempt to develop a ‘reporting’ plug in tool but that offered little more than the ability to favourite selected posts and accumulate them in one view.

Mahara is another popular open source ePortfolio tool. I have not actively played with Maraha for two years. Although still built around a blogging platform, Mahara incorporated a series of reporting tools, to allow students to present achievements. But it also was predicated on a (university) course and subject structure.

Early thinking around e-Portfolios failed to take into account the importance of feedback – or rather saw feedback as predominately as coming from teachers. The advent of social networking applications showed the power of the internet for what are now being called personal Learning networks, in other words to develop personal networks to share learning and share feedback. An application which merely allowed e-learners to develop their own records of learning, even if they could generate presentations, was clearly not enough.

But even if e-portfolios could be developed with social networking functionality, the tendency for institutionally based learning to regard the class group as the natural network, limited their use in practice. Furthermore the tendency, at least in the school sector, of limited network access in the mistaken name of e-safety once more limited the wider development of ‘social e-Portfolios.”

But perhaps the biggest problem has been around the issue of reflection. Champions have lauded e-portfolios as a natural tools to facilitate reflection on learning. Helen Barrett (2004) says an “electronic portfolio is a reflective tool that demonstrates growth over time.” Yet  are e-Portfolios effective in promoting reflection? And is it possible to introduce a reflective tool in an educations system that values the passing of exams through individual assessment over all else? Merely providing spaces for learners to record their learning, albeit in a discursive style does not automatically guarantee reflection. It may be that reflection involves discourse and tools for recording outcomes offer little in this regard.

I have been working for the last three years on developing a reflective e-Portfolio for a careers service based din the UK. The idea is to provide students an opportunity to research different career options and reflect on their preferences, desired choices and outcomes.

We looked very hard at existing opens source e-portfolios as the basis for the project, nut could not find any that met our needs. We eventually decided to develop an e-Portfolio based on WordPress – which we named Freefolio.

At a technical level Freefolio was part hack and part the development of a plug in. Technical developments included:

  • The ability to aggregate summaries of entries on a group basis
  • The ability add custom profiles to see profiles of peers
  • Enhanced group management
  • The ability to add blog entries based on predefined xml templates
  • More fine grained access controls
  • An enhanced workspace view

Much of this has been overtaken by subsequent releases of WordPress multi user and more recently Buddypress. But at the time Freefolio was good. However it did  not work in practice. Why? There were two reasons I think. Firstly, the e-Portfolio was only being used for careers lessons in school and that forms too little a part of the curriculum to build a critical mass of familiarity with users. And secondly, it was just too complex for many users. The split between the front end and the back end of WordPress confused users. The pedagogic purpose, as opposed to the functional use was too far apart. Why press on something called ‘new post’ to write about your career choices.

And, despite our attempts to allow users to select different templates, we had constant feedback that there was not enough ease of customisation in the appearance of the e-Portfolio.

In phase two of the project we developed a completely different approach. Rather than produce an overarching e-portfolip, we have developed a series of careers ‘games; to be accessed through the Careers company web site. Each of the six or so games, or mini applications we have developed so far encourages users to reflect on different aspects of their careers choices. Users are encouraged to rate different careers and to return later to review their choices. The site is yet to be rolled out but initial evaluations are promising.

I think there are lessons to be learnt from this. Small applications that encourage users to think are far better than comprehensive e-portfolios applications which try to do everything.

Interestingly, this view seems to have concur with that of CETIS. Simon Grant points out: “The concept of the personal learning environment could helpfully be more related to the e-portfolio (e-p), as both can help informal learning of skills, competence, etc., whether these abilities are formally defined or not.”

I would agree: I have previously seen both as related on a continuum, with differing foci but similar underpinning ideas. However I have always tended to view Personal Learning Environments as a pedagogic capproach, rather than an application. Despite this, there have been attempts to ‘build a PLE’. In that respect (and in relation to rethinking e-Portfolios) Scott Wilson’s views are interesting. Simon Grant says: “As Scott Wilson pointed out, it may be that the PLE concept overreached itself. Even to conceive of “a” system that supports personal learning in general is hazardous, as it invites people to design a “big” system in their own mind. Inevitably, such a “big” system is impractical, and the work on PLEs that was done between, say, 2000 and 2005 has now been taken forward in different ways — Scott’s work on widgets is a good example of enabling tools with a more limited scope, but which can be joined together as needed.”

Simon Grant goes on to say the ““thin portfolio” concept (borrowing from the prior “personal information aggregation and distribution service” concept) represents the idea that you don’t need that portfolio information in one server; but that it is very helpful to have one place where one can access all “your” information, and set permissions for others to view it. This concept is only beginning to be implemented.”

This is similar to the Mash Up Personal Learning Environment, being promoted in a number of European projects. Indeed a forthcoming paper by Fridolin Wild reports on research looking at the value of light weight widgets for promoting reflection that can be embedded in existing e-learning programmes. This is an interesting idea in suggesting that tools for developing an e-Portfolio )or for that matter, a PLE can be embedded in learning activities. This approach does not need to be restricted to formal school or university based learning courses. Widgets could easily be embedded in work based software (and work flow software) and our initial investigations of Work Oriented Personal Learning Environments (WOMBLES) has shown the potential of mobile devices for capturing informal and work based learning.

Of course, one of the big developments in software since the early e-Portfolio days has been the rise of web 2.0, social software and more recently cloud computing. There seems little point in us spending time and effort developing applications for students to share powerpoint presentations when we already have the admirable slideshare application. And for bookmarks, little can compete with Diigo. Most of these applications allow embedding so all work can be displayed in one place. Of course there is an issue as to the longevity of data on such sites (but then, we have the same issue with institutional e-Portfolios and I would always recommend that students retain a local copy of their work). Of course, not all students are confident in the use of such tools: a series of recent studies have blown apart the Digital Native (see for example Hargittai, E. (2010). Digital Na(t)ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the “Net Generation”. Sociological Inquiry. 80(1):92-113).  And some commercial services may be more suitable than other for developing an e-Portfolio: Facebook has in my view limitations! But, somewhat ironically, cloud computing may be moving us nearer to Helen Barrett’s idea of an e-Portfolio. John Morrison recently gave a presentation (downloadable here) based on his study of ‘what aspects of identity as learners and understandings of ways to learn are shown by students who have been through a program using course-based networked learning?’ In discussing technology he looked at University as opposed to personally acquired, standalone as opposed to networked and Explored as opposed to ongoing use.

He found that students:

Did not rush to use new technology

Used face-to-face rather than technology, particularly in early brainstorming phases of a project

Tried out software and rejected that which was not meeting a need

Used a piece of software until another emerged which was better

Restrained the amount of software they used regularly to relatively few programs

Certain technologies were ignored and don’t appear to have been tried out by the students

Students used a piece of software until another emerged which was better  which John equates with change. Students restrained the amount of software they used regularly to relatively few programs  which he equates with conservatism

Whilst students were previously heavy users of Facebook, they were now abandoning it. And whilst there was little previous use of Google docs, his latest survey suggested that this cloud application was now being heavily used. This is important in that one of the more strange aspects of previous e0Portolio development has been the requirement for most students to upload attached files, produced in an off line work processor, to the e-Portfolio and present as a file attachment. But if students (no doubt partly driven by costs savings) are using online software for their written work, this may make it much easier to develop online e-portfolios.

John concluded that :this cohort lived through substantial technological change. They simplified and rationalized their learning tools. They rejected what was not functional, university technology and some self-acquired tools. They operate from an Acquisition model of learning.” He concluded that “Students can pick up and understand new ways to learn from networks. BUT… they generally don’t. They pick up what is intended.” (It is also well worth reading the discussion board around John’s presentation – - although you will need to be logged in to the Elesig Ning  site).

So – the e-Portfolio may have a new life. But what particularly interests me us the interplay between pedagogic ideas and applications and software opportunities and developments in providing that new potential life. And of course, we still have to solve that issue of control and ownership. And as John says, students pick up what is intended. If we continue to adhere to an acquisition model of learning, it will be hard to persuade students to develop reflective e-Portfolios. We should continue to rethink e-Portfolios through a widget based approach. But we have also to continue to rethink our models of education and learning.

Pedagogy Frameworks, tools and representations

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More on the work in progress. Yesterday I wrote about pedagogy framework for the development of web 2.0 learning environment we are developing for European G8WAY project which aims to support learners in transitions between school and work, school and university and university and work.

In the framework we look at different pedagogic theories. We the look at Conole, Dyke, Oliver and Seale’s model for mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design. Based on Activity Theory models of transition process and on a Vygotskian pedagogic approach we aim to try to identify mini learning activities for supporting transitions and to identify social software tools that can support such learning.

The paper by Grainne Conole et al is worth reading in full. But here is a synopsis  of their framework and its representation.

Conole, Dyke, Oliver and Seale (2004), have proposed a toolkit and model for mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design. They say “Toolkits are model-based resources that offer a way of structuring users’ engagement that encourages reflection on theoretical concerns as well as supporting the development of practical plans for action (Conole & Oliver, 2002). The models that form the heart of each toolkit consist of representations of a ‘space’, described in terms of qualities, in which theories or approaches can be described.” They emphasise that “the descriptions of these approaches reflect the beliefs of describer. These models are thus best understood as sharable representations of beliefs and of practice, rather than as definitive account of the area (cf. Beetham et al., 2001).”

The framework they propose consists of the following six components:

  • “Individual – Where the individual is the focus of learning.
  • Social – learning is explained through interaction with others (such as a tutor or fellow students), through discourse and collaboration and the wider social context within which the learning takes place.
  • Reflection – Where conscious reflection on experience is the basis by which experience is transformed into learning.
  • Non-reflection – Where learning is explained with reference to processes such as conditioning,preconscious learning, skills learning and memorisation (Jarvis, Holford, & Griffin, 1998).
  • Information – Where an external body of information such as text, artefacts and bodies of knowledge form the basis of experience and the raw material for learning.
  • Experience – Where learning arises through direct experience, activity and practical application.”

They put forward three ways of representing the framework.

The first is as a series of continua:

The second is a three dimensional representation with a cube:

The third emphasises the relationships between the ends of the spectrum in the form of a octahedron:

The affordances of Web 2.0 and the development of Personal Learning Environments

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This is work in progress. It is part of a report I am writing for the European G8WAY project which aims to support learners in transitions between school and work, school and university and university and work. The report is focused on the development of  a common pedagogy framework for the development of web 2.0 learning environments, based on clearly defined pedagogy criteria. The aim is to conclude a framework, which enables us to map onto digital media and e-tools with regard to their learning characteristics, such as thinking & reflection, conversation & interaction, experience & activity or evidence & demonstration. This can then be used as the basis against which to benchmark pedagogical principles for any particular learning scenario developed within G8WAY.

I am writing the report in a wiki and attempting to develop a coherent framework for the report. The first section, a draft of which follows below looks at the affordances of Web 2.0 applications and the development of Personal Learning Environment. The next section will briefly summarise pedagogic theories and see how web 2.0 tools can be used to support learning according to different pedagogic approaches. A further section will look at the issue of educational transitions and in particular use Activity Theory to examine the contexts in which learning takes place within transitions. I then want to try using Grainne Conole’s model for mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design to map the tools against these contexts and illustrate this with mini learning activities. I will then take my own favourite learning theorist, Vygotsky, and see how his ideas can be used for supporting learners in transitions and how the model can allow the selection of different tools (at least that is the plan :) ).

Anyway here is a very rough draft of the section on Affordances and Personal Learning Environments.

There are changing ideas of how technologies can be used for learning, in part inspired by the emergence of Web 2.0 services and tools, but in part due to a critique of previous generations of learning software. Oliver (2002) points out that although many described instances of elearning claim to draw upon theoretical positions, such as constructivism, few explain how they embody the principles and values of that approach. Attwell has pointed to the difference between espoused pedagogies and the reality of the learning designs.

In part this may be due to lack of confidence and knowledge by teachers in pedagogic approaches to Technology Enhanced Learning. But it may also reflect the affordances in practice of Learning management systems and Virtual Learning Environments. Socio-cultural theories of knowledge acquisition stress the importance of collaborative learning and ‘learning communities’ but Agostini et al. (2003) complain about the lack of support offered by many virtual learning environments (VLEs) for emerging communities of interest and the need to link with official organisational structures within which individuals are working. Ideally, VLEs should link knowledge assets with people, communities and informal knowledge (Agostini et al, 2003) and support the development of social networks for learning (Fischer, 1995). The idea of a personal learning space is taken further by Razavi and Iverson (2006) who suggest integrating weblogs, ePortfolios, and social networking functionality in this environment both for enhanced e-learning and knowledge management, and for developing communities of practice.

Based on these ideas of collaborative learning and social networks within communities of practice, the notion of Personal Learning Environments is being put forward as a new approach to the development of e-learning tools (Wilson et al, 2006)  that are no longer focused on integrated learning platforms such as VLEs. In contrast, these PLEs are made-up of a collection of loosely coupled tools, including Web 2.0 technologies, used for working, learning, reflection and collaboration with others. PLEs can be seen as the spaces in which people interact and communicate and whose ultimate result is learning and the development of collective know-how. A PLE can use social software for informal learning which is learner driven, problem-based and motivated by interest – not as a process triggered by a single learning provider, but as a continuing activity. The ‘Learning in Process’ project (Schmidt, 2005) and the APOSDLE project (Lindstaedt, and Mayer, 2006) have attempted to develop embedded, or work-integrated, learning support where learning opportunities (learning objects, documents, checklists and also colleagues) are recommended based on a virtual understanding of the learner’s context.

However, while these development activities acknowledge the importance of collaboration, community engagement and of embedding learning into working and living processes, they have not so far addressed the linkage of individual learning processes and the further development of both individual and collective understanding as the knowledge and learning processes mature (Attwell. Barnes, Bimrose and Brown, 2008). In order to achieve that transition (to what we term a ‘community of innovation’), processes of reflection and formative assessment have a critical role to play.

Personal Learning Environments are by definition individual. However it is possible to provide tools and services to support individuals in developing their own environment. In looking at the needs of careers guidance advisors for learning Attwell. Barnes, Bimrose and Brown, (2008) say a PLE should be based on a set of tools to allow personal access to resources from multiple sources, and to support knowledge creation and communication. Based on an initial scoping of knowledge development needs, an initial list of possible functions for a PLE have been suggested, including: access/search for information and knowledge; aggregate and scaffold by combining information and knowledge; manipulate, rearrange and repurpose knowledge artefacts; analyse information to develop knowledge; reflect, question, challenge, seek clarification, form and defend opinions; present ideas, learning and knowledge in different ways and for different purposes; represent the underpinning knowledge structures of different artefacts and support the dynamic re-rendering of such structures; share by supporting individuals in their learning and knowledge; networking by creating a collaborative learning environment.

Whilst PLEs may be represented as technology, including applications and services, more important is the idea of supporting individual and group based learning in multiple contexts  and of promoting learner autonomy and control.

Personal Learning Environments offer both the framework and the technologies to integrate personal learning and working and to support learners in transitions. Coneole (2008) suggests a personal working environment and mixture of institutional and self selected tools are increasingly becoming the norm. She says: “Research looking at how students are appropriating technologies points to similar changes in practice: students are mixing and matching different tools to meet their personal needs and preferences, not just relying on institutionally provided tools and indeed in some instances shunning them in favour of their own personal tools.”

Auch a development would appear to reflect the changing ways in which young people are using web 2.0 tools and social software for social and entertainment purposes as well as for learning.

Web 2.0 applications and social software mark a change in our use of computers from consumption to creation. Young people are increasingly using technology for creating and sharing multi media objects and for social networking. A Pew Research study (Lenhart and Madden, 2005) found that 56 per cent of young people in America were using computers for ‘creative activities, writing and posting of the internet, mixing and constructing multimedia and developing their own content. Twelve to 17-year-olds look to web tools to share what they think and do online. One in five who use the net said they used other people’s images, audio or text to help make their own creations. According to Raine (BBC, 2005), “These teens were born into a digital world where they expect to be able to create, consume, remix, and share material with each other and lots of strangers.” VLEs and LMS systems were designed as ‘walled gardens’, to isolate learners within institutional, class and subject bound groups and precisely to prevent the open social networking which characterises the ways in which we are using computers to communicate today.

It is not only that learners are using personal tools to meet their own needs and preferences, but teachers also. Whilst in the past, teachers would need technical support for software applications, the widespread availability of online environments and tools has allowed teachers to move outside of institutional VLEs. A wide range of different social software applications are being used for learning including blogs and wikis, social networks such as ELGG or Buddypress, mico blogging applications, shared presentations and social bookmarking tools. Some teachers have experimented with popular social networks such as Facebook for supporting learning. Many of these were not designed for learning and have simply been appropriated for that purpose. Other software vendors for instance Apple have developed learning specific areas such as iTuneU.

Recent research suggests that students are moving away form desktop applications such as Word to use Cloud applications like Google Documents to save money. These applications also tend to offer enhanced opportunities for collaboration.

Furthermore the development of Open APis allows applications to be embedded – thus it is possible to view Utube videos, to access Twitter and to present slideshows all within a personal blog.

However these developments are not unproblematic. Not all institutional provision can be accessed through a PLE. using multiple tools often means logging in separately to different accounts. There are issues around privacy, online safety and digital identities.

Data created in one application may be difficult to move to another. Online cloud providers may go out of business arising issues of data preservation.

Above all there remain pedagogical issues. With a wide array of potential tools available how do teachers and students choose the best tool for a particular task? Is it possible to look at the affordances for learning of different types of social software and group them? One major issue is the context in which such tools are being used. Later in this report we will suggest ways of understanding the contexts in which learning for transitions is taking place and look at a framework for matching groups of tools to such contexts to facilitate the development of Personal Learning Environments.