Mountains, microblogging and mashups

One of the papers I will be presenting in September is entitled: "Learning Space Mash-up: Toward a Collaborative Personal Learning Environment". It will be presented in the special track on Mashups and Education at this year's Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference, which as usual, is held in the beautiful Alpine town of Villach, in Austria. Nestled in the mountains in the silubrious Holiday Inn Congress Centre, the conference is a stimulating and enjoyable event which attracts around 600 delegates attending each year. Last year, our post conference social event was an unforgettable day trip to Venice.

There are many ideas I will be trying to convey in my paper. Firstly, I will be arguing that Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) will be the way forward for future distributed/blended learning. Secondly, I will want to reinforce the idea that PLEs, which are developed by individuals rather than through institutes, can be optimised through mashups - combinations and aggregations of tools and services that suit the individuals approach to learning. Thirdly, I will revisit the idea that mashup PLEs will rival and perhaps ultimately supplant the institutional Learning Management System (LMS) or VLE. I will outline and expand upon my reasons for this belief based on some of my recent blog posts. These include Monkey Business, Changing the Architecture (about the future of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 services) and The Emperor's New Clothes? I also want to emphasise the power of collaborative working and interpersonal communication within PLEs - something that has been largely ignored in the quest for personalised learning spaces.

I will also be co-presenting a 90 minute workshop on Microblogging at the conference with my good friend and colleague Dr Tara Alexander and I'm also chairing the posters and demonstrations streams, so it will be a busy event for me. If you're there in Villach for ICL 2009, say hello!

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