• http://fm.schmoller.net/2006/07/personal_learni.html

Seb Schmoller's latest Fortnightly Mailing includes a piece by Mark van Harmelen about the state of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) in the UK, focusing especially on a recent meeting at Manchester University sponsored by CETIS (Center for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards). The post focuses not only on emerging Web 2.0 tools but on client tools being developed by groups like CETIS.

Van Harmelan writes, "Importantly, and picking up on threads that have been emerging in the Blogosphere over the last two and a half years, PLEs are increasingly seen as a vehicle for self-directed and group-based learning, where individual learners construct their own agendas and learning programmes to satisfy their own learning goals. As such, the PLE revolution harbours two important threads, a change in learning style in institutions, and a spilling over of learning technology from institutions to non-institutional life."

"...There was a general degree of concern about possible institutional responses to the coming PLE revolution: That PLEs in their most useful incarnations can only be used to full advantage with a fundamental change in pedagogic practice and that institutions may be wary of a consequent loss of  control of their teaching and learning processes. Perhaps, then, from an institutional point of view, it was no coincidence that the first day of the workshop was scheduled on the much touted date of 666."

Van Harmelan also provides some useful links:

• CETIS PLEX Blog, their  download page, and a selection of screenshots of PLEX in action.
• Elgg, a PLE-like environment initially conceived as a response to increased institutionalization of e-portfolios.
• The half-hour PLE, a simple PLE built in half an hour.
• warwickblogs, the University of Warwick's bold experiment in student blogging.