Derek,
Quite a timely post for me. I just came back from the SUNY Conference on Instructional Technologies (CIT). The session topics focused primarily on “Web 2.0” technologies and techniques; wikis, blogs and of course the now ubiquitous LMS.
In all of these sessions, Derek's model for content development and delivery was evident. Many contributors using disparate tools generate content then pass the finished product through to an institutionally managed tool where it is aggregated and managed by faculty. The focus was on many contributing to a single interface: student generated content, distributed content, etc.
Derek's model of the Personal Learning Environment would appear to provide multiple aggregation environments (equal to the number of students potentially more) that host the independently developed content.
Only one session at CIT touched on this, “Whose technology is it anyway?” presented by Steven Zucker, Beth Harris and Eric Feinblatt of the Fashion Institute of Technology. The session description asked, Why haven't we, as educators, been asking this question of ourselves? Why is technology exempt from the lessons we've learned about involving students in their own education? Why is technology something that an institution 'delivers' without significant input from the students themselves?
In the presentation they displayed two screen shots, one of the campus portal that included announcements, calendar events, email, etc., what the campus felt the students needed, and the other, a student generated PLE built in their own instance of Wordpress. The idea I took away from this was that students are not only better suited to identify and organize their own content, they are better suited to define the tools to do so.
To me it seems plausible that a course's faculty member publishes course specific content, references, activities, etc. to a course site, but the students aggregate that (and other resources they may find) within their own PLE, a wiki, a blog, iGoogle, a basic web page, etc. Really just like they used to with their own notes, folders, binders, lockers, desks, etc. These independent sites (maybe we call them “cites?”) can also be shared between students as course resources.
I noticed here that there is a link to Digg on this page. I wonder how such tools could be used to identify student “cites” as resources for the class? Could these be referenced and scored similarly where those that received multiple visits, comments, referrals, rankings, be scored (valued?) higher just as search engines, Digg, del.icio.us does. Is Education 3.0, Web 3.0 or Web2.0-2.0 (my Web2.0 “goes to eleven”) really all about integration and interoperability?
Great post (and I'm happy to have for once beaten Richard Wyles to the punch and posted the first comment - woohoo),
Patrick
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