Heather Ross

think that the Facebook issue is interesting. I've seen several posts on it recently that are questioning whether we should be getting students to use it for a PLE - on the grounds that it *is* their space. Do they necessarily want their teachers in it? Do they want their friends to know what they're doing at University?

However, if students have learnt to use sites like Facebook for socialising, then perhaps they can transfer those skills to something like Elgg for learning.
Probably the bottom line is the "personal" - they have the choice as to what to do.

This is a good point. Do they want us in "their world"? But a Facebook like setting, such as in Elgg would allow for an environment type that is familiar to them. That would give them the option of whether or not they wanted their worlds (academic, social, etc.) to meet.

We currently use WebCT/Blackboard and this certainly doesn't allow for these possibilities.

To me, the *ideal* PLE would be something that the student has created herself - from tools that are available to her. They could be those that the institution provides, they could be those that she's found. We may well be geting students to see each other's PLEs - (though noting the privacy issues I mentioned earlier) - however, given that most tools are RSS enabled, that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I agree that the use of RSS will make this easier. You also noted social networking sites like Elgg and Facebook (I'm not familiar with Plex). This would take learning to where the learners already are instead of making them come to us via WebCT/Blackboard or even Moodle.

As someone who is new to Facebook I'm looking forward to hearing  some ideas on making use of it as a PLE. When I leave my office I have to walk through the computer lab and students are always on Facebook (which is new because our institute just removed the blocking filters).

However, I think that you're also correct that there will be issues with "letting go" on behalf of staff (administration and faculty).

Thanks, Alec. I'm not sure where I got the link.

Corinne,

I mainly use two "programs" for blogging. I have WordPress on my server space, but you can use the hosted version at WordPress.com and it's free.

I also use the Performancing plug-in for Firefox. It lets me write my post and then send it to my blog as either a post or a draft.

Peter,

I had heard about this  (we're using version 6), but being the rebel and open source fan that I am, I encourage people to make use of the wide variety of non-proprietary tools that are out there.