1. PADDLE: Piloting A DecentraliseD Learning Environment Henry Blackman University of Chester http://www.chester.ac.uk/ple/

2. Background

3. Project Aims Funded by JISC Deliver outside the “VLE” - Developing with the VLE Not reinventing the wheel, use RSS, iCal, UWA etc Use existing aggregators, readers and devices Track effects on learners, teachers and pedagogy Judge the technology, effects - sharing approaches

4. Our 2 Year Project IBIS: Chester In-House VLE extended RSS (podcasts & content), iCal for ALL content Small pilot Blended learning modules (circa 3/4 online) Evaluate effects, attitudes and technology success Every teacher & learner has access to this technology!

5. Fitting In The Future Pick and Mix degrees? Pick and Mix degrees? Lifelong learning? Lifelong learning? Multi-course aggregation? Multi-course aggregation?

6. Our Project Students Non-traditional Work based students Mature Non-IT students, but IT literate Studying Health Informatics Foundation Degree

7. Personal Learning Environment... Personally chosen applications, web services or sites Uses standards Aggregate, display or act on data Integrate information from personal, University and work life

8. ... our twist Focus on content delivery Utilise existing applications and schema Focus on personal homepages and multi-application aggregation

9. Affordances of the PLE Learners are busy: Content is PUSHED to learners (and other staff!) Underlying tech mobile, web or desktop Standard, freely available tools utilised - Already using? Content updated in PLE when updated in VLE Interaction is preserved where possible

10. The Technology

11. How IBIS Works Create Content

12. How IBIS Works Define content order Time release

13. How IBIS Works

14. Examples VLE

15. Examples RSS Reader

16. Examples

17. Technological Restrictions & Workarounds RSS reader support for media and forms variable Alternate display of objects All content displayed - negating RSS advantages Order specified, time released content delivered on a schedule Limited mainstream support for iCal subs, and FOAF (etc) Use widgets and “richer” delivery mechanisms

18. Pedagogic Restrictions & Workarounds Learner prior experience with technology limited Induction & Pre-course training given RSS delivers time- released content Sage on stage vs. Guide on side Is a PLE just changing delivery mechanisms Embrace diverse learner behaviour

19. Personal Homepages Netvibes, iGoogle, Pageflakes etc Netvibes, iGoogle, Pageflakes etc Netvibes UWA provides platform Netvibes UWA provides platform Extends to the desktop and personal sites Extends to the desktop and personal sites Netvibes

20. Netvibes Netvibes UWA: Dashboard, Vista, Google etc with Netvibes UWA; in future Facebook, MySpace and Bebo Select widgets to provide reasons to use the Personal Homepage

21. Distributed Data Courtesy Alex Faaborg Integration of Distributed Data Via Microformats and Brokers HB

22. Questions, Comments and Suggestions!

23. Who We Are? Henry Blackman, Head of Learning Technology Project Lead, h.blackman@chester.ac.ukh.blackman@chester.ac.uk Carol Comer, Academic Advisor eLearning Project Manager, c.comer@chester.ac.ukc.comer@chester.ac.uk Alice Jones, Learning Technologist alice.jones@chester.ac.uk alice.jones@chester.ac.uk