talk at the JISC dev8ed conference in Birmingham

1. widget-
based PLEs
Fridolin Wild
KMi, The Open University
f.wild@open.ac.uk

2. LEARNING
(more or less planful)
… is development
of competence.

3. MORE… OR LESS PLANFUL
COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT

4. 21ST CENTURY LEARNING
SKILLS & COMPETENCES
competence = a Social
“facilitate communicative and cooperative action
human potential that aim at identifying, managing and mastering
conflicts” (Erpenbeck, 2003)
for action!
“A competence is defined as the
Professional
basic and specialized general knowledge, basic
ability to successfully meet complex psychomotor and mechanical skills, and disciplinary
demands in a particular context and interdisciplinary knowledge (Jäger, 2001)
through the mobilization of psycho-
social prerequisites (including both Methodological
cognitive and non-cognitive aspects)” ability to independently acquire, structure,
critically evaluate, and exploit knowledge in a
(Rychen & Salganik, 2003b, p. 43) creative way (Kauffeld et al., 2003)
Personal
concerned with those attitudes and character
attributes required to perceive and utilize one’s
own competencies and to act in a reflective and
self-reflective way (Erpenbeck, 2003)

5. PERSONAL LEARNING
ENVIRONMENT Ecosystem: lack of control of
the individual, characteristics
of all agents moderate
performance and behaviour
Aim: positively influence
A network of development
competence people
surrounding an individual
(i.e. building up potential
with the future action)this
for persons in
network making use of
artefacts and tools while
they engage in isolated or
collaborative activities of Actions modify this
more or less planful (co- environment
)construction of knowledge
and information (Wild et
al., 2011).

6. plan
reflect COMPETENCES
monitor MOTIVATED
interact
act (Wild et al., 2009)
 Planning competence refers to those
skills, abilities, habits, attitudes, and
knowledge that fix how goals,
schedules, and paths are set.
 Reflection is creative sense making of
the past and enables planning.
 Monitoring refers to how progress
control is performed.
 Last but not least, the pair acting and
interacting group social & collaboration
and information & tool competences.
Qualitative Interviews:
15 persons in 5 sessions (each 40 min to 1 hour)

7. The theoretical justification
or: why? Why? WHY?

8. Douglas Adams’
‘meaning of liff’:
– Epping: The futile movements
of forefingers and eyebrows
used when failing to attract the
attention of waiters and
barmen.
– Shoeburyness: The vague
uncomfortable feeling you get
when sitting on a seat which is
still warm from somebody
else's bottom
‘CAUSE: MEANING IS SOCIAL

9. METHODICAL
CULTURALISM Logical abstractor = a
• Methodical culturalism is a form of release mechanism.
(radically social) constructivism.
• Understanding is by nature social as it
is grounded in human action (Janich,
1998; Hesse et al., 2009)
• Therefore: understanding is always
constituted (and restricted) by a (96dpi)
culture of shared understanding Quality of a signal

10. learning = social interaction
for knowledge building

11. … and web-apps mediate
between users and
knowledge

12. ACTIVITY THEORY
 In internalisation, “social interaction
turns into mental activity” (Fjeld et al.,
• A form of (socio-) constructivism.
2002).
• Mediated action: Tools appropriate
collective experience and therefore  In objectification, individual’s mental
mediate between subjects and objects. processes result in the production of a
new tool, which again can be involved in
social interactions.
(Engestroem, 2008)

13. Widgets, Services, …
and Shopping?

14. It’s either an open social
gadget or a widget 1.0 app
it’s a use-case sized mini
(web) application
Other apps can run it with the help
of an RTE (Wookie, Shindig) and
This is a ‘widget’ connectors
You can turn it into a
mobile app (using
e.g. phonegap)
WIDGET
BASED PLE

15. shop /
directory
PLE Architecture

16. Analytics: Tracking:
interactions & usage
Widgets & find papers
web applications using www.objectspot.org
Recommendations:
tools, activities, … share bookmarks
using delicious
summarize papers
using piratepad.net/art1
Recommendations:
patterns

19. <script
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http://tinyurl.com/cfkno26

21. http://code.google.com/p/edukapp
http://widgets.open.ac.uk:8080/