Managed Learning Environments and Virtual Learning Environments.
One thing I know for certain in this world; there will never be a shortage of acronyms.
Our former government stipulated that by 2008, all British school pupils should have a personal online learning space. This has been widely though not fully realised, and the implications on children's' learning and information access are deep.
I was unaware that I was actually rather more familiar with the concept of these online learning resources than I thought. Having worked in universities for the last eight years, and now studying at one, I was a daily user of intranets such as our very own UniHub. These types of online community lend themselves perfectly to schools and universities as they can be accessed by the learners and teachers only, and provide a platform for knowledge and learning as well as the administration side of education establishments. When I enrolled on my PGCE course for example, I was able to do it online. Back in 1998, enrolling on my BA, I believe I spent about a week in different queues, carrying bits of paper from office to office and generally getting very fed-up!
MLEs and VLEs can deliver education outside the walls of the school and can provide each child with an E-Portfolio; a kind of continuous folder they can keep adding to, throughout their schooling. Homework can be submitted online, making all the age-old excuses, instantly a thing of the past. Parents too can get involved; letters from school can be received through the school's online community and not on a crumpled piece of paper that often ends up between a wet swimming-kit and a half-eaten packed lunch! Teachers can vary the tasks set for each child according to their academic ability or learning group.
In London, the London MLE currently has 1716 subscribing schools, and is run by Fronter. Schools are no longer separate entities but are linked to a wider community of learning. This benefits teachers as suddenly there is an infinite supply of good resources to share, which obviously impacts on planning. A lot of these resources are very attractive and of excellent quality. I was personally most impressed by the videos available for science subjects.
Potential problems for individual schools and children are mostly in the area of funding. MLAs and VLAs are not cheap things to set up and run and they rely on children and parents having access to the internet. While many schools now have laptop loan possibilities, this still doesn't help if the parents have no computer skills or internet connection.
Finally, harking back to an earlier blog on child safety in relation to the internet, parents and teachers can be reassured that MLAs and VLAs are probably the safest online environments for children available, as they can only be accessed by the school communities they serve.
http://webfronter.com/mlewebsite/mle/
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