I have no doubt that real people will continue to become teachers and enjoy their careers.  However, the inevitable progress of technology will change our working environments and also our conditions of employment.   There is a significant urgency to understand what is happening in schools and the need to understand how VLEs will influence Teaching & Learning.  The Slideshare summary of a recent presentation illustrates something of this urgency.

There are three significant technological movements which will inevitably change both our teaching and learning lifestyles for both staff and students:  The Virtual Learning Environment  (or VLE), the Personal Learning Environment  (or PLE)  and the e-Portfolio (see menu item eFolio).

At the moment an increasing number of schools are gradually introducing some form of VLE - a facility whereby any student (or for that matter any member of staff) can access appropriate files from their school's Intranet but away from the classroom - for instance, in school but out of normal hours, at home, a friend's home, a cyber-cafe, youth club or public library.

There are already well-established Managed Learning Environments (MLEs) in both FE and HE - just look at the edu-tools site to see just how complex the definition of the technology can be.  Unfortunately the need for flexibility and a wider range of differentiated resources in secondary schools makes the task even more complex. 

Another confusion which makes this whole subject area even more difficult is that of definitions.  It was Humpty Dumpty who said, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."  and the profound answer came back to Alice, "The question is: which is to be master - that's all".   This, I would suggest, is how the definition of the VLE has come about, not by deciding on a clear and precise definition but more by a common acceptance of a catch-all acronym whose exact meaning, unfortunately, is only known to the individual user.

The trouble is, as far as I can judge, many schools and colleges are following their own individual design ideas and thus coming up with differing configurations.  How user-friendly such set-ups may be, how secure and how efficient they may be and for that matter how many homes can accommodate the latest technologies is still to be determined.

Teachers or other adults may be on-line to provide remote learning support - in some cases on-call 24hrs per day!  The home-tuition teacher has now become a global entity.  Not only banking has call-centres in India!  One recent example of this is from the HCI annual conference, where it was proposed that large numbers of science experts volunteer a time-tabled slot where they will be available for on-line Q&A sessions with pupils.

Seriously, though, the possibility of children accessing their coursework at home and carrying on from where they left off in class is fraught with issues which need to be thought through carefully.  It will also be interesting to hear what parents think of the quality of work set on-line.  Much work will need to be done by teachers in the advance preparation of materials to be uploaded.  Who will do this additional work will also need to be negotiated!

The relevant Becta page is essential reading.   Also a more technical paper Learning Platform Functional Requirements. (11-pages .pdf) with a thorough checklist.

For some enlightening Case Studies on Learning Platforms and VLEs. click here.  Also the JISC list of Case Studies is very useful.

For a thorough study of VLEs look at the Ferl site   and   JISC 

For case studies on Managed Learning Environments (MLEs)   also  see Fronter, 

Enabling  different VLEs to pass complex data to each other is a cutting-edge technology at the moment.  Some FE and HE institutions are addressing these issues.  For an excellent introduction to 'A Service Oriented Approach'  download the animated videos from JISC.

A checklist from Ferl  (1-page .pdf file) identifies some of the issues to be addressed when defining a specification for an institution's VLE.

For a demonstration of e-learning look at the Virtual College site.

For an interesting discussion on what a VLE interface should look like, see the report of Eva de Lera's work.

For some preliminary notes on Personal Learning Environments go to the next page.

 ►