E-LEARNING PORTALS AND MOBILE PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS AS NEW LEARNING ECOSYSTEMS

Abstract

The current paper presents a case study describing a learning ecosystem which comprises a specialized web portal called Time Maps, designed to collect and distribute information on ancient technologies, as well as a mobile personal learning environment (MPLE), designed with the purpose of gathering resources from the portal's pool of educational information, based on user's personal learning needs and interests. The portal is an educational web tool structured as a set of web pages presenting different archaeological sites and offering different educational resources (mainly video films) describing in detail the technological stages of several technologies specific to certain local periods of habitation, i.e. prehistory and Iron Age. The educational resources of the portal are organized in several layers to suggest the local stratigraphy. As a Content Management System (CMS), the information is organized in data collections and categories, under the headings of virtual museums of artifacts, technological gestures, or artistic performances. Resources accessible on different pages are interconnected, resulting in an informational mind map. A part of the educational information is also distributed using the social web, i.e. on the dedicated Facebook and Google+ pages of the schools participating in the project. Personal learning environments represent a modern educational paradigm, with the learning process strongly centered on the learner, as he/she is selecting the educational resources and is establishing the individual learning pace and objectives. Generally speaking, personal learning approaches gather content from heterogeneous sources and ecosystems, from different educational websites and/or social networks. Our approach addresses this educational strategy differently. First, we propose the large scale use of mobile devices (smartphones, tablet PCs), as efficient learning instruments well suited to the users' mobility, and to contextual information displays. Secondly, apart from the traditional use of mobile devices for accessing the mobile version of a learning web portal, we propose a new strategy, that of creating a specialized application which supports the development of a mobile personal learning environment. This application is designed as an interface with the portal and uses a middleware service whose role is to filter and extract resources from the portal depending on the declared user's profile and learning objective. The present paper describes the design of the mobile personal learning environment and of the "extractor service", the implementation/deployment of the tandem system (web portal - MPLE) and several experimentations involving children from participant schools. The paper also contains results and evaluations, conclusions regarding the utility of the proposed learning ecosystem in the case of the vocational education, and further proposed work.