The electric fuel pump was ‘clicking’, suggesting that it was trying hard to pump the fuel. Was the fuel getting to the carburettor or was there a restriction in the supply pipe from the fuel tank or was there a leak in the supply pipe causing the pump to pump air?  Was the pump managing to get the fuel from the supply pipe and was it pumping it to the output pipe? Was the fuel then leaking or flooding the carburettor?

Either way, a restricted or interrupted fuel supply will result in a weak fuel mixture being drawn into the engine. If too much fuel is being forced past the float valve, the mixture would be too rich. In either case the engine would not run efficiently. 

I drifted off and began to think of an analogy; feeding the learning process. The complex learning ‘engine’ would rely on many ‘pipes’ to supply the fuel for learning, some external; external information feeds and stimuli, others internal; emotional feelings, needs  and  reflections. And then the critical mixing process designed to produce the most efficient learning - the old carburettor (teacher) replaced by ICT enabled, programmed injection (e-learning + +).

So what was the Twitter-er looking at? Did ‘Flow’ support my day-dreaming? “Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Fully immersed, energised, and fully involved – everything we want for our learners!

Drifted off again and followed the Twitters celebrating the internets 20th birthday. I followed a link to the first page of the internet http://bit.ly/7I96e    and within minutes someone had suggested that I should be looking at the last page. Www.thelastpage.org .

Earlier in the week I had overheard a comment about violet sky thinking; thinking beyond blue sky thinking. I began to think what would take over from the internet, whether the internet could exist without the text based hyperlink. I related the information and services provided by the internet as some of the ‘pipes’ providing the ‘fuel’ for learning.   

I will not watch Twitter

I will not watch Twitter

I will not watch Twitter

While following a parallel journey that began by looking at teaching, or rather the way that teachers plan or map their learner’s learning opportunities, I recognised the potential of Web-based curriculum mapping tools and how the process could support independent learning.

A learner’s (Personal) Learning Environment will need to include some element of ‘teaching’. The teaching will need to presented or packaged up, in some way so that it is ready for learner consumption.  So we have learners actively controlling their own learning and selecting their learning opportunities from the choices available on the ‘menu’.  The menu = the curriculum map??

Our 21^st Century learners will be expecting some of the ‘planned’ experiences/opportunities to be web-based and it will be likely that they will follow many unplanned, informal web-enabled learning journeys. Thinking about the ‘teaching’ that they will want to access. They will expect anywhere, anytime access to multimedia ‘teaching’, so we are talking podcasts, but there will also be a demand for real-time teaching opportunities delivered in a virtual environment.

Graham Attwell expresses his concern at how the ‘teaching’ environments in the virtual world were currently emulating traditional classroom practice. A virtual environment with a heavy dose of ‘sit down, be quiet and listen to the teacher’.  http://www.pontydysgu.org/blogs/waleswideweb/

So what should these session/lessons that will have to be timetabled and ‘led’ by ‘someone’ look like? Is this the missing link in the PLE chain or the curriculum map?

John Pallister

The National Curriculum that has been revised to address this challenge, emphases the value of personalised learning and requires schools to re-think their curriculum and practice. Schools are expected to design “dynamic, forward-looking curriculum that creates opportunities for learners to develop as self-managers, creative thinkers, reflective learners, problem-solvers, team workers, independent learners, and effective communicators.” http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/skills/index.aspx  They will need to provide learners with opportunities that engage them in their own learning and equip them with the Personal, Learning and Thinking skills (PLTs) that they will need to succeed in education, life and work. http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/organising-your-curriculum/the_secondary_curriculum/index.aspx

The emphasis has shifted from teaching to learning; the learner is placed at the centre of the process and it is expected that they will be challenged to reflect on their learning and identify how they can improve and exercise choice as they develop as independent, lifelong learners.

This curriculum, reflecting the UK skills agenda, values skills and gives particular importance to Functional Skills. They are embedded in the revised programmes of study for English, mathematics and ICT and are an essential part of the new Diploma qualifications.

Schools are committing effort and resource to work out what it is that they need to do to introduce Functional Skills and Personal Learning and Thinking skills (PLTs) into their curriculum.

The learners currently in Year 8 will be the first cohort of learners that will need to have demonstrated mastery of Functional Skills before they can gain a GCSE in Maths, English or ICT, or any Diploma qualification.  While Functional Skills and PLTs underpin the new curriculum, their introduction is likely to create significant curriculum development challenges.

The learning environment that we are beginning to explore here will require the heralded shift in emphasis from teaching to learning. To create this learning environment and design the curriculum will require imagination, determination and significant planning.

This ‘new’ environment for leaning relies on, and values collaboration. Learners are expected to "form collaborative relationships” while schools and colleges are expected to collaborate to design their Diploma courses, and then to collaborate as they deliver them. As learners work in a number of different settings; school based, college based and training provider based it will be vital that all partners have a common understanding of the Functional Skills and PLTs. This common understanding must permeate through into the experiences and opportunities provided for the learner in each of the settings that they work in.

Individual schools and providers will need to review their current curriculum provision and engage in processes that will help them to integrate opportunities that will enable their learners to develop and practise their Functional Skills and PLTs. They will also need to provide opportunities for Functional Skills assessment.

Schools are very familiar with change. They frequently audit their curriculum looking at what they need to ‘include’ as a result of their revised thinking, aspirations, external demands or expectations.  The revised curriculum will be documented, stored and presented in many different formats ranging from simple text based paper documents to linked database systems. 

While common, agreed formats for storing information about learner’s achievements are in place, there does not appear to be any standardisation in terms of the way in which a learner’s curriculum is described or presented.  If a learner is to be involved in making choices about their learning, they should be able to ‘see’ their planned curriculum. If a learner in one school gets used to using a curriculum described in one format, it would be useful for them, if the curriculum plan that they access in others schools or colleges that they work in were in the same format. If schools are to collaborate on the design and delivery of courses, it would be useful to provide all partners with access to common curriculum documents. There would be an argument for a common format for a learner’s curriculum plan and for learners and teachers to be able to share and access curriculum plans and documentation.

All secondary schools are re-thinking their curriculum and are working through an audit and mapping process as they attempt to introduce Functional Skills and PLTs. Tens of thousands of teacher hours are being consumed by this process.

A discussion with Paul Mayes at Teesside University about the UKAN project   http://lis.tees.ac.uk/ukan/, prompting me to do some thinking about Web-based curriculum mapping processes and whether they might have something to offer schools as they begin to address the challenges of  the 11 – 19 curriculum. Might the process save some teacher time and effort? Might it engage teachers or provide something that might help us to engage learners more in their own learning?

Web-based curriculum mapping is a process that focuses on what is taught, how it is taught, when it is taught and how it will be assessed.  Teachers start by translating an existing planned curriculum into a standardised digital format. The format requires the curriculum to be broken down into topics or units that are then defined in terms of content, skills, assessment methods, the resources required and the teaching strategies that will be used. The topics or units are allocated learning/delivery time and are organised on a timeline.

The immediately obvious outcome from the mapping process is the curriculum map itself, however the actual process of constructing the map has the potential to engage and empower the teachers involved. This would be a very valuable by-product from a curriculum development process that in turn can feed the process. Supercharged curriculum development!  It might prove useful in the current environment as teachers review what they teach and more importantly how they organise and provide learning opportunities.

Most of the demands or initiatives that present themselves to schools require a change in the way they organise their teaching, or manage and support their learning environment. The initiatives or challenges often require a shift away from traditional teaching towards independent or personalised learning.

This process, by enabling the learner to search for and select appropriate learning activities, might also encourage them to plan their learning and provide opportunities for them to take more control over their learning. By providing learners with links to the resources that would enable them to complete the units or activities as well as to activities that would enable them to demonstrate their understanding or mastery, the Curriculum Map could support anywhere, anytime, personalised learning.

By being able to ‘see’ the map, learners would be better able to see the ‘big picture’ and that in turn could result in greater learner engagement. Having a map available that shows them what their available, planned learning diet is, and has the potential to support the assessment for learning process and in turn improved achievement. If we encourage learners to use maps showing their planned curriculum it might help them to understand what the Functional and Personal Learning skills are. The conscious competence model suggests that this would, in turn, help them to realise that they need to do something to develop their competence.

Accepting that things rarely go to plan, the planned learning will not always be the same as the learning that actually took place. Curriculum Mapping acknowledges the discrepancy between the plan and what has actually taken place. It recognises the need for the ‘diary’ map, a map updated by the teacher that documents what actually happened or what the learner had actually experienced or learnt.  The curriculum map is really a database that stores details of the past, present and future curriculum; what learning is planned in the near future and then a record of what actually happened. The ‘what happened’ becomes the history that informs the plans for future learning.

Curriculum mapping can support reflective learning.  Reflective learning can benefit the learner in two ways;   firstly, the teacher, by reflecting on the learning that they had planned and what the learner had actually learnt or experienced,  will refine and adapt their practice. This in-turn should improve the learning opportunities available to the learner.   Secondly, if the learner is encouraged to use curriculum maps to plan their own learning and if they are encouraged to reflect on what had actually happened prior to revising their learning plans, they will develop their own reflective practice. They will develop as reflective learners, selecting and using appropriate curriculum mapping tools as part of their Personal Learning Environment.

The natural place for the teacher to record their reflections would be their Professional Development ePortfolio; the natural place for the learner to reflect on what they had planned to learn and upon what they had actually experienced or learnt would be their learner ePortfolio. Providing learners with access to Curriculum Maps and encouraging them to use them forces them to use the plan, do and review process that underpins the Personal Learning and Thinking Skills.    Asking learners to record their experiences and reflections would help to support their Personal Development Planning and would satisfy the requirement for them to evidence their Personal Learning and Thinking skills.

The developing 14-19 curriculum requires teachers working in a range of different institutions to collaborate in the planning and delivery of the new 14 -19 Diploma Courses. A Web-based Curriculum Mapping tool would have a lot to offer. It could provide both teachers and students, regardless of the institution that they are currently working in, with access to a common view of the planned curriculum. This would go some way to provide the consistent approach that both the learners and teachers, working in this new environment, will need.  It could become both the catalyst that promotes the dialogue and collaboration between teachers that will be needed at the planning stage and the vehicle for communication that will be needed between the teachers in the delivery team and between teachers and learners.

Curriculum development is a continuous process. Web-based Curriculum Mapping tools have the potential to support the constant dialogue, evaluation, revision and communication that the process requires.

Getting back to Functional Skills. If we were to map the learning required by each of the Lines of Learning of the 14-19 Diplomas we should end up with a set of common or generic skills. These should be the skills that have already been defined as the Functional Skills and the Personal Learning and Thinking skills, the skills that all learners would need, to enable them to successfully complete their Diploma studies. The same set of skills would enable them to function as effective citizens and to function in their chosen vocational area.

The curriculum maps for the 14 – 19 Diploma courses should include both the Functional Skills and the Personal Learning and Thinking Skills. This generic skills set has already been identified and defined for us. Although there is no requirement to assess the PLTS there is a need for learners to evidence their PLTs development. Opportunities for learners to develop PLTs will need to be integrated into the curriculum maps along with opportunities for learners to generate evidence that they have developed and used their PLTs.

Deciding on how to start will take some thinking. As well as being included in the Curriculum Maps for the Diplomas these skills will also need to be identified in their own right as they also constitute stand-alone skills sets with Functional Skills having their own assessment requirements. The mapping would need to show the Functional Skills as integral components of the Diploma Line of Leaning and as a collection of activities/components that constitute Functional Skills.

One approach could be to start by mapping the principal learning and then devise and integrate activities and opportunities that would satisfy the Functional Skills and PLTs requirements. Another approach would be for a school to start with the Functional Skills Standards and to design a curriculum map that all courses could then adapt to integrate into the curriculum that they had designed to provide appropriate opportunities to satisfy the requirements of the principal learning.  The same approach could be used to integrate Functional Skills into the additional specialised learning, the work experience and project.

The advantage of the second approach would be that, by beginning with a common interpretation of the Functional Skills Standards, the school and collaborative consortium would be integrating something that, hopefully they all understood an had ‘bought into’. This would help standardisation across the providers and all of the courses in a centre or consortium.  It would, for schools or providers offering GCSE Maths, English and ICT, be a very useful way of promoting the integration of Functional Skills into the curriculum of other subjects. This would provide learners with more opportunities to develop and practice applying their Functional Skills in a range of different situations.

The first stage would be to interpret and convert the Functional Skills Standards and represent them as a curriculum map broken down into activities that would provide learners with opportunities to develop and practice their skills.

Would this be a sensible starting point for schools? Would it provide a better experience for learners? Would it save schools and teachers time? Would it engage and empower teachers? Would it encourage learner to get involved with their own learning? Would it help schools to integrate Functional Skills?

Over the years I have read a lot about eSafety. A lot of the advice/articles/Blogs have been brought to my attention via Twitter and the numerous on-line discussions that have taken place in a wide range of communities. I think that I have a fair handle on eSafety, so if I do a bit of research and a bit of reading, I should have something to offer the meeting. But again something is telling me to write, to Blog, to share!

It must be because I have not really got all of the issues sorted out in my head and so feel the need to go through the writing/Blogging process to help me to sort out my thinking.

I need to decide where I sit along the continuum of eSafety that at one end, has  the walled garden, where learners are protected by a rabbit proof, giraffe proof and social software proof ‘fence’, while at the other end learners are allowed open access to all of the available resources and tools.

Looking at the extremes; the walled garden is an attractive proposition for schools. Learners only have access to what (the opportunities) that the gardener (the teacher) thinks that the learners (the plants) need to grow (learn) and thrive. So long as the ‘fence’ is designed to keep out all of the nasty experiences, all should be well. The school (teacher) defines what should be allowed to get through the fence; the learners are safe and get on and, hopefully learn, in a ‘safe’ place. Duty of care fulfilled. Philosophy, if you do not understand it, or you are not ‘told’ to provide learners with access to specific tools, applications or experiences, do not do it, fence against it.

3.30pm arrives, the learners are let out to roam their Personal, home based, Learning environment. There are fewer fences in sight; they have access to tools and applications that provide a wide range of opportunities and experiences. Many experiences will be positive and support their learning; some could be detractors and some could put the learner at risk.  So we cannot rely on ‘fencing’ systems to protect out learners 24 hours of the day, 7 days of the week.

Historically we have educated/taught our learners how to survive, that is, what they need to do, or not do, to stay safe in the big, bad world. We teach them the Green Cross code; we promote Cycling Proficiency; we provide information about the risks of alcohol and drug abuse and we advise them not to talk to strangers.  We do not have fences along all of the pavements that run along the side of every road, we   do not have footbridges over, or under-passes under, all major roads. We educate young learner to behave in a safe fashion.

So thinking about the other end of the continuum, would it be better to provide learners with access to ‘everything’ and then ‘educate’ them in eSafety?

If that was the chosen strategy, one challenge would be to make sure that every teacher fully ‘understood’ the potential, for learning, of the current and evolving Web 2/social tools, and that they appreciated the risks. Without this background and understanding we could not expect teachers to teach the skills and understanding that our current generation of learners will need if they are to stay safe. Somehow we would need to spend a lot of time working with teachers before we could begin to move towards ‘un-fenced’ personal learning environments.  How can we do this? Can Emerge help?

Functional Skills are being marketed as  ‘… the core elements of English, mathematics and ICT that provide an individual with the essential knowledge, skills and understanding that will enable them to operate confidently, effectively and independently in life, education and work.’. Functional Skills are required for, and should be embedded in all learning pathways (including GCSEs, Diplomas, foundation learning tier and apprenticeships). They are free standing qualification; they are part of the National Qualifications Framework and are available at Entry Level, Level 1 and Level 2. Level 3 Functional Skills are ’under consideration’.

There is an expectation that most ‘young people’ will achieve Level 2 Functional Skills in English and maths, and possibly ICT, by the age of 16.

The emphasis of Functional Skills is on the development of skills that the learner can select and apply in a range of different contexts. Having developed the skills they demonstrate mastery by being able to ‘transfer’ and apply them in a wide range of different contexts. They need to be aware of the skills, they need to practise and develop the skills and need to be able to select and apply them ‘independently’.

The ‘Level’ of the Skill that the learner has ‘mastered’, will be determined by the complexity of the problem that they have shown that they can solve; the technical demand of the solutions that they devise; how familiar they were with the situation/problem and how ‘independently’ they worked while tackling the problem.

The learner will need to be able to tackle and solve problems with different degrees of complexity.

The Functional Skills Standards define, for each of the Levels, what the learner must be able to do if they have ‘mastered’ each of the Skills.  

We do not know, at this stage, what form the assessment will take.  Developing the assessment model is part of the pilot.  We know that it will not require a portfolio; that it will be task-based, have questions based on scenarios; will be of a limited duration, and will be delivered in a controlled environment.

The scenarios that are presented to learners will provide them with opportunities to show that they have mastered a Functional Skill at a particular Level. They will be drawn from a wide range of ‘real life’ contexts/situations. Some situations/contexts will be familiar to learners; others will be less familiar to them. The solutions that learners develop will offer varying degrees of Technical Demand and varying degrees of complexity.  The level at which the learners operates will be determined by the familiarity, the complexity, the technical demand and the level of independence at which they operate. This will take some sorting out/getting used to!

It is also likely that the assessment model that does evolve will allow on-demand testing and as such is likely to be screen-based.

To equip/prepare our learners so that they can demonstrate that they have mastered a particular Functional Skill at a particular Level, we will need to provide them with opportunities to practise and apply their skills in a wide range of ‘real life’ contexts', before we assess them. Learners need to learn the skills, then practise applying them (in a range of different contexts/situations), before they can be assessed. That is really the challenge, to integrate these opportunities into out curriculum.

Functional Skills will require learners to have the opportunity to work independently in problem solving situations. As we move away from portfolio/course work as an assessment vehicle, we need to retain the best of the process if we are to provide the opportunities that learners will need to develop, practice and demonstrate mastery.

14 – 19 Diploma students could be expected to demonstrate their mastery of Functional Skills in a situation more familiar with Hairdressers, perhaps calculating the ratio of hair colorants/chemicals etc. They need to be able to transfer and apply their skills in a wide range of different situations, which really means that they need to practice applying their skills in a wide range of situations, out side of their principal learning

Starting in 2010, students will need to have achieved Functional Skills at Level 2 before they can achieve a GCSE in Maths or English. Any students who follow Diploma Pathways will need to achieve all three Functional Skills at Level 1 if they are on a Foundation Diploma and all three Functional Skills at Level 2 for Higher and Advanced Diplomas. Functional English, Mathematics and ICT will need to be embedded in the Diploma delivery programme, a programme that will be running across a number of partner providers. There will be a need for a common, and an agreed understanding of Functional Skills; and an agreement on who delivers what, when, and what opportunities are provided when and where for learners to develop, practise and apply the Functional Skills.

All students, teachers and parents aware of Functional Skills, what they are, why they are so important and what students will need to do. We need to integrate/embed Functional Skills into the curriculum so that it provides learners with the required opportunities to develop, practise/apply and demonstrate mastery of Functional Skills.

We need to somehow encourage, support and provide opportunities for our learners to operate as independent learners. We need them to take responsibility for their own learning, to manage their own time and to become reflective learners. Independent Learning, action planning, problem solving, opportunities to work with vocational professionals and common standards for communication etc have become important again.

We need to provide a range of real life problems and the time for our learners to try to solve them.

Independence. Functional Skills are not just a Maths/English/ICT challenge; they are  major whole school issues that will affect school performance data 5 A* -C (inc Ma/En)  2012+.

So, to achieve Functional Skills learners need to develop independent learning skills. Its back to Personal Learning and Thinking Skills, the Independent Enquirer skills set becomes important. Then the old chestnut, to operate independently the learner needs to be a Reflective Learner. The ePortfolio Process supports Reflective Learning. But?

I developed an enthusiasm for social software and Web 2 tools through my interest in ePortfolios.  I am a bit predictable, each time I drift across a new tool I very rapidly recognise its potential to support learning. I am becoming increasingly addicted. I am using the tools; I am joining the brigade of professional talking about the tools but am becoming increasingly frustrated that I am unable to influence their adoption in main stream practice. I am talking the talk more and walking the walk less – so a bit more talk then! I began to wonder whether all of the talk had resulted in us designing a ‘concept’ learning environment; but like a lot of the clay models in the motor manufactures design offices, a concept that does not make it to the production stage?

I can see many good reasons why schools should not allow/encourage the young students in their care to use the emerging tools. Perhaps it might be useful if we forget these for a while; put to one side the suspicion that young learners use and enjoy using the same tools outside of school, and consider the case for promoting social software in schools.

The tools and technology have the potential to:

• Support 1:1 and 1:many and many:many multimedia communications between learners anywhere in the world, for ‘free’;
• Provide learners with access to information and to the research tracks of others who might be, or might have previously, searched for similar information;
• Provide learners with the opportunity to share their research and their research tracks with others;
• support the learner as they make connections with others,  to enable them to follow and collaborate with others who have similar interests and purposes;
• provide the learner with opportunities to publish their thinking and findings and to obtain comment and feedback from others;
• enable learners to record and share their thinking from wherever they are working;
• provide an active, interactive environment capable of engaging learners;
• capable of supporting anywhere, anytime access to learning
• support what learner do naturally, to provide the majority of the elements that learners are likely to accept as their Personal Learning Environment;

It is our responsibility to prepare young (and older) learners so that they can function in a world where emerging technologies are being accepted and embraced.

I cannot see that schools will be able to resist pressure to use these tools indefinitely. Eventually they will accept them and begin to build on them. I do not know what it will be that actually tips the balance. It might be the development of a new set of management tools or safeguards, or perhaps simply that we accept the tools as valuable and decide to educate and manage the risks?

OR are we approaching a Luddite swing towards traditional, proper learning with teachers straightening up the desks and requisition a new box of Interactive White Board chalk. Drawing an analogy with the credit crunch, have we built learning environments on ‘foundations of sand’? The constantly changing sand (ICT and social software etc) and prevailing currents (national expectations etc) making it impossible to construct anything on it. An acceptance that with everything constantly changing, it is not worth building anything, it will simply fall down!

Or do we, as builders do,   build a concrete raft that will spread the load and build on top of the raft. If the sands shift the worst that could happen would be that we ended up with ‘the leaning tower of learning’. Ahh – tower, ivory tower are we looking out from it.

Could the learning process act as the raft? The learning process would ‘sit’ on, be supported by, the emerging as well as traditional tools.  New tools are then unlikely to phase the learner, they will evaluate them and either adopt or dismiss them.

I distilled, from an earlier attempt at summarising the PLE discussions that I had followed , www.tinyurl.com/57eugd that it is what the learner ‘does’ in their Personal Learning Environment that really determines what they will learn.  What they do in the environment is more important than the environment itself. [I take the environment as meaning where they work/operate/learn, in its broadest term.]

Individual will learn something from any environment that they operate in. It is our job to create/contrive the physical environment and then cajole, encourage and support our learners to ensure that they encounter the experiences and stimuli that we hope will result in learning taking place. Not any old learning, but the learning that we, or ‘somebody’, thinks will be important to them.

While the physical environment provides learners with access to the tools and resources it will be the ‘teaching’ that will provide the experiences, activities and support that will supply the opportunities for learning. The ‘teaching’, in whatever form it takes, will: create the climate for learning; wet the learner’s appetite; create the need for learning; encourage learners to recognise when learning has taken place and encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning. It will need to create the space that will allow learning to happen and hopefully and provide learners with an experience that will enable them to be creative and that they will enjoy.

The bad news, or the big challenge, is that this is unlikely to be what the majority currently accepted as teaching, where large groups of students arrive every hour, expecting to be entertained, expecting to be taught a separate subject and expecting to be examined every 5 minutes. Re-stating the obvious, but creating a Personal Learning Environment for every learner, that is delivering the required shift in emphasis from teaching to learning, will need commitment, imagination and resource.

So leaving the hard bit, for now, and moving on! How the learner operates in this new environment, how they behave, how they use their initiative, how they interact with others, how they manage their time, how they support others, how they employ their different learning styles and how they deploy their different intelligences will affect how and what they learn.

To be able to survive and learn in the environment Learners will need to develop a set of skills, the Personal Learning and Thinking skills, the Functional Skills and, another skill set, yet to be defined, that will enable learners to use the tools and approaches that we are beginning to recognise as having potential to support learning.

Back into the loop; learners need to work in an environment that provides the appropriate opportunities for them to operate as independent learners – the environment needs to exist before they can work in it – what they do in the environment determines how and what they learn – to function in the environment they will need to develop a specific set of skills.

How do we break-in to the loop?

I listened to a radio programme that discussed the problem created by all of the space debris that was whizzing around, in orbit, just waiting to collide with some thing.

I related the space debris hazard to the distractions that surround learner and my thinking, thinking and thinking about ePortfolios, PLEs and Social Networking to the over-cooking bit. I began to think back 20 years when I watched Woodwork and Metal work [as curriculum subjects] being over-cooked to make Technology. Practical subjects that had most everything - practical problem solving opportunities where learners developed, practiced and mastered skills; where they developed the ability to select the most appropriate tools for their purpose; where they learnt to protect their own heath and safety, and that of others.  They had (often) opportunities to be creative, to work with others and to enjoy what they did. Then it got over-cooked in the name of rigour and academic acceptance.

So learner have access to the majority of tools that they need to manage their own Personal Learning – should we not concentrate on encouraging them to just do it?  Oh – tried to pedal that message before http://eduspaces.net/jpallister/weblog/177464.html

The man on the Bill says ‘someone out there holds the key for this, they just don’t know’ it yet – are you the one with the Key that will unlock this?

They will need self discipline and independent learning skills.  In PLTs terms they will be Reflective learners who will be expected to "evaluate their strengths and
limitations, setting themselves realistic goals with criteria for success”. They
have to “monitor their own performance and progress, inviting feedback from others". They will need to be Self-managers who will be expected to "organise themselves, showing personal responsibility, initiative, creativity and enterprise with a commitment to learning and self-improvement".

These budding Self Managers, will have to balance their desire to be recognised and accepted by others; their desire to influence the community that they operate in or that they want to belong to, with their desire and need to learn. In a traditional classroom situation, the teacher attempts to manage and moderate these distractions for their learners. In a Personalised Learning Environment the learner will need to take responsibility for moderating and managing these distractions.

How can we help them to develop these skills?