I was simultaneously amused, pleased and chuffed to have a head of department (unnamed department, unnamed university, but not the University of Manchester) discussing adoption of our PLE with me as a replacement for a mainstream VLE across the entire department.
OK, so we are only starting with a pilot there, but that will make it the second university department where the PLE is being piloted.
The first is our own School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, where for the task in hand, first year students rated the PLE as 'better than Moodle' and 'something I would be happy to use again in my university career' (only two quotes from our first evaluation session).
The third use will start soon in Unviersity of Manchester's School of Education, on a distributed learning course.
We are producing an interim 1.5 version this Sunday in time for the York meeting. We are also on track to have a very 'media-friendly' version 2.0 suitable for use by art, design, and graphics students available mid-Feb.
Below, a screenshot from the developing version 1.5. To see the whole thing, you may have to right mouse, select 'view this image', and then perhaps click on the resulting image (Firefox) or the enlarge symbol (IE). Also a couple of images from one of our media spaces.
Massive thanks are due to the Emerge benefits realisation programme for funding the PLE initiative!
