Mark van Harmelen :: Blog :: PLE users sought !!!

We're close to a new release of our PLE and are looking for testers (now) and production users. The production users could start use the PLE this coming semester (say from Oct 07), in the first semester in 2008, and given that we get JISC U&I funding, use our full version in 08/09 academic year (starting Sept 09).

So what do you get now?

• User profiles, friends, and communities of users - the standard social software stuff, with various different kinds of joining policies for the communities.
  
• The ability to construct directed-graph like learning plans.
• The ability to transform learning plans into interlinked documents, images and links to external web-based resources that together reflect an individual's or a community's growing knowledge.
  
• The ability to change learning plans on the fly during learning.
  
• Learning plans and documents can be simultaneously edited by more than one user over the web in a Google Docs and Spreadsheet like fashion. (Actually we use our own graph editing software, and Zoho, a Google competitor, to edit the documents.)
• There is an easy-to-use interface to del.icio.us, and a light touch mechanism to incorporate existing web resources and systems.
• There is no notion of privacy or visibility in the current system's user interface, so any registered user of the system gets full vision of what anyone else is doing.

What extras will appear in the full version? I have a long list, but basically

• Visibility controls.
• A whole bunch of productivity features, some automated, and some manual. For example, automatic notification of other users with common interests (if they have set themselves as visible), automatic notification of visible items which may be of interest.
• Integrated communications facilities.
• More light touch use of existing Web 2.0 facilities.
• Support for a very large number of registered users (yes we are still aiming at supporting on million registered users per installation).
  

Want a bash at the forthcoming version? Want to influence the final version? Want to use the final version? Just plain interested? Please email me, mark -a-t- cs.man.ac.uk