Personal learning environments for language learning
| Author | Affiliation |
|---|---|
Panagiotidis, Panagiotis |
Mykolo Romerio universitetas |
| Date |
|---|
2012 |
Ypač tai darosi aktualu kalbų mokymosi procese, kuriame AMA užtikrintų studentų bendravimą su gimtakalbiais ir natūralų sąlytį užsienio kalbų mokymosi procese. Šiame straipsnyje pateikiama „filosofinė“ AMA koncepcija kartu su praktiniais patarimais dėstytojams, kurie yra suinteresuoti AMA kūrimu. AMA kūrimo užsienio kalbų mokymosi tikslais galimybės pristatomos pasitelkiant dvi skirtingas programines įrangas: SymballoEDU ir Netvibes.
informal communication and practice and eventually acquiring the foreign language. Purpose—The purpose of this study is to investigate the ways in which foreign language teachers could take advantage of web 2.0 technologies to form efficient and easy to use personal learning environments (PLEs) for their students in foreign language learning courses. Design/methodology/approach—In this paper we firstly present the current research on PLEs, as well as the different ways of their formation and the pedagogical context in which they are based. Furthermore, in order to investigate the possibility of developing PLEs for language teaching/learning, we examine the technological platforms and web 2.0 tools that could help a foreign language teacher without special technical skills to develop an environment suitable for use in a language course. Towards this direction, specific solutions-PLEs based on tools available on the web and especially designed for this purpose, are proposed. Findings—In this paper, the capabilities and characteristics of the proposed PLEs as well as the advantages and the disadvantages of the proposed settlements are detected. Moreover, as PLEs are a potential next step in the formation of future VLEs, the way in which the proposed solutions could extend the existing VLE installations and potential as well as the possibility of their parallel utilization is also examined. Research limitations/implications—A PLE can be developed in several different ways, which vary in degree of difficulty and development requirements, in terms of manpower and the skills involved, and of course in terms of financial resources. Having that in mind, the proposed solutions meet many of the above requirements, as they are exclusively based on tools that are freely available on the web and do not require the allocation of funds, or the existence of a multidisciplinary production team.