Personal learning environments and portals
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The document discusses personal learning environments (PLEs) and portals, defining a PLE as an area where learners can organize their education and access web content and accounts through a portal. It focuses on Netvibes as a PLE option. It describes how to set up a Netvibes account and personalize a Netvibes page by adding content like RSS feeds or widgets that allow access to accounts like del.icio.us and Twitter to organize bookmarks and posts. Learners can thus access course content and manage accounts and resources all in one place through their personalized Netvibes portal.
Personal learning environments and portals
- 1. Personal Learning Environments and Portals Matthew Mobbs mjm33@le.ac.uk Personal Learning Environments and Portals For the purposes of this guide a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) will be defined as an area in which learners can organise their education, and also can act as a portal to their web-content and accounts. There are a few environments that are suitable for this, iGoogle, PageFlakes and Netvibes. This guide will focus on Netvibes as a preferred option. Creating a Netvibes account From the home page of Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/) select the link ‘Sign up now, it’s free’. This link will open a dialogue box prompting you to enter some registration details, an email address and password. Once the details have been entered and the ‘Sign up’ button is selected this will launch your account. Your browser may ask if you would like your details to be remembered. If ‘yes’ is selected, Netvibes will launch into your personalised page when you return to the site thereafter. Personalising your Netvibes The first touch you can make to persolalise your Netvibes page is naming it. At the top of the page where it says ‘Type your page title here’, you can do exactly that. Next, and probably more importantly, content can be added to your page. To do this, select the ‘Add content’ button in the top left of the page. This opens a selection menu that has three main areas: ‘Browse categories’: This gives access to some of the most popular RSS feeds on the web from variety of media sources. ‘Essential Widgets’: These are a selection of tools, including Netvibes own widgets and other widgets, that enable content from other web accounts to be controlled from within Netvibes. These will be explored further shortly ‘Add a Feed’: Any RSS feed from the web can be entered and the feed results will be displayed. ‘Essential Widgets’ From the ‘Add content’ link, ‘Essential Widgets’ can be selected, seen below. These are a selection of widgets that allow content from around the web to be controlled from within Netvibes. To add any of the widgets double click the on the icon, and select the ‘Add to my page’ link when 1
- 2. Personal Learning Environments and Portals Matthew Mobbs mjm33@le.ac.uk prompted. Here we will explore the two widgets that relate to the accounts discussed in the Web Services and Accounts Guide, del.ico.us and Twitter. Del.ico.us When the del.ico.us widget has been added to the Netvibes page, hover the mouse cursor over it. In the grey toolbar will appear five icons, from these select ‘Edit’, this reveals the ‘Configure’ options. Entering your del.ico.us username and password and selecting ‘Save’, will log this widget into your del.ico.us account. When complete select the ‘Close Edit’ link. When loaded the bookmarks from your account will appear, alongside the tag cloud that has been created from all the keyword tags that have been entered. See the Web Accounts and Services guide for more details about this. Selecting any of the hyperlinked bookmarks will take you directly to the bookmarked website. Bypassing the need to visit the del.ico.us website, this ease of use highlights the abilities of a PLE/portal. Twitter When the Twitter widget has been added to your Netvibes page, open the Edit options using the same method described in the del.ico.us section above. Enter your Twitter account details and select ‘ok’. This will load your Twitter account, displaying any posts you have Your Posts and Posts written and the posts from other users in your network. They are from users in your displayed in reverse chronological order (most recent first). network appear here Furthermore, there is a box to write a new post, it has a 140 character countdown, for the character limit. See the Web Accounts and Services guide for more details about this. When you have completed your ‘tweet’ select ‘update’, this will automatically update your account and will also RSS directly to your ePortfolio if Twitter is embedded within it. Other Widgets and Content There are many other widgets available within Netvibes for the majority of the most popular web accounts and services. Netvibes allows you to add as many as you require to your pages. Furthermore, from an education context, a learner can add a personalised RSS feed to Netvibes pages, this could be a feed directly from an institutional VLE, if available, keeping them up-to-date with course content. 2