I would like to thank all participants of the 5th International Conference on Personal Learning Environments 2014 for turning our little event into a very lively, engaging, and conversational encounter. Without your openness for playing with alternative session formats and the purposeful blending of programmed and more informal forms of engagement this type of conference would simply not be possible.

I would also like to thank again my fantastic organisational team in Tallinn – Dr. Kairit Tammets, Dr. Terje Väljataga, and Priit Tammets – who helped in so many ways to turn the overall event into a rather pleasant experience for all of us.

The Tallinn Team will try to slow down and rest a bit in the coming days before we rejoin and start curating some of the digital traces that were produced during and around last week.

I hope you all took something interesting – or even inspiring -with you from Tallinn!

All the best,

Dr. Sebastian HD Fiedler – Tallinn Conference Chair

Here you can find the proceedings from last year’s PLE conference 2013 in Berlin, Germany: Proceeedings-PLE13

We got a few questions regarding the format of the paper sessions. So, let me try to elaborate a bit on that topic before we finally come together in Tallinn.

In the Call for Papers we had stated the following:

“The PLE Conference treats written submissions of academic work and the presentation of it as two totally different practices…”

What we mean by that is that during the actual conference event we really want to use our written products only as a sort of backdrop. So, instead of trying to “cover” your entire paper in any comprehensive way, we would expect you to provide some conversational triggers or hooks that engage other participants and that invite controversial exchanges.

We do not expect that we will be able to treat all topics and questions within the allocated sessions alone. The overall programme is designed to allow for various opportunities to carry on with conversations throughout the entire conference. So, relax… and treat the “paper sessions” mainly as conversation starters.

Please prepare for “presenting” your contribution roughly along the following guiding questions:

1. What problem/challenge/question does your contribution address?
2. What are your main insights?
3. What are the limitations/weaknesses of your contribution?
4. What would you like to discuss/explore with other participants?

You can use whatever means you would like for getting these aspects across. Just be prepared to do this in a very condensed manner. We have up to 4 contributions in each paper session. So, please shoot for around 5 minutes in “presentation” mode, ending with a clear statement regarding question 4 (what you would like to discuss or explore with other participants)… and leave the rest of the time we have together for an actual exchange of ideas.

We are really looking forward to welcoming you all in Tallinn!

Dr. Sebastian HD Fiedler

Graham Attwell from Pontydysgu, UK, has just published a post titled “Personal Learning Environments, Self Directed Learning and Context“. This is what Graham has to say about PLEs and “people not enrolled on formal educational programmes”…

…At a development level, there is little point in trying to develop a new PLE to replace the VLE. Instead we need to provide flexible tools which can enhance existing technologies and learning provision, be it formal courses and curricula or informal learning in the workplace or in the community. It can be argued that whilst most educational technology development has focused on supporting learners already engaged in educational programmes and institutions, the major potential of technology and particularly of Personal Learning Environments is for the majority of people not enrolled on formal educational programmes. Not all workplaces or for that matter communities offer a rich environment or learning. Yet there is vast untapped potential in such environments, particularly for the development and sharing of the tacit knowledge and work process knowledge required in many tasks and occupations. PLE tools can help people learning in formal and informal contexts, scaffold their learning and develop a personal learning knowledge base or portfolio…

Read the full post on the Pontydysgu Weblog.

We have decided to move the submission deadline for all accepted academic papers to
July 1.
I am sure some of you appreciate the little extra time for working on your text. And we think we can afford this extension.

I also want to use the opportunity to remind all authors of accepted academic papers that you need to submit your texts following the guidelines below:

• Title
  Titles should be informative and stimulate interest.

• Author(s)
  State the author(s) name(s) and affiliations

• Abstract
  Articles must include an abstract of around 300 words providing sufficient information on the research.

• Section headings
  Use a maximum of three levels of headings. Do not number the headings.

• Figures
  Figures, graphics, and/or images should be at least 300 dpi.

  It is the author’s responsibility to ensure figures, graphics and/or images used in his/her paper are cleared of copyright and/or that she has the rights from the copyright holder to reproduce those figures, graphics and images. When figures, graphics, and images are reproduced, a parenthesis should be added to the figure legend stating the following: (Reproduced with permission from xxx.)

• References
  References need to follow APA style.

• Length
  Academic papers should not be longer than 8000 words including tables, captions, and references.

• File format
  Please submit your final papers as pdf-files.

Based on the experiences of last year we have decided that we don’t provide a particular template at this point in time. Formatting templates most likely become part of the picture after the conference in the context of some of the publication projects we are still negotiating.

So, as long as we all stick to a 12 point (readable) font, bold for headlines, and the brought guidelines above… things should be fine.

We are looking forward to your contributions!

Dr. Sebastian H.D. Fiedler – Tallinn Conference Chair

The Journal of Literacy and Technology (JLT) has just published a Special Issue titled “Personal Learning Environments: Current Research and Emerging Practice“. The issue includes papers from the PLE Conference 2013 (Berlin/Melbourne) and is thus the second special issue – after eLearning Papers Issue No. 35 published in the fall of 2013 – that features contributions from the 2013 edition of the Personal Learning Enironments Conference Series. This new special issue of JLT is edited by Nancy Rubin (Columbia University, USA) and Ilona Buchem (Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin, Germany).