The PLE Conference has been an annual meeting where the research and practice on the Personal Learning Environment concept has always moved one step forward.  It was held in Barcelona in 2010 for the first time and the debate was focused on the nature of the concept as well as on the establishment of its grounds. Since then, a lot has been learned and the discussion has shifted from teaching practices (Southampton 2011 and Aveiro 2012) to a broader vision that includes learning in diverse contexts (Berlin 2013) and through emerging approaches that enhance self-driven paths (Tallinn 2014).

A lot of very interesting work has been published in our proceedings and special issues in different journals, and we invite you to look at them when preparing this year’s extended abstract:

• Proceedings The PLE Conference 2010 Barcelona, Spain:

  • Special issue Digital Education Review, 18, 2010
  • Special issue International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2(4), 2011

• Proceedings The PLE Conference 2011 Southampton, UK:

  • Special issue Digital Education Review, 20, 2011
  • Special issue International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 4(4), 2013

• Proceedings The PLE Conference 2012 Aveiro, Portugal

• Proceedings The PLE Conference 2013 Berlin, Germany:

  • Special issue eLearning Papers, 35, 2013
  • Special issue of the Journal of Literacy and Technology, 15(2), 2014

• Other interesting links to document your work:

• Curated list of publications related to PLE by Ilona Buchem
• Curated Zotero public started by Mike Cosgrave
• Free book “Entornos personales de aprendizaje: claves para el ecosistema educativo en red” 2013 (only Spanish)
• Monographic on PLEs in Interactive Learning Environments, 16(1), 2008
• Monographic on PLEs in Culture and Education, 26(4), 2014
• Monographic on “Nuevos Escenarios de Aprendizaje” in Edutec-e, 47, 2014 (only Spanish)
• Monographic on “Los entornos personales de aprendizaje en el espacio formativo” in Edmetic, 2(1), 2013 (only Spanish)

The PLE Conference 2015 is not also committed to be a forum of discussion among researchers and practitioners but also to be a challenging opportunity for journal publication. Thus, we have three Special Issues in open access academic refereed journals that will ask for a full academic article to be published from the most interesting extended abstracts submitted to the conference.

We would like to present you these journals:

• Digital Education Review, DER is the journal supported by the Grup de Recerca Ensenyament i Aprenentatge Virtual (GREAV) of the University of Barcelona (UB), which was started as such in 2010 (as the continuation of Interactive Educational Multimedia 2000-2008). Articles are published in English or in Spanish; it is open access and indexed in very relevant databases such as Scopus (Elsevier).

• Edutec-e. Revista Electrónica de Tecnología Educativa is a Spanish journal which publishes articles from the whole Spanish speaking community on educational technology since 1995. It is supported by the Group of Educational Technology of the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) and it is published by the Edutec association. It has been the leading journal in the Spanish language context since its first issue and has always been innovative both in the open access approach and in research interests.

• Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, NAER is a recent bilingual Educational Technology Journal of the University of Alicante. It was started in 2012 with the aim to offer research both in English and Spanish with a very innovative approach. Nonetheless, the journal offers data of each article and has recently started to publish infographies of selected articles. The highly professional editorial team and the innovative publishing approach announces an increasing impact on indexed databases.

Stay tuned for further information on our blog about the PLEConf 2015 !!!