Leveraging ePortfolios & PLEs to Facilitate Learning

The best way I can address how an ePortfolio or Personal Learning Environment can influence and facilitate learning is to make sure that students are given the opportunity to create one. In this way students become engaged and involved in co-creating knowledge. PLEs are a new approach to learning and educators must be open and willing to build it into their curriculum. The traditional pedagogy is now obsolete and is evolving in the school system. Students now expect to control their own learning. Make class content more relevant by giving students free rein to integrate it into an ePortfolio or PLE. Use Web 2.0 technologies in course content to keep school from becoming irrelevant to the everyday lives of many young people and how they communicate and share knowledge.

The virtual classroom, MySpace, Blogs, Flickr, Online Social Networks and Communities, Google Sites, Wiki Spaces; there's such a variety of Web 2.0 technologies to choose from, that providing at least one or two of these tools in a class assignment would be a step towards supporting learning that digital natives can relate to and hold their interest.