Facebook as PLE - Part Two - The Plot Thickens...

I recently posted my thoughts about Facebook being an ideal environment for the creation of PLEs (Personal Learning Environments). I firmly believe that PLEs are the future of learning-centred adult education. PLEs ARE all about the learners - what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, how they want to share what they learn, when they want to learn, and what tools they will use in order for THEIR learning to occur.

Yesterday my friend Carolyn (Randommind) introduced me to Mosoto. Mosoto is a Web 2.0, Flash-based application that allows users to "share, chat, and discover". More importantly it fully integrates into Facebook. You can add Mosoto to you Facebook profile as one of the many Facebook Applications now available that have revolutionized Facebook.

Here is the description of Mosoto from its Web site:

"Mosoto is a new way to share and connect with your Facebook friends. With Mosoto you can easily share files, chat with friends and discover people and media in your social network. Because Mosoto is built on top of Facebook your friends and social network are already here. Mosoto is streaming social media."

Mosoto adds simple, easy to use synchronous chat, file sharing, and more to Facebook. It allows users to create private "rooms" or chats, an amazingly powerful learning tool. Combined with many of the Facebook applications mentioned in my earlier post, Mosoto provides a rich customizable learning environment - in short a PLE.

PLEs are an amazing opportunity to engage learners that many institutions may be missing due to geography, learning style, time, or dissatisfaction with "traditional" learning approaches and environments. PLEs are not just an alternate delivery or distance learning tool either. I fully believe that they will work well in classrooms, online, and in learning environments not yet thought of and that Facebook is the tool that will let this happen.

I am now convinced that I will allow and encourage my learners this coming fall to create their own PLEs and I will suggest to them that Facebook is a great place to start that PLE development. Facebook's combination of social networking, customizable environment, and ever-increasing list of easy to use applications makes it the ideal PLE development platform.

Over the next while I am going to build my own PLE using Facebook and I will share it with you once it is done. Of course being a PLE it will never actually be done, but rather will be in a state of constant renewal and evolution, so I will be looking for your feedback and comments ...