Stephen Downes

This is an interesting article that blends a consideration of the needs of people in less wealthy nations - based on experiences in Liberia - with the opportunities offered by things like the OLPC and the personal learning environment (PLE). "Can we stretch the concept of the PLE into an industrial-strength learning platform, costing precisely nothing to construct, offering a genuine depth and breadth of modularity and flexibility, and dependent for successful implementation only on the provision of the underlying connectivity, the wide distribution of access devices, and the level of engagement required to train teachers and learners in the use of the tools (not an aspect that should be underestimated, of course)."