Work & Learning Partners

Milestones: Heading from the Velenje Workshop (January) to interim meetings in Bremen (March)
As I have indicated in a previous posting, the WLP Workshop in Velenje helped us to get a picture of the results of the groundwork phase. It also gave us a push towards a piloting phase that has to be implemented in a differentiated way in the participating countries. Therefore, I worked with the partnership concepts and the visualisation of the interim synthesis. As the next step I started to draft a roadmap to give an overview on the piloting phase. However, because of time pressures I had to leave this 'big picture' aside and concetrate on the inputs for our interim meetings alogside the German cnference "Hochschultage Berufliche Bildung" in the middle of March.
For our meetings in March I prepared some drafts with which I tried to support separate piloting measures with Personal Learning Reviews (support for individual learners) and Learning Interface Reviews (dialogue between training providers and partner enterprises). However, it appeared during our talks in Bremen that could take one step further and draft an outline of an integrative instrument (see below).

Intervening factors: The issue of Leonardo projects'  participation in the ECER'06 conference in Geneva
In this context it is worthwhile to note that the administrative efforts  to ensure a proper  partiipation of ongoing Leonardo projects (including WLP) caused a delay in the work with the WLP Web tools. Now we are in the position to take further steps.

The interim conclusion: KLearn as the WLP prototype for an integrative Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and Learning Management System (LMS)
During the series of meetings with Graham Attwell, Al Harris, Alan Brown and Elmo De Angelis we could agree on some basi principles how to develop the integrative instrument for our piloting activities. The instrument "KLearn" (that Graham Attwell drafted on the basis of our talks) draws upon our discussions in Velenje and upon the needs that wer expressed by different partners. It draws upon the preliminary tool ("Courses") that was drafted by the KnowNet on the basis of the LPA-analyses. It also draws upon the prior work of Alan Brown and the KnowNet for the "Skills Review".
The KLearn instrument is presented in the attached note that was drafted by Graham Attwell on basis of our discussions. Here just some quick remarks on the two main features:

a) The simple Administration Interface  makes it possible for  vocational teachers and trainers to work as system adminstrators and provide the necessary support for learning),
b) The simple User Interface makes it possible for individual learners or training providers or partner enterprises to analyse and manage their work-related learning activities.

My impression is that KLearn will be the kind of integrative and easy-to-use instrument that the WLP project has been looking for to introduce as the "WLP Web tool".  However, we have to look at the usability from different user perspectives. This brings me back to drawing the "Roadmap" but now with an idea on the central instrument.

I think this enough for the moment. See the presentation of the "KLearn" as the attachment.

Pekka Kämäräinen