Work & Learning Partners

One of the basic tasks of the WLP project has been to develop a working concept for "WLP Web" that supports the users of the WLP results to get access to the ideas, tools and services that they need. In this respect - as we have learned it during the project - the development of the "WLP Web" has not been a separate extension element to the 'main project' but an integral part of the whole project. However, in order to get this idea, the project has had to get a clearer idea of its own objectives and how to link the "WLP Web" to these objectives. This has required many phases and many revisions to the original ideas.

When looking back to the earlier stages of the project, the ideas on the "WLP Web" can be related to tool-centred assumptions on the role of "Web tools"as technologies for pushing through certain WLP-related ideas. Roughly we can reconstruct  the following variants of such tool-driven approaches:
a) Using traditional Web tools as 'push technologies' to disseminate the use of WLP tools (notably LPA) as means to support paretnership creation and related cooperation,
b) Using social software as 'learning technologies' to enable reflective learners to shape their own personal learning environmentts and related uses of portfolios,
c) Using specific 'management technologies' to support local learning designs and networked learning arrangements or
d) Using 'home-made applications' (KLearn) that try to give a minimalistic support kit for further piloting (that may take different courses)

As the project had completed the preparatory analyses, it became clear that the national partners were not in similar starting positions. Therefore, the above listed tool-centred approaches could not give support for bringing the whole project forward. In this respect the project took the following measures to review the role of web resources within the WLP project:
1) Opening the discussion on different piloting agendas that respond to the national circumstances;
2) Bringing into picture the use of national and joint multimendia resources,
3) Putting a new emphasis on partners' own areas, on linking WLP website to external resources and on different ways to access and use web rsources.

At the end this brings us to a concept or "WLP Web" as "WLP Web resources".  To me the architecture of "WLP Web resources" is based on different structural elements that help the users to access WLP-related knowledge resources:
i) Web resources for file management (WLP  folders that make original documents available as they have been submitted)
ii) Web resources for communication and sharing ideas (WLP blogging system)
iii) Web resources for presenting the accumulated results (WLP wiki as a joint presentation medium),
iv) Web access points for providing gateways to country-specific or theme-specific resources (WLP Partners' areas/profiles).

In the Strasbourg workshop we discussed primarily the first point (file management) and the last point (gateways). The use of web resources for communication (blogging has taken its own course in the meantime). The new element after the Strasbourg workshop is the WLP wiki that completes the architecture of the WLP web resources. As things stand now, I would see the WLP wiki as the main instrument for presenting the WLP results. However, we do need the solutions for the gateways and for the index folders as well.

Pekka Kämäräinen