USING NETVIBES AS A PLE FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING Panagiotis Panagiotidis Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GREECE) Abstract The continuously increasing influence and integration of the web 2.0 services and applications in users’ everyday life has, as it is evident, a corresponding impact on their learning behavior. It is a fact that the potential for real time communication, social networking, data sharing, syndication and collaboration, give users wider perspectives and greater possibilities regarding the collection and use of learning resources in order to acquire knowledge in the field of their interest. A similar picture exists for teachers who, on the one hand, have the opportunity to exploit and take advantage of a variety of new technological tools and, on the other, the responsibility to offer their students new educational perspectives and applications, suitable to their new mentality and attitudes. As is obvious, the support of this new educational approach could be better served by the use of informal learning environments, the creation of which is based on freely available platforms and tools and does not require a high level of technological skills from users. The “start pages” -among others- belong in this category of software tools. Some of them can provide a solid basis for the creation of Personal Learning Environments suitable for every subject and, in this case, for foreign language learning. A personal learning space based on the Netvibes start page and created specifically for language learning is presented in this paper. This environment includes a variety of services and tools through which the user can approach a foreign language in its original form, having organized access to a variety of authentic multimedia recourses and complete collaboration opportunities with other users and the teacher. The different features and components of this environment, as well as the way it can be used in the foreign language classroom are described and conclusions deriving from the application and the perspectives that this type of environment creates for language learning are drawn. Keywords: PLE, Netvibes, Start Pages, Language learning, web 2.0, Personal Learning Environments, collaborative tools. 1 ELEARNING AND SOCIAL SOFTWARE Nowadays the provision of e-courses in institutions at all levels of education is based on Learning Management Systems (or Virtual Learning Environments - VLEs) 1 . It is widely accepted that these systems are particularly effective in the delivery of learning content, as well as in the structuring and the management of the learning procedure, as they dispose mechanisms that facilitate the enrollment of students, the deposit/transfer of assignments or files, the grading etc. Furthermore, they provide a variety of tools that allow teachers to create a course, fill it with multimedia learning content and support it via discussion fora, videoconferencing rooms, whiteboards, chat, and e-portfolios [1]. Nowadays, the educational market of VLEs is dominated by the commercial VLEs Blackboard, Desire2Learn and Canvas, as well as by the open source VLEs Moodle and Sakai. Although all of the above applications offer advanced possibilities and rich features, the operational philosophy and the pedagogical model on which they are based offer a traditional, centralized and standardized learning experience [2]. It is true that this approach in elearning has effectively served educational institutions for the last 10-15 years. However, the increasing popularity of web 2.0 applications leads to significant changes in the way users perceive education and affect the strategies they choose to reach their learning objectives. These changes are due to the daily habits and behavior of students, behavior that is becoming all the more online, following technological developments [3]; [4]. It is thus well understood that the new technological reality demands a new educational approach, that adapts to the natural way in which the 1 According to the Distance Education Survey 2011 [5], and an equivalent research of New Media Consortium/EDUCAUSE [6], 71% of higher educational institutions base their elearning program on some Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Proceedings of INTED2014 Conference 10th-12th March 2014, Valencia, Spain ISBN: 978-84-616-8412-0 3403