Personal/Cloud Learning Environment, Semantic Web 3.0, and Ontologies

Abstract

In the era of digital world that we live in, a new vision for learning is required. Learning is essentially personal, sociocultural, distributed, ubiquitous, flexible, dynamic, and complex in nature. There are multiple challenges, opportunities, and movements in learning that must be considered in the development and implementation of online learning environments. From the emerging computational capacity as a virtualized resource pool available over the network, several benefits can be obtained with regard to the management of computing infrastructures, such as environmental sustainability and improved Personal/Cloud Learning Environment use. In fact, Personal learning environments, Cloud computing, Semantic Web 3.0 and Ontologies are relatively new terms that hold considerable promise for future development and research in higher education contexts. Motivated by the aforementioned perspectives, the purpose of this chapter is to explore and discuss how these terms can be understood towards a more personalized, sociocultural, open, dynamic and encouraging model to support/facilitate teaching and learning processes, fulfilling the integrated view of the educational context presented in Part I of this book.