Am on my way to Tallin for a meeting of the European funded Workplace Learning Partnership project.

The project focuses on organising and recognising the learning which takes place in the workplace - particularly through apprenticeship programmes. One central idea is that many workplaces - particularly small enterprises cannot by themselves provide a sufficient range or breadth of learning opportunities for all the different tasks and skills an apprentice has to learn. If different enterprises were to work together they could provide a much wider range of learning opportunities. one of my roles in the project is to design and develop software tools to help that process.

" Portfolio's can play an important part in developing the use of ICT for informal learning or learning outside formal institutional settings. " We have spent the first six months scoping the work and prototyping the tools. A few things have become clear. first is that most enterprises are very reluctant to share in this way. There is no tradition of close collaboration, enterprises are reluctant to cooperate with potential competitors and there is a significant barrier to shared provision in the form of funding mechanisms.

From my side of the work, I made a false start in trying to adapt Open Source VLEs to support work-based learning. I should have known better. VLEs - even the good ones - are developed around a formal institutional course based model.

For both reasons I have turned back to social software. Social software can be sued to encourage collaboration and build on those aspects of sharing about which trainers are happy - and in some cases even eager. Anecdotal reports suggest access to learning materials is one such area. Our original idea was to develop tools for teachers and trainers to identify workplace learning opportunities. This may not be the best way. one of the problems is that workl-plave learning opportunities are so heavily dependent on human support. A set up which provides rich learning in one work-place may offer little in another dependent on the (informal) support available in the workplace. Learners themselves who are in the best position to describe the opportunities for learning in the workplace. Of course this means they have to think about what they have learned - to reflect on their personal learning. But isn't that just the pedagogic process which we want to encourage? And portfolios would seem the natural application to support that process.

Portfolio's can play an important part in developing the use of ICT for informal learning or learning outside formal institutional settings. However, this needs a bit more thinking through about what a portfolio is and how it might be used. More on this later in the week..............