Hey Dave!
You’re right – you didn’t say it. It’s the characterization of VLE as organization controlled, locked down and teacher focused vs PLE as individualized, open and personal – and never the twain shall meet…

I don’t know what to call it (VLE, PLE, VPLE, PVLE, or maybe just learning…), but I think addressing the needs of and engaging the “many” only happens when we figure out how to integrate the best of both. The ease of use of an institutional system with the ability to personalize learning, using the tools that work for me.

Why can’t we make the system such that I can bring in stuff from outside (i.e. have my own blog, my twitter, my flickr, etc…) to share with my peerw? Or why not allow people to feed their internal work to outside sources (i.e. easy for students to take their learning with them and make it relevant in their worlds)?