I don’t think it would be too controversial to say that the use of some kind of PLE in education is becoming more commonplace as people start to make use of technologies in various areas of their life. Where is this all heading? If we can accept that students learn in different ways and what is good for one student may not be good for another then we have to accept that a one size fits all system is not optimum either. As Weller points out in the Sclater/Weller (2016) podcast that students do not want to use an inferior system in their studies than they are using in their leisure time, they’re are some great free tools out there that work very well, but as Sclater counters that students need to be able to interact so they must be using systems that allow this, although it is a red herring to suggest that a good reason for not partaking in the use of different technologies in the form of a PLE is in case of technical failure, of course any platform can fail but if your environment is distributed then it is much less likely your whole environment is down at the same time. It is true that there needs to be some consistency for ease of communication, but at the same time students needs and preferences need to be taken into account for optimum learning potential, after all there are a vast range of technologies waiting to be exploited, along with a vast range of preferences. How would this work? Some kind of hybrid system? Maybe it is fair comment from sclater to suggest that far from the VLE being put out to pasture it could become more of a back end system. This is the direction I see for the PLE. We do need to give students ownership over the tools they use if they are to get the most out of their learning as they possibly can, but their needs to be a route for the students to maintain fluid communication. This currently does not happen with the VLE either, forums are not instant or fluid enough and the whole system is a little restrictive when compared to the tools that can be utilised in everyday life. What would be better and a potential direction is for students to choose the tools that they wish to use and have a system that interacts with these platforms giving students the flexibility of using their PLE whilst keeping the ability to communicate, of course there may be situations that need to be kept in a closed forum or at least desirable, but a more flexible system is surely more beneficial for all. Is this fanciful? Is education heading down the PLE highway? Its already on it, where to next?