Current Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are focused very much on meeting the needs of the institution in providing a basic, common technology platform for teaching and learning. However monolithic VLEs are too hard to customize at the individual user level, and evolve far too slowly to meet teaching and learning of users who want their teaching and learning environments to be under their personal control. This paper explores how the concept of the Personal Learning Environment has influenced developments with learning technology, within the context of emerging social software, and examines a range of developments with existing VLEs that move them in the personalized direction. It contrasts the issues involved in bespoke extensions to VLEs as opposed to the incorporation of existing tools (mash-ups), and suggest that the latter approach offers the best hope to escape the bonds of a single VLE product by allowing teachers and learners to simply aggregate whatever tools and capabilities they desire from the Internet to use in their learning. Real progress is being made on several fronts, including the provision of interfaces to social software systems that support the building of applications that can be organized around a personal or group context, and in the development of specifications for learning tool interoperability. (Contains 5 figures.)