PLEs

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)

PLEs — Enabled by Web-based Resources and Technology

A personal learning environment (PLE) can be described as "the tools, communities, and services that constitute the individual educational platforms learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals." (Educause, 2009, 7 Things You Should Know About Personal Learning Environments)

Stated another way, a PLE enables personal, self-directed, learning. I use the term ‘self-directed learning’ to describe those things that you are interested in and learn on your own, whether informally or as part of formal courses and other structured learning experiences. You are undoubtedly already using some of the technologies that we will be investigating — smart phones, texting, IM, computers, Skype, Facebook, etc.

You can think about these online technologies and resources and the types of learning that they enable as a set of survival skills for living in the 21st century. The rate of change in technologies, the changes in the nature and kinds of work we do, and the rate of new knowledge creation makes life-long learning a mandatory condition.

Personal Learning, Collaboration and Social Networking

This section provides an overview of some of the better-known tools for learning, communicating and sharing that can be used by individuals, for team or group work, or to participate in a social network. Collectively, they represent many of the capacities that make up the so-called Web 2.0.

Skype

Skype is a secure Internet VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service that allows you to call/talk to another Skype user anywhere in the World free of charge. Skype also allows low cost Skype to phone calls.

RSS

RSS (really simple syndication) is a type of information or news feed that notifies you when Web sites or blogs that you have designated add to or change their content. RSS allows you to keep track of changes to the selected sites without having to periodically check the sites yourself. The BBC provide an explanation of a RSS news feed. There are many different RSS readers, but I use Google Reader.

Collaboration

Collaboration tools enable teams and groups to work in a common online workspace. There are both general collaboration tools and special purpose ones designed for specific kinds of tasks such as project management for example. Google docs is an example of a collaborative set of tools.

Social Networking

Social networking sites are one of the foundations of Web 2.0. Facebook, MySpace, and Linkedin are among the best known social networking sites. All of these can be used for both personal networks and professional networks although Facebook tends to be personal while Linkedin is a professional networking site. MySpace appears to combine a bit of both and is used by musicians and other artists for professional networking and promotion.

Yammer is a free private social network for organizations.

Tagging

Tagging is another Web 2.0 feature. Tags are short descriptors or key words that are added to a file, picture, blog entry or other object to provide a way to search for and retrieve the tagged object.

Photosharing sites such as flickr and bookmarking sites such as delicious make extensive use of tagging to categorize photos and Internet bookmarks, respectively.

Blog (Web log, Weblog)

A blog or web log is a Web site that publishes content in a reverse chronological sequence (i.e., latest content is "at the top"). The term blog is used both as a noun and as a verb. As a noun, blog refers to the Web site or Web log. Blog, the verb, refers to the action of writing and publishing the Web log and the person doing the writing and publishing is a "blogger". The act of writing and publishing the Web log is referred to as "blogging". An important feature of blogs is that readers can post comments and these can sometimes develop into asynchronous conversations and discussions that add to the contents of the blog.

Wordpress and Blogger are two sites among many others, that allow you to set up a personal blog.

Wiki

A wiki is a web site that allows multiple users to create, add and edit Web content using a Web browser. Wikipedia is the quintessential wiki. It can be regarded as an asynchronous, collaborative, Web content authoring tool.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging or micromessaging tool. Messages or ‘tweets’ are restricted to a maximum of 140 characters.You can sign up to follow the topic "training" on Twitter (Select some relevant sources and try it for a couple of days just to see what comes out!).

iTunes U

iTunes U provides access to resources for mobile learning. Content is downloaded from iTunes U as a podcast, a digital media file that may be audio or video. Podcasts have become an ubiquitous resource and are freely available from most media and broadcast network Websites. For example CBC podcasts are available for archived radio (audio) and TV (video) programs.

Open Courseware (OCW)

MIT rattled the windows of academic "ivory towers" in 2001 when it announced that it was going to publish all of its courses on the Internet. The MIT OCW site was launched in 2002 with an initial group of 50 courses. There are some 2000 MIT courses available online. Lecture notes, assignments, exams and other course resources are available for every course. Audio/video content is freely available on YouTube and iTunes U. Course images are on flickr.

MIT keeps site statistics; the OCW site receives about a million visitors per month of whom 43% are self-learners.

Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) has a limited number of “open and free courses” courses designed for self-guided study. Registration is required, but there are no fees or other obligations associated with registration.

Stanford's OpenClassroom provides a number of free courses.

The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. You’ll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others.

The Open University of Hong Kong is a relatively new provider of open learning offering courses in both Chinese and English.

YouTubeEDU provides video resources from a number of sources.

MOOC (Massive Open Online Course)

CCK11, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2011, Week 6 - Personal Learning Environments & Networks

A Critical Eye

Sherry Turkle has spent her professional life researching the effects that technologies have on the human condition. In this TED video, Alone Together, she discusses the impacts that networked mobile technologies are having on the way we interact with our technologies and each other. You will find it a provocative 16 minutes.

Collaboration Scenario

The CLO is on a tear! She's been following Dan Pontefract's blog and is convinced that your organization can "become a mecca of collaboration" with T&D leading by example. Once again, you have the ball!

Which of the social media tools should you consider and why (i.e., provide a rationale for each tool to be considered)?

Outline your response in point-form in the Post a Comment box and Publish.

[Top of page]
[Home]