Comments on: Does the PLE make sense in the connectivist context?

By: glen

glen — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:51:05 +0000

Knowledge can be valued, and differently by each.

By: Dallas McPheeters

Dallas McPheeters — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:24:32 +0000

Most of the so-called PLEs I’ve seen are nothing more than Personal Information Aggregators that feed information of interest to individual users. Learning implies capacity or skill is increased. Information alone may reduce risk but only education increases capacity. If you are saying that connectivist groups can be better informed, I would agree. But being informed is not the same as learning per se. We know the knowledge resides in the network. So where does the learning reside? That’s the real question and the determining factor of whether or not you have a PLE or whatever name you wish to call it.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:45:28 +0000

Re: Does is make sense for a ‘network’ to be ‘personal’. What does it mean for a network to be personal? do you somehow have special control over it? Sounds like a group to me and not a network

The first question as to whether it makes sense is at the core of the debate on PLE’s vs VLEs that those who are criticising the Government’s money being plowed into VLEs in education, are using with a fair degree of validity. I suppose the question comes down to two things imo:
1 – Can the technology on which a network sits i.e. the VLE keep up with the demands of its users both now and the future demands?
2 – Do users want to be ring-fenced in such a way?

If either or both of the these questions can not be answered yes then PLEs are the way forward are they not or an alternative could be to let everyone have PLEs while education remains in a VLE. Another altenative could be to have a VLE that is flexible enough to accomodate other apps i.e. somewhere between the 2. And no, SCORM is not that flexible really is it?!?!?

Re a network being personal to my mind means you have control over the tools you use, the way you use those tools and combine various resources to your own end. So, in that respect a PLE can be a controlled personal network. To say it is just a group suggests that a user only control of who/what is involved yet a PLE is surely much more than that. It is also how these elements are involved and how they are brought together, used to one’s own personal gain.

Hmmm…….

By: admin

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:42:50 +0000

@Frances @Nick yes. I understand that the usage of the term personal in the term Personal Learning Environment means that it is personal. My question remains, does that make sense from a connectivist point of view.

I don’t doubt that lots and lots of people see PLEs that way. Does is make sense for a ‘network’ to be ‘personal’. What does it mean for a network to be personal? do you somehow have special control over it? Sounds like a group to me and not a network.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:14:32 +0000

To my mind, a PLE is as the acronym suggests, an environment for learning that is personal. Therefore, it can be made up of a network or networks, applications, tools, documents, contacts, the work of contacts, etc etc. The term has arisen surely as a response to VLE where as you have mentioned, there is a sense of ownership of a body to which a user is subscribed. This means that all those elements of the environment must be stored within that one environment rather than one of a possible set of environments which could and often do make up a PLE. Catch my drift?!?!!?

By: Frances Bell

Frances Bell — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:05:30 +0000

My twopennorth!
First, I think that a personal learning environment is what an individual accumulates, constructs and experiences themselves: comprising their face to face experiences in elective small groups and formal activities such as lectures and tutorials; their desktop access that might be bookmarks, an online desktop such as Netvibes, Pageflakes, iGoogle; and whatever formal learners ar offered by way of Virtual Learning Environments and resources.
A personal learning network is a network of people and things that generates and sustains learning for an individual. Connectivism is, I think, looking at learning within networks of people and things, as something that emerges from this. My own take on this is that the agency of people , what they do !!, is very important alongside what they find, supplement, amend by way of content/things/etc.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:24:42 +0000

@Chris you make a compelling argument (as per usual) “engaging in connective activities automatically creates a PLE” I’m still stuck wondering if the title itself is what’s bothering me. I think i see what your saying, but the idea of “personal” calls to mind a binder that lives on a shelf. It is MINE. I wonder if we just think that way because we’re accustomed to it.
It’s that implicit only (and I believe i’ve heard both George and Stephen use it explicitly) that makes the PLE difficult. I think that’s one of the issues i was trying to tease out. Sounds like the Neo-platonic Nous. Must go back and read my plotinus.

@george i think i understand what you mean… but then why call it personal? That’s the thing that i keep coming back to… in what sense is it personal? It tends to sound more like a desperate attempt to keep our enlightenment sense of the individual and not open ourselves to the fact that the things that we know are indelibly connected to everything else and are not, in fact, personal at all. In the sense that there are ‘no new ideas’ what we think of as personal are in fact just brand choices.

@Nicola those resources are just manifestation of things done by people. One of the problems i’ve had with certain parts of the OER movement for instance is the desire to blandify things so that they are reusable, attempting to take the human context out of it. I don’t think the attempt entirely succeeds, but it to is often premised in the idea that knowledge is countable and the human can be taken out of a situation leaving rarified knowledge behind.

@Dan I work (in my day job) on the corporate side of academia, so i have some sense of what you’re talking about. You are, i believe, omitting a key part of connectivism in your definition. I think the how of connectivism is inherently tied to the what… that’s the whole point of the theory. You are, of course, more than welcome to make the distinction, but I’m not sure you are then talking about connectivism.

@everyone I can’t think of a theory (outside, maybe, of postmodernism, which isn’t really a theory) of knowledge or otherwise, that offers itself up to so many interpretations from people who claim to be members of the brand. Maybe the lesson here is that connectivism allows itself to be different things to different people, as is the nature of connected networks and the ways that people touch the knowledge residing in the network.

By: Dan Pontefract

Dan Pontefract — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:46:40 +0000

I like to think of Connectivism as ‘how’ I’m learning, collaborating and sharing to achieve my PLE … which is my ‘what’ I’m personally learning, collaborating and sharing.

In the corporate world, where I’ve been now for the past 9 years (yes, the dark side), terms like connectivism and PLE never fly, because they become much too academic. (although I am one – and get it 100%)

So, to simplify, we frame things in the ‘how’ and ‘what’ categories, and it seems to work.

No one in the corporation knows they are actually employing connectivism and the PLE … but they are! (and they’re connected)

By: Nicola

Nicola — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:13:44 +0000

I am still trying to define what I think a PLE and PLN are – when I see examples of how people are organising their learning, I get confused still.

Examples of tools that I’ve been using to – find, track, share – these are all tools I use where I am connecting to – network/s:

Delicious – if I bookmark a resource, or someone has shared a resource and marked it, so its in my delicious inbox. If I don’t put the cck09 tag, keep it private or don’t share it with anyone – is that being unconnective – I had to connect in order to bookmark the resource? Its not very helpful to anyone else if they don’t know it exists, but does that mean I haven’t learnt how to connect?

Google reader – if something appears in a feed I’ve subscribed too – I’ve already connected in order to receive the feed in the reader. I may choose to like, share, comment on that post but again if I didn’t – unless I keep it unread – it disappears from my consciousness and I will only remember its existence if something or someone in the future triggers a memory of it. If all my feeds are part of a network, how responsive do I need to be in order to be connective?

I wonder if its possible to be connective and only connect entirely to resources or information, without sharing / talking to another person so personal learning network or environment is quiet but exists?

This is a bit rambling, but still trying to understand the connecting bit with other people too – if I react to something or someone and at that moment in time, some part of my thinking changes but I don’t signal that reaction in any way that is obvious is that learning?

Is an environment or network something that reacts – it identifies the presence of other humans not just information and responds – then that is connective?

By: George Roberts

George Roberts — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:32:36 +0000

The reification of the PLE is for me the problem. We all have personal learning environments in the sense of from time to time framing our world around “learning”. What’s in the frame? That’s our PLE. While I have quibbled with the theorization of connectivism (shoot me I’m an academic) I consider myself an open connectivist and I choose tools and use tools in ways that I hope support open connectivism. To me there will never be *A* PLE in the sense of a shrink-wrapped set of kit, though there may be kits that model or scaffold the development of a PLE. This is mainly because my PLE is not the kit but the people in my learning frame and the tools I use to connect with them and to share learning. Perhaps a PLE is more than people and tools, it the shared practice of people using tools together to learn.