What does a Personal Learning Environment look like?

A PLE is comprised of all the different tools we use in our everyday life for learning.

Many of these tools will be based on social software. Social software is used here in the meaning of software that lets people connect or collaborate by use of a computer network. It supports networks of people, content and services that are more adaptable and responsive to changing needs and goals. Social Software adapts to its environment, instead of requiring its environment to adapt to software. Social software underpins what is loosely referred to as Web 2.0. Whereas Web 1 was largely implemented as a push technology - to allowaccess to information on a dispersed basis, Web 2.0 is a two way process, allowing the internet to be used for creating and sharing information and knowledge, rather than merely accessing external artefacts.

Social software is increasingly being used in education and training through such applications as web logs, wikis, tools and applications for creating and sharing multi media and tools for sharing all kinds of different personal knowledge bases including bookmarks and book collections.If we are to use different applications, individually configured then standards are critical for allowing one application to talk to another Rather than monolithic vendor driven and designed applications, Web 2 and social software is based on the idea of ‘small pieces, loosely connected’ utilising commonly recognised standards and web services for linking ideas, knowledge and artefacts.Social software offers the opportunity for narrowing the divide between producers and consumers. Consumers become themselves producers, through creating and sharing. One implication is the potential for a new ecology of ‘open content, books, learning materials and multi media, through learners themselves becoming producers of learning materials.

Social software has already led to widespread adoption of portfolios for learners bringing together learning from different contexts an sources of learning and providing an on-going record of lifelong learning, capable of expression in different forms.The idea of a Personal Learning Environment is also based on being able to aggregate different services.

The list below is of the software I use for my personal learning environment:

- Word processor for writing papers
- E-mail client for communication
- Audio for making podcasts
- Video editor for making multi media presentations – iMovie
- Personal Weblog
- Photo editing programme - iPhoto (and plug infor uploading to Flickr)- Photo sharing service
- Instant messaging – Skype, Msn
- Search engines - mainly Google

Personal Learning Environments - intent and use the development and support for Personal Learning Environments would entail a radical shift, not only in how we use educational technology, but in the organisation and ethos of education. Personal Learning Environments provide more responsibility and more independence for learners. They would imply redrawing the balance between institutional learning and learning in the wider world. Change is difficult but it is probable that the rapid development and implementation of new technologies and social change make change in our educational provision inevitable.There are also many unresolved issues, including who provides technology services, security of data and of course the personal safety of students. Notwithstanding these issues, we are beginning to see how these new tools might practically be used in education, especially through wide scale experiments in the use of blogging.

Personal Learning environments are not an application but rather a new approach to the use of new technologies for learning. There remain many issues to be resolved. But, at the end of the day, the argument for the use of Personal Learning environments is not technical but rather is philosophical, ethical and pedagogic.PLEs provide learners with their own spaces under their own control to develop and share their ideas. Moreover, PLEs can provide a more holistic learning environments, bringing together sources and contexts for learning hitherto separate. Students learn how to take responsibility or their own learning. Critically, PLEs can bridge the walled gardens of the educational institutions with the worlds outside. In so doing learners can develop the judgements and skills or literacy necessary for using new technologies in a rapidly changing society.

References

Cross, J. (2006). The Low-Hanging Fruit Is Tasty, Internet Time Blog, retrieved 3rd April, 2008 from http://internettime.com/?p=105

Nonaka, I. & Konno, N. (1998). The Concept of "Ba": Building a Foundation for Knowledge Creation, California Management Review, 40, 3, 40-54.

Seely Brown J. & Duguid. P. (2002). The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School Press (2002).