Discussions started by Derek Chirnside

SCoPE: Seminars -> Personal Learning Environments June 4-24, 2007 -> Business World and PLE . . . (Part One)

by Derek Chirnside -
I feel a little like Sylvia: From intentional learning, with new tools and attitude by scurrie on Saturday, 16 June 2007 10:36:00 a.m.: There is something about this topic. It's a little mind bending. I feel like things click one minute and then the next I've lost it again.
I've wanted to pick up at some stage the question that was among our first posts in this seminar, the business setting.
Brenda posts - From Re: Welcome . . . by harpsouth on Monday, 4 June 2007 5:15:00 a.m.: Since I don't work in a higher education environment, I am not familiar with PLEs. I work in a business environment and am thinking, however, that PLEs might be a worthwhile addition to a collaborative environment where members are collaborating online.
We have dabbled a little on this: there is the tension between public/private that Emma comments on:
From Re: learning in isolation by emmadw on Monday, 18 June 2007 6:48:00 a.m.: Besides that, for me, particularly, a PLE only makes sense if it is shared with others, so that others also have a(nother) change to contribute to my learning, by commenting on it.
While I agree in general that a PLE needs to have a community input, I think that it is vital (to ensure the *personal* side) that the owner has the ability to determine who, if anyone, has access to particular resources - and that this can change over time. I would be very wary of a PLE that is totally transparent - where one can have no private, personal areas.
For the vast majority of learners (probably large) sections will be visible to (selected) others. For the minority of users, the largest sections will be those that are invisible.

I think we are back to the "what's a PLE question again?"
Businesses have a special need.  There is constant debate about what can be shared outside and inside.  Case in point: one large multinational engineering firm has a community partly run by a friend of mine.  He runs groups within it in about 2 days of time each week.  Knowledge, documents, reports etc are stored, circulated, used etc.
Some end up outside (conferences, websites, journals etc).
There are powerful tools built into the community platform.  Tags, reminders, follow up, drafts, etc etc.  But this is not a PLE.
<to be continued> sorry about this.  I've got to kill by browser now.  Part two coming later.

SCoPE: Seminars -> Personal Learning Environments June 4-24, 2007 -> Schools (etc) and PLE's getting implementational . . .

by Derek Chirnside -
I have been very aware that sooner or later we need to open up another thread for the final question in the description of this seminar:

<snip>  How does this change the way we teach and learn?

Derek (W) has written a paper that has been incubating for a while, and he has just finished another draft.  It takes a descriptive and narrative approach, and while it is relevant to the school sector in particular, it has some ideas pertinent to the non-profit and business sectors as well.  He asked me what I thought.  Even in it's slightly unfinished state I thought it was worth posting here for your comment.

I've been thinking about where we go next in our dialogue.  In a personal e-mail Derek said: "Interesting to see the discussions emerge around devices vs. applications, internet vs mobiles (although that one has me baffled), and concept vs system etc - I'm fascinated to see the different perspectives!" 

This is true!!  - we have traversed a lot of foundational ideas.

We have Ann and Amy's comments on commitment. From Re: Personal Learning Ecology . . . by annbusby on Friday, 8 June 2007 11:24:00 a.m.:
Amy, I loved your comment, "you mean I have to commit to an idea?" I keep changing the content of my thinking from reading what others are posting, so fast I can't commit, either smile Isn't that what learning is about?  :-)  :-)

Michelle: From Re: Personal Learning Ecology . . . by michelemmartin@gmail.com on Thursday, 7 June 2007 3:23:00 a.m.:
Anytime an organization is involved in deciding what "system" to use, I've found that it inevitably becomes a system that works for the organization, not the individual.

Ron's little throw away comment on metadata helped me put non-digital resources in perspective.  And Tia's links take us a little into the cooperate large scale operations.

So: I'm also interested in moving on to new questions.  Given our initial discussion . . .   Given some of the convergence, and some unfinished thinking . . .  So what?  Where to now?  Given these ideas and perspectives, what do we do in our various roles?  What should (our) institutions do?
And: how should we then teach and learn??

I attach Derek's paper, now that it has emerged out of his the information processing and incubation part of his PLE.  (Three pages and a nifty diagram - I think several of us could have a version of the diagram in our brains if we looked . .) - Derek
From a chilly, clear Wintery, downunder, Christchurch Saturday afternoon.

SCoPE: Seminars -> Personal Learning Environments June 4-24, 2007 -> Into tools . . .

by Derek Chirnside -
From Re: Welcome . . . by emmadw on Monday, 4 June 2007 8:31:00 a.m.:
That's where I'd see something like Elgg, Plex or Facebook being the starting point.

Pretty quick we have got into a discussion of tools. The technical side of things. 

I'll add one more: James Farmer makes a case for WPMU - Wordpress Multiuser as an option.  Wordpress is one of the most popular open source blogging tools, but it has incredible flexibility to add pages, and from the dashboard to add items (like feeds, links etc) to the home page)

In fact, I reckon that right now we’re limited pretty much only by our imagination and ambition, and in tools like Elgg and WPMU we’re not far off cracking it. Yeh, major institutions aren’t going to start switching their LMSs to our PLEs any time soon and yes security, ip, maturity and (above all IMO) the structuralist transmissive models that LMSs on the whole play up to and re-enforce make this a difficult journey, but having said all that…. stranger things have happened.
[http://incsub.org/blog/2006/the-inevitable-personal-learning-environment-post]

But: this begs the question.  What is a PLE?

Derek is actually writing a short paper as part of his normal day job that may appear here soon.  But a little preview.

There are clearly at least two views of PLE's on we we get technical.
  1. An application.  (Please correct my lingo here Derek)  Like Elgg, Plex, Facebook, WPMU.
  2. Or a collection of tools.  Just have a home page of some sort (like Netvibes as Derek suggests) where you link to your suite of tools.
    Stephen Downes is strong on this view.
Maybe Emma is on the right track: a starting point.  From there on - into the hands of the student/learner.

Brenda's question From Re: Welcome . . . by harpsouth on Monday, 4 June 2007 5:15:00 a.m.: Is there a place where one might see a sample? does not quite have a simple answer.  I had this romantic view of a few field trips to vist during our time together.

So to with Amy's question: From Re: Welcome . . . by ajs on Monday, 4 June 2007 10:14:00 a.m.: Can an LMS (Learning Management System - or a VLE - Virtual Learning Environment) be extended to provide some of the benefits of a PLE as well?  :-)

Comments?


SCoPE: Seminars -> Personal Learning Environments June 4-24, 2007 -> Personal Learning Ecology . . .

by Derek Chirnside -
Wow.  This is what comes of living in a 'downunder' timezone.  You wake up and come online to a LOT of buzzing ideas.

In thinking about the possible directions of the conversation Derek W came up with a couple of themes for conversations.

One was to consider our patterns of behaviours: our practices, the developing of our own personal ecology of learning, our choice of tools - or not - our own PLE.

Sylvia captures a little of this in her post a year ago:
What just struck me is how much we benefit from having access to other people's personal learning environments. How other people draw connections, decide what's important, and interpret what they come across in their own daily routines through commentary, can be so intriguing. In many ways how individuals structure their PLEs is as valuable as the information.

Maybe we all have a PLE of sorts.  :-)

This is actually at the heart of some of the debate.  Is a PLE a thing, a collection of things, or an attitude?

I very nearly moved Sylvia and Derek's posts over to here . . .
Sylvia says: From collecting information feeds for yourself and others? by scurrie on Monday, 4 June 2007 2:20:00 p.m.:
Help! Why am I having a hard time getting personal about this?

You've heard a little of Derek's story:
From Re: collecting information feeds for yourself and others? by dwenmoth on Monday, 4 June 2007 3:26:00 p.m.:
I tend to regard that as my PLE - a sort of on-line and off-line combination.

Interesting eh? - we are stretching the boundary a little here, but what does your Personal Learning Environment look like?

SCoPE: Seminars -> Personal Learning Environments June 4-24, 2007 -> Welcome . . .

by Derek Chirnside -
Welcome to our seminar for June, Personal Learning Environments.

Over the last year or so, the subject of Personal Learning Environments came up several times as part of other SCoPE conversations. 
A few random quotes:
Informal Learning: May 15 - June 4, 2006 - scurrie on Friday, 9 June 2006 2:42:00 p.m.:
What just struck me is how much we benefit from having access to other people's personal learning environments. How other people draw connections, decide what's important, and interpret what they come across in their own daily routines through commentary, can be so intriguing. In many ways how individuals structure their PLEs is as valuable as the information. Personal Learning Environments are obviously valuable for the individual, but maybe "personal" is the wrong label if others are benefiting as well?
jaycross on Friday, 9 June 2006 5:30:00 p.m.:
Sylvia, I find personal the apt term and I agree that looking into one another's PLEs is a great learning experience. I've been playing around with recording some of my navigation on screen and replaying it as "a look over my shoulder." We all use so many shortcuts and online tools that a three-minute look over anyone's shoulder may show you how to save hours.
Blogging to Enhance Learning Experiences: February 12-25, 2007: terrywassall on Monday, 12 February 2007 9:26:00 a.m.:
In particular I am interested in how I and students can develop a more personal learning environment outside of the more restricted institutional VLE.
Learning the Art of Online Facilitation: March 1-21, 2007: berthelemy on Monday, 22 January 2007 5:59:00 a.m.:
Regarding the second question, I think about my own experiences of writing responses to things on my blog, or as comments on other people's blogs, or in forums like this. I also have bookmarks kept in Diigo; three email clients where I keep archives of conversations; as well as various file storage mechanisms. Is the search engine really the only way we can try to keep track of things? What about content and conversations that are hidden behind a login? The concept of the Personal Learning Environment seems beguiling, but for the moment do we need to live with the fact that our online lives are not very easily connected? What happens then to those people who find working online difficult to start with?
From Live chat breadcrumbs - transparent facilitation by nnoakes on Monday, 19 March 2007 12:35:00 a.m.:
There were a number of key ideas I left with from our live chat/conf call, such as:
* Complexity - facilitation, technologies, life
* Proliferation - of tools, of knowledge
* Fractured/fracturing/fracturati
on (not a word but should be) - as a consequence of proliferation and complexity, inclusion-exclusion
* Expectations - mis-match (gulf? chasm?), management (solving it needs immersion)
* Faciltator's role - baggage of transmission approach (connects to expectations too), knowledge capturing and sensemaking, glue, collaborator - and how to spread role to others
* Learner and learning center stage - starting point of shared value of learner driven, e.g. personal learning environment (PLE)
* Tensions - (i) conforming to one tool vs. multiple tools, (ii) focus on individual vs. focus on group, (iii) being together vs. being apart - level of commitment needed for being together
From Re: Online Facilitation - the next 10 years (where do we go from here?) by hondomac on Thursday, 15 March 2007 6:07:00 a.m.:
I think that the increased use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies (and Web 3.0, 4.0 , etc....) will add a greater "social" aspect to online learning and online facilitation. What this means to me is that as an online facilitator I will be able to engage learners in ways that I have not even fully thought out or realized yet, and they will be able to engage each other in ways not yet fully explored, resulting in a much richer learning experience with a collective approach to information gathering and dissemination.
Learners will develop their own personal learning environments (PLEs) around tools and technologies that they want to use rather than tools assigned or provided to them. This means as a facilitator I will have to be aware of these diverse tools and technologies.

On reading this small assemblage of quotes I think there is a lot to tease out already.  !!

And just for fun I found this while I was trolling the archives, a quirky take on PLE's . . .
Cartoon

The month ahead . . .

Derek (Wenmoth) and I have talked on this topic quite frequently over the last few years.  Through his blog  (eg http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/personalisation/ ) and his work at Core Education (http://core-ed.net/) he has contributed regularly to the debate around PLE's. My interest comes through the challenges of meeting the needs of students at the place where I work - last year the Christchurch College of Education, and now the University of Canterbury.  We both live in Christchurch, New Zealand. (although Derek is spending quite a lot of time in Malaysia at the moment).

As usual, we will have opportunity to tell stories, share ideas and explore new thoughts together.  You are invited introduce yourself and tell a little of your interest in this topic (probably not the first introduction if you are a regular here!!).  I'm not going to dive in with PLE definitions, further questions or directions just yet, but if you have things to start us off, go ahead!!

If you are really new to SCoPE seminars, you are particularly welcome.

Soon we will open up two further threads, two dimensions for our thinking: the behavioural and the technical aspects of this diverse and multifaceted topic . . .

With regards, Derek (Chirnside)