From Re: Personal Learning Ecology . . . by michelemmartin@gmail.com on Wednesday, 6 June 2007 1:48:00 p.m.:
Reality is, though, that all three could have worked as a personal "portal"--it was a matter of which one "felt" best to me and offered the functionality I was looking for.
I agree Michelle, PLE's really are personal eh? Learning style, thinking styles, preferences, (platform, mobility of lifestyle . .) Let me know your thoughts on evernote . . You can also run it off a USB which is really cool.
Derek Chirnside
Posts made by Derek Chirnside
If I had a Mac I'd use Tinderbox. It is commercial, and priced a bit high for me. I'll amend that. I just looked at the website, it is ridiculously expensive.
http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/
Written by Mark Bernstein, a loveable eccentric who visited NZ last year for BlogHui 2006.
But it does presentations that are cool as well, and is really personal knowledge management, an aspect of PLE attitude I think is critical for me - as well as managing fragments.
This is not morning soapbox spewing Heather. You have hit the nail on the head with this comment: "What are our needs? What are the needs of our learners? What are the needs of those the learners will end up working with? When we answer these questions we can determine what is the best thing or environment to make use of."
-Derek
http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/
Written by Mark Bernstein, a loveable eccentric who visited NZ last year for BlogHui 2006.
But it does presentations that are cool as well, and is really personal knowledge management, an aspect of PLE attitude I think is critical for me - as well as managing fragments.
This is not morning soapbox spewing Heather. You have hit the nail on the head with this comment: "What are our needs? What are the needs of our learners? What are the needs of those the learners will end up working with? When we answer these questions we can determine what is the best thing or environment to make use of."
-Derek
Michelle, this is fascinating. It took me some time to read your two blog posts . . there are some interesting links here that I got distracted with. eg http://www.diigo.com/ ?? (How do you pronounce it??)
I like your categorisation:
Maybe Heather uses Google Home page in a similar way . . From Re: Into tools . . . by hmross on Monday, 4 June 2007 7:19:00 p.m.: Per Sylvia's recommendation I checked out pageflake, which also reminds me of Google, but allows for sharing, which is great (it doesn't let me add my Google Reader to it though).
Bron makes two comments: From Re: tools, an attitude or lifelong learning by bronwynh on Monday, 4 June 2007 10:00:00 p.m.: I find firefox and having lots of tabs open works pretty well so my organisation is dynamic to fit the situation and my need at the time.
From Re: complexity theory by bronwynh on Monday, 4 June 2007 10:03:00 p.m.: Surely we need to flow as our learning needs change by the hour, by the day? If I get slotted into a neat PLE system whatever that is, I have already constructed walls and barriers to some extent. The very act of selection has reduced my perceptive field of vision. I have become set in my webways, my pre-determined feeds and structures and tools. Complexity may be eliminated and in doing so I have reduced my learning potential. A PLE has now become a lineated web ...a contradiction in terms really.
I also was interested to see Ray Sim's mindmap which inspired Michelle. My own mindmap would be much more chaotic, and a little more like Brons "Based around Firefox tabs" dynamic - but also chaotic. But I reach a limit here. Today in working on a workshop I ended up with 42 tabs open, and if I opened a new one it shot to the right end and how to get back to where I was, and I wasted 40 minutes looking at the extensions, there are some that claim to help this by grouping tabs. Then I try different windows for grouped tabs . . .
But as I've moved from project to project I have tended to get impatient with the Netvibes approach which I did seriously try to use. It did, for me, end up being constraining. Now it just holds a few key things I need to remember often when I am not on my usual PC. I may give it another go after reading your approach Michelle. [And I'd be interested just for interest at some clear comparisons and contrasts with Google home pages and Pageflakes]
OFFLINE, not internet connected: Dare I say it: for projects I revert to paper to capture things and word files, and HDD folder structures (with copernic desktop search). Where it all comes from, and comes together is a little app called Evernote. http://www.evernote.com/en/
Client based. No web connections . . . This is one of the few programs where I have thought "Maybe the PC is as good as the Mac after all".
It has like an endless stream of items (pictures, text etc) with tagging - just what I want. But I've only been using this seriously for a few months.
This manages my fragments, thoughtlets etc. Totally collaborative. And totally offline . . . [Does anyone else use this?]
ONLINE, internet connected: browser + Gmail + delicious (much more regular with this now, the power of shared tags . .) + RSS agregator + skype I think are my core tools.
In talking with Derek last week I described myself as having a pretty messy PLE with only a few basic tools . . with a trail of tools behind me I have tried and discarded . . . in some respects a learning style/work style I guess.
Lapsed: Vootodo, lists, google notes, mindmeister (But may change), writley, academici, flickr (but that will change), GTDtikiwiki, . . .
I'd like to suggest most of our own "personal PLE's" will have some sort of integrating 'place' to support our working orientation. That it will be different for different ones of us (learning style related as Ignatia suggests) - for some (like Anay and Derek) this will be browser centred . . others agregator centred, Netvibes etc. It's this core place/attitude the programmers are seeking to create, as Glen graphically writes . From Re: tools, an attitude or lifelong learning by glendavi on Tuesday, 5 June 2007 3:12:00 a.m.: the only reason you would want to try and define a PLE, or wrap it up in a sexy web 2.0 wrapper and put PLE(beta) in big letters on top is if you were a developer looking for some JISC funding, or an academic looking for a new paper to write and present at the latest conference. Going down this line will just end up trapping us in the same inflexible 'learning' systems that we may be trying to escape from. I agree with your complexity theory post Bronwyn - we need to throw the whole PLE concept out the window before higher education in general get their teeth into it.
I don't think they will - but their efforts may have some spin off.
The questions remain of course, as Emma and others say: how to implement in education and not lock it all down, how to help our students and free them to their own personal trajectory, how to help create lifelong learners etc. Without being prescriptive.
Well, much more than I meant to write. Need to go. OK, ramble mode off. This is probably much more appropriate to a blog post.
I like your categorisation:
- Gathering Information
- Processing Information
- Acting on the Learning
Moved Back to Netvibes
One day several months ago, Netvibes annoyed me and I switched to Feedraider. I have no idea why, really, since Netvibes is so much better for what I'm trying to do. So my first step was to head back over.
Created a Dashboard for Myself
One of the tabs I created for myself in Netvibes is called My Work. This is the first tab in my reader and I put in a few things that have begun to help me already.
A quick bookmarks module--One of the netvibes modules you can drag and drop into your page is a Bookmarks Module. It allows you to add any bookmark you want, so I put in a few pages that I access a few times a day, such as my Typepad Account, a page with HTML codes (since I always forget), etc. I also added links to my blog and to my ePortfolio (more on that another day). This way I can reach these things directly from my dashboard. And that dashboard is always available to me no matter where I am. Sort of a mini de.licio.us, I suppose.
Much more than a mini delicious I suspect. Dashboard is the term used in Wordpress (the platform James Farmer has advocated) - kind of like a control centre, a home page on steroids. I'm not sure if it quite lives up to the burden he suggests it can carry.
Maybe Heather uses Google Home page in a similar way . . From Re: Into tools . . . by hmross on Monday, 4 June 2007 7:19:00 p.m.: Per Sylvia's recommendation I checked out pageflake, which also reminds me of Google, but allows for sharing, which is great (it doesn't let me add my Google Reader to it though).
Bron makes two comments: From Re: tools, an attitude or lifelong learning by bronwynh on Monday, 4 June 2007 10:00:00 p.m.: I find firefox and having lots of tabs open works pretty well so my organisation is dynamic to fit the situation and my need at the time.
From Re: complexity theory by bronwynh on Monday, 4 June 2007 10:03:00 p.m.: Surely we need to flow as our learning needs change by the hour, by the day? If I get slotted into a neat PLE system whatever that is, I have already constructed walls and barriers to some extent. The very act of selection has reduced my perceptive field of vision. I have become set in my webways, my pre-determined feeds and structures and tools. Complexity may be eliminated and in doing so I have reduced my learning potential. A PLE has now become a lineated web ...a contradiction in terms really.
I also was interested to see Ray Sim's mindmap which inspired Michelle. My own mindmap would be much more chaotic, and a little more like Brons "Based around Firefox tabs" dynamic - but also chaotic. But I reach a limit here. Today in working on a workshop I ended up with 42 tabs open, and if I opened a new one it shot to the right end and how to get back to where I was, and I wasted 40 minutes looking at the extensions, there are some that claim to help this by grouping tabs. Then I try different windows for grouped tabs . . .
But as I've moved from project to project I have tended to get impatient with the Netvibes approach which I did seriously try to use. It did, for me, end up being constraining. Now it just holds a few key things I need to remember often when I am not on my usual PC. I may give it another go after reading your approach Michelle. [And I'd be interested just for interest at some clear comparisons and contrasts with Google home pages and Pageflakes]
OFFLINE, not internet connected: Dare I say it: for projects I revert to paper to capture things and word files, and HDD folder structures (with copernic desktop search). Where it all comes from, and comes together is a little app called Evernote. http://www.evernote.com/en/
Client based. No web connections . . . This is one of the few programs where I have thought "Maybe the PC is as good as the Mac after all".
It has like an endless stream of items (pictures, text etc) with tagging - just what I want. But I've only been using this seriously for a few months.
This manages my fragments, thoughtlets etc. Totally collaborative. And totally offline . . . [Does anyone else use this?]
ONLINE, internet connected: browser + Gmail + delicious (much more regular with this now, the power of shared tags . .) + RSS agregator + skype I think are my core tools.
In talking with Derek last week I described myself as having a pretty messy PLE with only a few basic tools . . with a trail of tools behind me I have tried and discarded . . . in some respects a learning style/work style I guess.
Lapsed: Vootodo, lists, google notes, mindmeister (But may change), writley, academici, flickr (but that will change), GTDtikiwiki, . . .
I'd like to suggest most of our own "personal PLE's" will have some sort of integrating 'place' to support our working orientation. That it will be different for different ones of us (learning style related as Ignatia suggests) - for some (like Anay and Derek) this will be browser centred . . others agregator centred, Netvibes etc. It's this core place/attitude the programmers are seeking to create, as Glen graphically writes . From Re: tools, an attitude or lifelong learning by glendavi on Tuesday, 5 June 2007 3:12:00 a.m.: the only reason you would want to try and define a PLE, or wrap it up in a sexy web 2.0 wrapper and put PLE(beta) in big letters on top is if you were a developer looking for some JISC funding, or an academic looking for a new paper to write and present at the latest conference. Going down this line will just end up trapping us in the same inflexible 'learning' systems that we may be trying to escape from. I agree with your complexity theory post Bronwyn - we need to throw the whole PLE concept out the window before higher education in general get their teeth into it.
I don't think they will - but their efforts may have some spin off.
The questions remain of course, as Emma and others say: how to implement in education and not lock it all down, how to help our students and free them to their own personal trajectory, how to help create lifelong learners etc. Without being prescriptive.
Well, much more than I meant to write. Need to go. OK, ramble mode off. This is probably much more appropriate to a blog post.
Emma: Was trying to sort some material today for a workshop and found this cartoon . .
Part two is on the website
http://gwegner.edublogs.org/2007/04/28/gatekeepers-inc/
Part two is on the website
http://gwegner.edublogs.org/2007/04/28/gatekeepers-inc/
Emma (and 2 or three others), 8.00am here, and I just did not hit the keys early enough, domesticity calls. I've a morning of meetings, I'll be online in the afternoon.
Glancing at your posts, you have raised some new significant matters.
I have a son like you describe. Mobile phone (yes) Internet (only if I really have to) computers (No) :-)
Last weekend's Innovate had some new takes on this as well, I'll get out the URL. Have more questions than answers at the moment . . .
[Isn't it great to be conversing AND working??]
I'll be back later . . .
Glancing at your posts, you have raised some new significant matters.
I have a son like you describe. Mobile phone (yes) Internet (only if I really have to) computers (No) :-)
Last weekend's Innovate had some new takes on this as well, I'll get out the URL. Have more questions than answers at the moment . . .
[Isn't it great to be conversing AND working??]
I'll be back later . . .