Double the buzzword fun!
I’ve only glazingly-eyed scanned some things people are writing about “Personal Learning Environments”, but I just wonder if you create a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) on something, does that mean it really exists?
But I understand, embrace, and cheer the notion that the tapestry of free, loosely connected, highly personal technologies (and so many of them are like, “Web 2.0”) that have the nice viral growth of use tat is running smack up and against the philosophy, structure, rigidness, lethargym fees, of our “established” educational technologies. I like the tension. Bring it on.
Like Leigh and to an extent James, I feel like, “so what? the whole dang ‘net is my PLE”. What is it if you give it a name?
I am more than open to being wrong, and guess I should read a bit more on the work being done, but at this point, it seems a bit, well, vapor-ous.
By the time I figure it out, it will be up to the 2.0 version. And I still may not get it.
Oh, that’s a relief! I thought everyone was being rather quiet on this topic – or over whelmingly positive towards yet another system on top of a system..
btw, the link you gave me shoots off to a Google search….?
Thanks, and no, the sheep are not all lining up for PLE… I am guessing like many tihngs there is just so much MORE to digest, and some people (self included) are maybe being a bit pickier on what external things that can hammer on.
Sorry about the bad link; it has been adjusetd. Keep on rocking from the Blue Mountains 😉
It seems like the PLE thing might be a recognition that the direction e-portfolios were going (in mainstream implementations, anyway) too institutional, too single-system-focused and perhaps too limited in the potential to connect people. And on the other hand, the very sensible approach of using blogs as e-portfolios helped with connections, but probably didn’t include enough structure for many people.
The PLE could still be a system like elgg that plays well with others (feeds in, feeds out from an LMS or other web apps), or it could be cobbled together for each person using many applications. Benefits to both.
Well it’s inevitably vaporous if we think that something concrete is going to come of the idea called Pavoodle or Elgg or whatever, and that it’s going to personally meet learners’ every information need. I think that it’s also though a little dangerous to just ignore analysis of what students/learners might really ‘need/want’ for their learning and just leave it up to commercial Web2.0 companies loosely coupled together with RSS feeds, and some Ruby. Not that these don’t have their place, but it just seems like as educational technologists perhaps there are those out there that can create better more open systems that hone in on our specific users needs. I’m still a bit hesitant of the “Web 2.0 is the PLE” mantra that seems to becoming hummed around the blogosphere, but it’s nice food for thought.