Please don’t groan at yet another post on Personal Learning Environments. Well – I hope not becuase there are a few more in the pipeline. Why am I so focused. Besides my interest in how to change what I see as a grossly unfair and non-functional education system, because I am a partner on the EU funded Mature project which seeks to use PLEs to foster knowledge maturation.And I am using this blog as a jotting pad for confused ideas!

The problem with much of the debate for me, is that it is focused on hwo we use PLEs in education – or more narrowly in higher education. As such it is about replacing VLEs, letting go of control, providing services etc. Indeed we spend much of our time defining PLEs by what they are not! But what about those not in education – or at least those for whom formal learning is a episodic event? And what about using PLEs in the workplace? There has been very little dicussion around these issues and yet I think this may be where the real power of PLEs lies. Of couse everyone has their own PLE – if we take the widest sense of an enevironment in which we learn and if we accept that all working environments foster or constrain learning to a different extent. So one issue is simply how to design learning conducive working environments. But in a study we have undertaken for the Mature project (not yet available) we found that individuals have highly idiosyncratic ways of developing, managing and sharing knowledge, ranging from post-it notes and carrier bags to PDAs and voice recorders. On the one hand they are concious of their need for information and knowledge, on the other hand spend little time considering just how they meet such a need. And of course ICT comfidence and competence varies greatly.

We face a number of challenges in introducing PLEs for these knowledge rich workers. To what extent do we want to challenge the personal strategies people already have – especially if they are working for them? How can PLE tools be made to integrate within the working environment? At a more funadamental level what are these tools? What added value will they produce?

Yes – we can develop a range of services – calenders, access to research and resources and can provide these in flexible and multiple formats. But services alone do not mean learning. Much of the present learning is informal and much comes out of involvement in multiple networks – both organisational and personal. How can we build on the power of networks to enhance learning?

What is necessary for learning to take place? In a recent skype channel chat Jenny Hughes suggested that learning depends on readiness, preparedness and motivation. Readiness, she said, is about prerequisite skills and knowledge and physical and intellectual and emotional state or stage of development; preparedness is about having the time, the technology, the environment etc. and motivation is will or desire. If there are opportunties for informal learning in everyday work, then a PLE can assist in the preparedness for learning but can do little for readiness for motivation.

To be continued……

Jenny Hughes has been undertaking the thankless task of trying to edit (or more to rewrite) an article of mine on Personal Learning Environments as part of a handbook for teachers for the Taccle project.

I am intrigued by her reference ot the orgins of the words ‘curriculum’ and ‘learning’ in this excerpt from the draft:

“Traditionally, knowledge has been conceived of something possed by ‘experts’ . The formal education curriculum is based on the idea that learning can be neatly and conveniently divided into subject areas which in turn are based on traditional university disciplines.  The people who have the knowledge (the teachers) are accorded higher status than those that do not (the learners) and although all good teachers maintain that they learn a lot from their pupils, the passage of information is conceived as being one-way. There are desgnated places (schools) where learning officially takes place, where learning is tested and  which control access to the next stage or level of learning

The new technologies have challenged this status quo.  The explosion of freely available sources of information has increased the range of knowledge available to people and has made it accessible when and where they want it, in bite sized chunks that do not necessarily form a coherent subject discipline.

We are moving from the idea of knowledge being developed and controlled by experts to collaborative knowledge construction which can be facilitated by the use of social software, as we describe above. Even more importantly, we are starting to rethink what qualifies as ‘knowledge’.  Instead of the ‘curriculum’ being defined by experts, communities of people interested in the same things – or even just by being part of a community – are acting as a curriculum.

Interestingly, the word curriculum comes from the latin ‘currere’, which means to run or race and ‘curriculum’ was a race or racecourse. It is easy to see how this was adopted to describe a learning course which had a starting point, travelled along a straight route and reached a finishing point with competitors battling with each other to finish first or to be the best.

Maybe for the first time learning has stopped being a race course. Conversely ‘to learn’ originally meant ‘to find and follow a track’  and this seems to sum up rather well the current shift in emphasis from formal curriculum to informal learning.

This changing model requires not only different approaches but different technologies and implicit is the change from an institutional approach to learning to a more learner centred approach.”

Great Evolve seminar on Personal Learning Environments last night (you can see the recording here – if this link fails click here and go to Monday 22). What came through clearly was that PLEs are primariy a social and political issue. As I write this Scott Wilson who presented at the seminar has just twittered “scottbw PLE – Its quite tricky keeping the social and technical interventions both in focus at the same time.” But that is exactly what we have to do. A focus on the technical without taking up the social and politcial will fail. I would go even further to say it is the social and polictical fcus of what we wish to achieve in modelling a new vision of our education and learning systems which should be driving technicl development. I see so many technical presentations which leave me wondering – ‘so what’. And as Francis Bell rightly said last night we need to evaluate and understand the impact of previous generations of technology implementation on education and learning. But I also think many of us are hiding behind technology and failing to express our true wishes which are to reshape the way we learn in our societies.

Now may be the time to open such a debate. The PLE discussions have been instrumental in revealing many of the systemic tensions in education and traning provision. Now we need to start to articulate a new agenda and to consider how we can shape techncial development to support such a vision.

The Open Seminar Sessions @ EVOLVE are back!

This Month is about Personal Learning Environments. Hopefully a lot of food for thought here!!

This month our guest speaker is Scott Wilson from CETIS UK, who will share some thoughts about Personal Learning Environments

The idea of a PLE (Personal Learning Environments) is that learners can configure different services and tools to develop their own learning environment, bringing together informal learning from the home, the workplace as well as more formal provision by education institutions. The PLE is controlled by the learner and as well as offering an environment for accessing different information and knowledge allows access to web based publishing and other opportunities for creating content and expressing and exchanging ideas. The idea behind the PLE is to harness the power and potential of social software and web 2.0 applications for learning.

The session will take place in September, 22 2008 at 1800 UK time (please check your time here)

We will meet in Elluminate meeting, which you can access here. [ This is an open meeting. Attendee(s) don’t require a password to join, even if requested to do so. Just type your name]

I accepted an invitation to do a keynote presentation at a conference on Web 2.0 at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal on October 10th. What I dinn’t realise is that they wanted me to write a paper. I am not so keen on formal papers these days – I far prefer multimedia but I finally got down to it. I greatly enjoyed readng up for he paper and quite enjoyed writing it – though am frustrated at all the things I did not say. And I still find the academic text format a bit stifling. Oh – and I hated doing the referencing (though that is my fault – I should have done it as I wrote). Anyway here is the paper. I am trying to out in scribd to see if this makes sense as a way of blogging a paper.

If you prefer you can download the paper here – portplesfin

OK – the summer break from the airwaves is over. Next week we will broadcast the first of the autumn series of Sound of the Bazaar LIVE – details tomorrow but put Tuesday 1820, CEST, 1720 BST in your diaries now. And here as a warm up is a new podcast produced by the wonderful Andreas Auwarter from the Bildung in Dialog site (English monoglots – don’t be put off by the the German language introduction – the discussion is in English. As Andeas says in this programme notes: “Steve Wheeler in an interview with Patrick Vetter and Christian Czarnowske. Finally Graham Attwell joins the dialog and this interview brings up to an interesting and short discussion about Web 2.0, Adult Education, Web 3.0 and their meanings of those terms.

Soundpainted with podsafe music from http://www.Jamendo.com.”

This was recorded on a beautiful summers day on the terrace of St Virgil’s conference centre in Salzburg at the EdMedia2008 Conference. To be honest, its chats like this outside the official programme which make conferences worth their while.

Once more my thanks to Andreas – and do join us on the terrace and try to imagine the sun.

Sadly I can’t seem to get the stream to play in my blog. But just head on over to Bildung in Dialog to hear this recording.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Yesterday I read “Designing for Change: Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments” by Fridolin Wild, Felix Mödritscher and Steinn Sigurdarson, who are working on the EU funded iCamp project. Thi is interesting stuff.
At the core of their arguement is the idea that “by establishing a learning environment, i.e. a network of people, artefacts, and tools (consciously or unconsciously) involved in learning activities, is part of the learning outcomes, not an instructional condition.”

They go on to look at AI and adaptive approaches to learning environments.

“Adaptive (educational) hypermedia technologies all differ”, they say, but “they share one characteristic: they deal primarily with the navigation through content, i.e. the represented domain specific knowledge. Information processing and knowledge construction activities are not in the focus of these approaches. Consequently, they do not treat environments as learning outcomes and they cannot support learning environment design.”

Their approach goes beyond personalisation.

“Considering the learning environment not only a condition for but also an outcome of learning, moves the learning environment further away from being a monolithic platform which is personalisable or customisable by learners (‘easy to use’) and heading towards providing an open set of learning tools, an unrestricted number of actors, and an open corpus of artefacts, either pre-existing or created by the learning process – freely combinable and utilisable by learners within their learning activities (‘easy to develop’). ”

They go on to explain a set of tools beng piloted by the iCamp project:

“In this section we describe the development of a technological framework enabling learners to build up their own personal learning environments by composing web-based tools into a single user experience, get involved in collaborative activities, share their designs with peers (for ‘best practice’ or ‘best of breed’ emergence), and adapt their designs to reflect their experience of the learning process. This framework is meant to be a generic platform for end-user development of personal learning environments taking into account the paradigm shift from expert-driven personalisation of learning to a design for emergence method for building a personal learning environment.”

The tools and platform they have developed are based on a learner interaction scripting language (LISL) leading to a Mash-UP Personal Learning Environment (MUPPLE). I do not fully understand how the platform works (does it require users to understand the scripting language?) but it appears to be based on users describing a set of activities they wish to undertake. These activities then allow them to access a set of tools to undertake those activities. The focus on activities rather than tasks seems to me interesting.

I very much like the idea that the learning platform is seen as an outcome of learning and think the approach has great potential. I woudl be interested to hear what others think of the approach. I hope to get a look at the platform and will report back.

I am greatly intrigued by Martin Weller’s presentation on SocialLearn yesterday. One of the advantages of Elluminate is it allows you to watch a recording of the presentation afterwards, although it is very frustrating not being able ot take part in the rolling chat channel. SocialLearn is a UK Open University project. According to the SocialLearn blog: “Some learners will be happy running 20 web apps [for their Personal Laerning Environment], while others will want to access this ecosystem via a coherent web interface. Currently one would do this via iGoogle, Netvibes, Facebook etc, if the apps have widgets in these different walled gardens.

In SocialLearn, we aim to move beyond web-feed based interoperability and visual clustering of apps on the webtop, with SL-aware apps communicating via the API, so that the learner’s profile can track and intelligently manage the flow of information and events to support their activity.”

This seems a great approach and I particularly liked Martin’s demo of their alpha software. two things stood out for me – the focus on people as a recommender for resources, thus allowing Open Educational Resouces to be accessed in context. Secondly the idea of supporting micro and episodic learning.

I do have concerns. The OU appears to be positioning the project as an experiment in exploring new business models in a world of competition by multiple learning providers. I am not sure that this is the ideal starting point but I suppose innovation is driven by many concerns and motivations!

When I watched the presentation last night I was also not happy with another of the core assumations behind the project – namely that “there is a major shift in society and education driven by the possibilities new technology create for creating and sharing content and social networking.” This seemed to me too technology centerd. But looking at it again in the cold light of a Friday morning the emphasis on the possibilities of new technology seems right. What then becomes interesting is that if such possibilities exist and if we assume that technology can be socially shaped, how do we use such possibilities in facilitating learning.

And in that respect, the SocialLearn project looks to be a very important initiative.

I think I might have posted this some time ago. But it is worth looking at agin in teh context of developing Personal Learning Environments. I would argue that a central tole for a PLE is for knowledge development and sharing and the knowledge development involves different processes. Jenny Hughes has produced an analysis of different forms of knowledge based on the Welsh language. Whilst English has few words to differentiate knowledge, in Welsh there are at least six different terms for knowledge processes and six different terms for different types of knowledge, each with their own distinct meaning.
The general word for knowledge in Welsh – the translation from the English word knowledge is Gwybodaeth. Even this is not an exact translation. Gwybodaeth means something like ‘knowing-ness’, rather than knowledge.

However, the word Gwybodaeth – or knowing-ness comes in different forms defining different types of knowledge:

1. Cynnull (gwybodaeth) – to gather knowledge (as in acquisition) ‘along life’s way’
2. Cynhaeaf (gwybodaeth) – to harvest (purposefully) knowledge– or set up systems for harnessing knowledge or organise knowledge
3. Cymrodedd (gwybodaeth) – to compromise what you know to accommodate the unknown
4. Cynnau (gwybodaeth) – to light or kindle knowledge (in someone else) – can also be used to ‘share knowledge’ but implicit is that it is an active process not simply an exchange of information, which is an entirely different concept.
5. Cynllunplas (gwybodaeth) – to design (new) knowledge, paradigm shift
6. Cynyddu (gwybodaeth) – to increase or grow (existing) knowledge

I would argue that a PLE should support in some ways all of these different forms of knowing-ness and that such a list represents a useful starting point in defining what we want a PLE to be able to do.

I am working on a couple of new papers on Personal Learning Environments. And getting asked by developers what we want them to produce as a PLE. Nota n easy question – in fact I am not sure it is the right question! But here are a few things I think I want my PLE to be able to do.

Access / search

One of the major things we use computers for learning for is accessing and searching information and knowledge. Whilst Google has greatly improved searching it is far form perfect. We need to be able to search inside documents in a way we cannot at the moment. And of course we need to be able to access and search our own computers and possibly those of our peer network. We need to be able to search inside audio and video, which is as yet problematic. And perhaps most importantly we need to be able to find people. Accessing and searching poses many challenges for developers. At present at a relatively simple level of educational repositories we are uncertain as to whether federated search or harvesting offers the best approach.
Aggregate and scaffold
A second use of a Personal Learning Environment could be for aggregating the outcomes of our activity – be it searches for documents, or other media, be it people or be it our own work. Aggregation is more than simply producing a database or of ‘learning objects’. Aggregation should allow us to bring information and knowledge together in a meaningful way. At the same time such a process of aggregation should assist us in scaffolding our knowledge, both in terms of growing on existing knowledge but also in terms of compromising what we know to accommodate the new.

Manipulate
Another possible use of a Personal Learning Environment is to manipulate or rearrange knowledge artefacts. This could be at the simple level of editing text or adding a note or tag. However with the use of different forms of media it may involve more extensive repurposing of such objects. Such repurposing may be for use within a personal knowledge base or may be for (re) publishing or sharing with others.

Another reason for manipulating media artefacts may be to render them usable within different environments and contexts.
Analyse
A PLE should be a place to analyse knowledge. This might involve the use of different tools. Alternatively, or additionally, it might involve the functionality to render information, knowledge and data in forms to allow analysis. It might also include the functionality to share and collaborate in analyses and to compare the results of such analysis with the research of others.
Store
A simple and obvious function for a PLE is to store data and artefacts. However, that storage function may not be so easy as at first thought with an increasing use of different storage media including external drives and web storage. Whilst some data and artefacts may be stored in a personal repository it may be that others will be stored within shared areas.
Reflect
Reflection is a central activity in developing learning. Reflection is particularly critical in an information rich (or information overload) environment. Reflection involves questioning, challenging and seeking clarification and forming and defending opinions and supporting or challenging the opinions of others. A PLE could provide (micro) tools for supporting these processes.
Present
We all have a need to present our ideas, learning and knowledge in different ways and for different purposes. It may be that we merely wish to present some work in progress for feedback from others. We may also wish to present parts of our work for a seminar or for a job application. A PLE could offer the functionality to select and summarise ideas and learning and develop a presentation in different formats according to need. Some forms of presentation may be unique instances – for example a presentation at a conference, others may be more recursive e.g a C.V. Tool also need to take into account that presentation may involve different media.
Represent
The representation of learning and knowledge within a PLE may be seen as a more complex functionality of presentation. Whilst a presentation will draw directly on artefacts within the PLE, a representation will attempt to show the underpinning knowledge structures of such artefacts. A PLE could include tools for visualisation and tools which allow the structures of the knowledge to be shown in a dynamic way. They might also allow the dynamic re-rendering of such structures either through the interrelationship of the artefacts and the underpinning knowledge structures.   The representation of knowledge might be an individual activity but might also form part of a wider community activity

Share

That a personal Learning Environment should support individuals in sharing their learning and knowledge almost goes without saying. However, what is shared, when and with whom is far more complex. Tools could be developed, for example, which allow sharing to be the property of any particular artefact. A PLE might also include tools to facilitate collaborative work and collaborative work flows.
Network and people
Networks lie at the heart of a Personal Learning Environment. A PLE might be defined at a personal or individual node in a networked collaborative learning environment. It must be emphasised that a PE is not a document management system (although of course documents may be part of a PLE). PLE tools might allow social representation of networks and networking interchange. Such tools might also allow social association between people, knowledge and artefacts.