CCK11’s week six on PLEs & PLNs

The topic of week six of CCK11 was about personal learning environments and networks which is very relevant to my research. The facilitators’ live session on Elluminate on Friday 25.2.2011 was a great discussion on the topic with valuable contributions from the participants. The session was started with a question about the definition of PLE from the point of view of participants and what is unique in PLE? As shown below, there were different thoughts on the definition of PLE:

Source:CCK11

Some people just refer to a single application as their PLE like Twitter connections or iGoogle which seems to be more tool-oriented but, some other see PLE as a combination of different tools, services, resources and connections in the process of learning.  One person believed that PLE concept is a result of Web 2.0 evolution and if the internet did not move that way to more participatory direction, perhaps we wouldn’t talk today about PLE! Downes mentioned that PLEs are not just for collecting and aggregating resources and materials but rather pull all learner needs to PLEs then, remix, repurpose and create new artifacts and share them with the community. PLEs are where a lot of learning happens by all those processes.

Another big concern which Siemens posed was what problems PLEs can solve?  This is really an important question? Can PLEs approach be a pedagogical model of education to the needs of current network era in contrast to the classroom-based model? The screenshot below of the discussion whiteboard shows what participants think of PLE in this regard. It can be realized that PLE approach has values for lifelong and informal learning and the ways the learner can organize and personalize learning. 

Source: CCK11

Here in the course page of week 6 , there are some good readings for pondering about PLEs and PLNs. Also here is the Elluminate recording from the session and the MP3 file.