PLE thoughts: #PLENK2010

I recently signed up to participate in Stephen Downe's PLENK 2010 (Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge) online course. The main reason for this is because I'm working on EDU20.NET, the EDU 2.0 personalized social learning network, and wanted to see what others are thinking about such environments. So far, most of the activity is taking place in forum discussions on Moodle. My own thoughts about this area are:

1. There is a huge benefit of having a community of enthusiastic learners that can share and interact with each other. Not only do you have interesting conversations, but the communicate can also accumulate resources, reviews, Q&A responses. I don't think of this is being a PERSONAL learning environment, more a personalized SOCIAL learning environment.

2. If you want lots of students, especially high school kids, to engage in some kind of personalized social learning, then it needs to be more structured than just a bunch of forums. For example, having self-assessment quizzes, badges you can earn, karma points for helping others, individual and group quests, resource library, ability to arrange your own personal favorite resources in a Flip-board like fashion, etc. There are a variety of game mechanics that these environments can use to be more engaging.

3. Social learning environments should exist independently of any particular institution or class.

4. Ideally, social learning environments can be used from within LMSs. For example, a Math class might connect its students to a Math learning circle for additional learning.

I'll post more thoughts as the course progresses.

Comments

[Martin Kramer]

Hi Graham,
I totally agree with you on all four points. Some of the prominent findings of my survey point exactly there: People who have already gained some know-how about LMSs and social tools are more likely to build an effective personal learning environment.
I also agree with you in calling this a SOCIAL enironment rather than a personal learning environment. What I'd like to see, though, is a personally owned place, a "home base" one can use on a long-term basis, and a place to permanently store any personal portfolio. Also, as learners may or may not seek cooperation on certain topics, I would suggest a personal learning environment as the smallest unit, fully expandable to a fully grown institution on the upper end of the scale.
Knowing that this is within the realm of edu20, I'd specially love to see a connection between edu20.org and edu20.net - and my guess is you already have plans ...
Cheers, and thanks for keeping us updated!
Martin