Group items tagged

"The Personal Learning Environment concept is relatively new and is often used interchangeably with Personal Learning Network. The earliest reference is attributed to George Siemens in his 2004 paper, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Downes and Attwell have also popularised the concept with Downes describing the PLE as "a tool that allows for a learner (or anyone) to engage in a distributed environment consisting of a network of people, services and resources" (2006, p23). Semantically, a personal learning environment and a personal learning network differ, with a network referring to connections and the interaction between them, and an environment referring to a broader definition that includes more passive tools and settings. The network and its broader socially constructed environment are interdependent, constantly shaping each other and unable to be separated."

Post that adopts Viplax Baxi's description of a PLE as Learning Operating System (LearnOS) and attempts to align Downes' PLE functions with traditional OS functions. Also discusses the problem of recall ... which is an issue for me too, and one that I try to tackle by bookmarking everything.

"The following is a list of the feeds harvested as part of the PLENK2010 course. This list may also be obtained as an OPML File."

Captured and shared as a Diigo bookmark because I only found the link in Stephen Downes' blog and can't see it as a top-level link in PLENK2010 site.

Nice summary of the first week's readings and discussion by Stefanie Pike, Educational Technology and Change Journal.  "Both the discussion and readings helped me to refine my understanding of both concepts. To me, the term personal learning network refers to processes and structures within the personal learning environment. Another personal learning outcome is my new awareness of the importance of "curation" in online classes, an issue I have not yet thought about. A great deal of discussion time was dedicated to the problem of curation, that is, how to make the results of a forum or live discussion available without having to read through all comments. Dave Cormier and the participants vented different ideas and approaches - from structuring the process of curation in a wiki and using word clouds like Wordle and visualizations like concept maps to discourse analysis and approaches from computational linguistics. "Stephen Downes encouraged participants to be selective in their attention and activities within the class. "Think of it as football.  People do not stop watching football just because they cannot watch everything!" I wonder if Stephen was talking about american football or soccer? In soccer you just watch the player with the ball.

"There has been lots of discussion this week about whether Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and/or Personal Learning Network (PLN) are the right terms to describe what this is all about and some recognition that this a semantics issue. According to Rita Kop PLE is a UK term and PLN an American term. Dave Cormier questions whether the term personal should be used at all. Stephen Downes points out that personal is an OK term if you think about [Personal Learning] Network as opposed to [Personal] Learning Network - and similarly for PLE. I like that - but for me, the words are not as important as the process - although I can see that the process needs nominalising for ease of reference. If I am going to think about introducing the idea of PLEs/PLNs to my colleagues or students then I will be talking about the process and the implications of this process for learning rather than what we should call it, i.e. why it might be preferable for students to learn in environments/spaces of their own choice rather than be confined to an institutions VLE/LMS."

A Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) for the Personal Environments, Networks and Knowledge (PLENK) 2010 Massively Open Online Course (MOOC). Created by @cpjobling from a dynamic OPML file provided by Stephen Downes, at the suggestion of @psychemedia by following the instructions provided by @cogdog.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek philosopher Socrates, acknowledged as one of the founders of Western philosophy. Born in 469 BC into the golden age of the city of Athens, he has profoundly influenced philosophy ever since. In fact, his impact is so profound that all the thinkers who went before are simply known as pre-Socratic. In person Socrates was deliberately irritating, he was funny and he was rude; he didn't like democracy very much and spent quite a lot of time in shoe shops. He claimed he was on a mission from God to educate his fellow Athenians but has left us nothing in his own hand because he refused to write anything down. With Angie Hobbs, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University; David Sedley, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University; Paul Millett, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge. Last broadcast on Thu, 27 Sep 2007, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4

"George Siemens, with Athabasca's Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, is best known for his development of the pedagogical model of networked learning known as Connectivism. He and Steven Downes have pioneered the development of massive open courses, in which many hundreds of students study and learn in open and networked contexts." - It's all about MOOCs like PLENK2010

Stephen's presentation on PLENK