Comments on: I’m Not Interested in “the PLE”

By: Flexknowlogy » Preparing to Map My Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

Flexknowlogy » Preparing to Map My Personal Learning Environment (PLE) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:06:47 +0000

[...] responding to the (apparently provocative) question posed by Chris Lott this week, “What does your PLE look like?”, I have one genuine question that precludes defining one’s PLE (playing into the indictment [...]

By: My Network Probability Cloud … PLEase » CogDogBlog

My Network Probability Cloud … PLEase » CogDogBlog — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 07:16:54 +0000

[...] him this week grow tired of the PLE flak, bust out a brawl at the twitter bar, and then for me, state clearly what his interest was (he probably said it much earlier, but I miss [...]

By: chris

chris — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:17:15 +0000

Sarah– I will check out your post. I hope you noticed that every time I talk about the PLE I talk about it as not just tools, but people, resources and methods as well.

By: Sarah Stewart

Sarah Stewart — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:37:22 +0000

My PLE isn’t just a collection of tools but also people who help me learn such as Michele Martin and Sue Waters. The comments of this post explain what I mean: http://tinyurl.com/3xxxvy cheers Sarah

By: Edie

Edie — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:14:24 +0000

From the point of view of someone very new to “PLE” (so new that this is the first time I’ve seen the acronym!), I found it very enlightening to read through the posts mentioned in these comments regarding how that person organizes their PLE. I had just come to the conclusion yesterday that I needed to organize all the tools I’m learning about in Chris’s class this semester, and now it seems I’ll be putting together my own PLE. The idea of mind-mapping a PLE – which hadn’t occurred to me – seems like a great way to start organizing (& maintain my PLE). My goal is to have something that I can show to friends and colleagues, as a way to harness the internet and make it useful, instead of some out-of-control encyclopedia that has too much information. I also want to demonstrate a better way to collaborate on projects (specifically writing scientific papers and reports, that could extrapolate to other kinds of projects).
So I’m glad I can look over a few shoulders here, and peek at how you do things! Thanks!

By: Heather Ross

Heather Ross — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:36:30 +0000

Chris,

I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but I wrote this post on my PLE a couple of months ago. http://www.mctoonish.com/blog/?p=401

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:59:51 +0000

I think this is spot on Chris: “I find it odd that educators, of all people, would work so hard in service of the notion that teaching others is impossible. All a PLE is, to my way of understanding, is a particular, personal selection of tools, contacts, and methods. Many of us are still at a stage in our evolution that we can learn much from knowing what tools others use, how they use them, and who they make contact with.”
Commenting on your post yesterday made me, ahem, ruminate a bit further. Maybe we are talking about slightly different things, along a continuum: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2008/03/a-ple—vle-con.html

By: Nancy White

Nancy White — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:27:59 +0000

It is funny, I had not realized it until I was rereading your post that in our work with communities of practice, we are dealing with this same issue, but we have a different word. We call it an individual’s technology configuration – the set of tools they use to be/work/keep track of their individual and collective participation in their communities of practice. (Which, of course, are places for learning.) I have been tagging stories ofpeople talking about their COMMUNITY’s configuration and some of their personal configurations. You can find them here: http://del.icio.us/choconancy/configuration

Hm. maybe we are talking about training wheels, elbow and knee pads.

By: Michele Martin

Michele Martin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:07:22 +0000

I’m related to what you’re saying here on so many levels right now! Although I have a sort of academic interest in discussing issues such as how to define a PLE and what does it look like in theory, what excites me about the concept is that we could help other people have their own PLEs. This means that, like you, I’m becoming much more interested in getting a sense of people’s tools, tips and techniques on a very practical level so that we’d be able to turn around and show people who are new to this stuff how it could all work for them.

One of my dream projects, should I get the time, would be to create a wiki where we collected screencasts of people showing us how they move through their PLEs–how do they aggregate information? Do they use a portal like Netvibes (I do) as their start page? How do they find new blogs? How do they participate in conversations? I think that a lot could be learned if people were willing to provide a sort of digital “over the shoulder” opportunity for learning that could be referred to later to see patterns, ideas, etc.

I wrote about this awhile ago in defining my own PLE and it’s something I keep revisiting as I try to work with others. Now I’m just looking for the time to pull something together that could SHOW people how all this works because I think that it might make more sense than all the writing we do about it. By showing the process we could help new people get a better sense of how it all fits together.

Great post!

By: Dawn+

Dawn+ — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:57:31 +0000

Right up there with the “wiki daze” is the rebuffing head-shake to “social networking.” “You have time for socializing?! Hmph.” Ironically, it’s easier to interest my colleagues in a PLE than anything called “social.”

I need new colleagues….