Really nice collection of links for this week’s #PLENK2010 discussions. I especially liked Patterns of personal learning environments, Wilson. Wilson looks at patterns of use of and activity in personal learning tools and learning networks, revising a previous approach which was very functional and tool-specific.
One of the ongoing challenges I have is with the constant comparison between LMS and PLE, which I happen to think, is an apples to oranges comparison. They serve different needs and are differently located on the spectrum between self-learning and managed-learning (if there is such a phrase). The MOOC and the LMS are comparable, as are NBTs (which I define as Network Based Training, the natural networked learning successors to WBTs) and PLEs.
Let us picture this. The LMS is used to launch a WBT course. The course pops up in a player which is really a navigation shell that acts as a data conduit between the WBT and the LMS. Suppose the LMS is learning network and personal learning tools aware (with blog, wiki, Flickr, connection hub-bing, discourse monitoring etc. affordances being provided by whatever mechanism – web services, XCRI…) and the WBT is just base reference material not quite unlike the Daily in this MOOC.
The player could then be technically programmed to act as a conduit between the WBT and the network or personal learning tool (people, resources, context, conversation, bookmarking service). Sort of a SCORM for networked learning environments.
What would you call the WBT then? A NBT.
Would the PLE look similar to a NBT. Yes, it would resemble a slice of the PLE, a workspace which we organize around a theme that interests us. Similarly, the NBT could be conceived of as a combination of slices of many different PLEs, in fact as many as those learners enrolled in the NBT.
But the NBT would necessarily be a more constrained, parameterized environment, designed or seeded by a network weaver, an atelier – the new avatar of the teacher, and adapted and grown by the learners, present and past. The PLE would grow unfettered, the whole being greater than the sum of individual slices.
Most of the discussion, even in Wilson’s paper, focuses around the tools in the end. What can tools do to present the solution to a pattern? In fact, almost every solution is expressed in technological terms (notice how many times the word “tool” appears in the first line of the solution).
It is almost as if technology is the master problem solver for every pattern of learning, but that may just be me.
I would rather focus on Critical Literacies. On having reasons. Just like I would not count an NBT operating in an LMS environment to be a true NBT – as in truly architected as a networked learning aware solution from the ground up, rather than pasted on a WBT as a quickfix.
And that is perhaps why I would choose to take a radical stand – PLE/N tools do not yet exist. I would like to take you back to how PLEs were defined in Week 1:
A Personal Learning Environment is more of a concept than a particular toolset – it doesn’t require the use of any particular tool and is defined by general concepts like: distributed, personal, open, learner autonomy.
and for PLNs:
A PLN is a reflection of social and information networks (and analysis methods).
We are confusing our current lists of PLE/N tools with the concept or the method, like trying to measure the length of a moving snake by a tape measure or measuring the volume of a gust of air with a sudden clenching of our fist.
By far the most important attribute of the toolset, if you can call it that, for a PLE/N would be its complete invisibility. It would be implicit for learners in the way it has been designed. It is then that we will be able to project our personal aura on it and make it personal, as open as we are, as connectedly aware as we want to be (or can be) and as autonomous as we will allow it to be.
And that will also take a fundamental rearchitecture of the way we conceive of learning resources, away from resources as objects or networks, to living and dynamic forms that reflect our social and information networks.
More of a hard left than a gentle meandering this one, would you say?
Viplav Baxi's Meanderings 
Great concept;
Sort of like the unconscious psyche. In fact, not only could the tools remain invisible in the background, but they might also allow us to offload some of the relationship and psychological tasks and improve our capabilities.
The current crop of web tools give us only one way for a tool or toolset to acquire invisibility, that is to become so familiar with its use that it becomes automatic, sort of the way I used to use browser bookmarking. Plug-ins can help, (like a delicious button or fly-out) but practice using a tool (requiring an investment of time) is essential before it can become an extension of our mind, used to get work done without consciously focusing on how to use the tool. Because of this time investment, there is a limit to how many tools any one of us will use well.
I’m not creative enough to imagine what it will look like, but I look forward to the next generation tool that will be, as you put it, “implicit for learners in the way it has been designed.”
Great comment, Jim! That’s certainly one important inference that companies such as Microsoft have spent huge amounts of time to understand and leverage. I am toying with the idea that we may be able to make the learning curve steeper if we do not take the route companies such as Microsoft have taken, but rather try to see if there are other ways to make this simpler and more efficient. I know even email takes time to learn across different tools for lots of people, but we should look at conceptualizing something that is as close to real life experience and function as possible. Thanks! Viplav