Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: In a Vibrant Garden, Many Flowers Bloom: More Observations on Personal Learning Environments (PLE)

This post is a collection of rough ideas that stems from a link via Stephen Downes re: A discussion about PLE's from New Zealand. Stanley Frielick Moodle Moot NZ07. Slides and audio from the New Zealand Moodle conference. Frielick asks, can Moodle become more supple - that is, a more social, ubiquitous and permeable personal learning environment. I think it's a good question to ask - can Moodle migrate from the old LMS world to the new web 2,0 world? Stanley Frielick, Slideshare September 28, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Ubiquitous Internet, Audio]

Full disclosure: I heart discussions about Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). I even like the way the term rolls right off your tongue. Say it aloud: Personal Learning.

Simple, isn't it?

PLE and the Pleasure Principle
Frielick's discussion is a fun one to have. Can a course/learning management system be more PLE? -- that is, can it be designed more to be a social platform that is more supple, more flexible, more nimble, more happy.

Yes, I said "more happy."

Online social networks rely on social support. Support, mind you; trust, empathy, a shoulder. Without it, community suffers; why come back? A PLE should invite pleasure -- that without which not... From Wikipedia under pleasure: "Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th Century German philosopher, understood pleasure as a negative sensation, as it negates the usual existential condition, that of suffering." Shouldn't our time online investigating the world, watching videos, reading email, attending class, renting a room, shopping for shoes, paying bills, connecting, engaging, playing, negate our sense of suffering? So a PLE should be sweet and engaging! Perhaps Twitter is so popular because it is so simple, so supple, and happy. 140 characters to say your piece. Short, sweet, simple. Social support. Connectivity. Intimacy.

PLE as shoes
While plotting the PLE continues, I've come to appreciate multiple social networking platforms. Platforms are like shoes. I want one platform that's for play. I prefer another for work. In reality, I use multiple online community platforms for both toil and pleasure. Each is different in the sense that they fit particular needs depending on who I'm engaging and for what purpose.

Second Skin
The Internet is like a second skin. I have identity in multiple (uni)verses across cyberspace--sometimes overlapping, sometimes combining, sometimes alone. And while it might be interesting to have one multi-syllabic interface (Berners-Lee's semantic web?) that allows us to connect to and interface with the various communities and spaces we inhabit, doesn't that make our Web browser a PLE? Our desktop as the original PLE? In a way, the desktop serves a friendly metaphor for our personal learning space. Here is a space for me to engage in a number of activities. Here are my books, here are resources, pens, paper. From here we call upon friends, we talk with colleagues, or perhaps we only work here alone with no appearance of connection at all.

Intention
A PLE implies intentionality. Learning is not only personal, it is intentional. While social and developmental experience shapes much of how we see the world, we must choose to adopt some form of organizational structure to frame our experiences. Is this the role of a PLE? To house or support this framework, or is the framework, an a priori conceptual structure? Is it both? Should a PLE try to be a single platform or does it serve us best as a concept map?

 
PLE as the Tower of Babel (Confusion).
People/Individuals stay divided by platforms and applications as communities continue to anger the Internet gods in their attempt to unite humanity.

PLE as Organizational Structure
Diagrams of PLEs direct all activity clouds to a central unit, me. This picture makes me feel rather Ptolemaic, geocentric, in many ways. While every circle has a center, I like the notion of the center being undefinable. The center shifts, tied to a collective intelligence, the ghosts in the machine, or the wisdom of the crowds. But this view can also be limiting. PLE diagrams are essentially an atomistic view-- a representation of a single node within the larger universe/network. And like all matter these atoms connect, collide, excite, and repel each other, which is quite like what really happens in our geophysical worlds.

My ideal PLE diagram is depicted by these representations of Georges Seurat's Un dimance apres-midi a I'lle d la Grand Jatte (Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte).

Here we see a collection of people enjoying a beautiful day on the banks of a lake. Seurat's pointillist technique shows how the atoms, the variations, compose what we see as well as our existence. This picture could be (y)our life.

Notice the crowd. There is proximity; there is intention; there is pleasure and simplicity. This environment is both active and passive. There are others to engage, listen, and talk to. Or one could sit alone. There is water, the symbol of the substance of life, without which we are not... There are people sailing on the lake, people observing the lake, people absorbing the environment.

PLE and the Wisdom of the Crowds

Surowiecki notes that a wise crowd relies on independence, decentralization, a diversity of opinion, and and the ability to combine and collect as needed. This collective wisdom of the crowds can theoretically lead to greater cognitive advantage for people, the opportunity to coordinate and share an understanding of what's right and what's wrong. Thus collectively, a PLE cannot exist without connecting the dots.

The limiting factors of such a stance relate to incorporating too much agreement or division of opinions, too much centralization, or when choices are limited by a handful of decision makers (the "information cascade"). Of course there is also the threat of a  herd mentality overpowering other outside opinions.

GeNe(x)t
I imagine, based on my read of current literature, 3D networking platforms and applications will continue to expand in ways that will be easier to learn and navigate, better fitting my particular needs and interests. Second Life will become next years Friendster. MySpace will be so 5 minutes ago (like AOL). Perhaps there will be a return to the WELL, to places we grew up in, places that are nostalgic, that trigger pleasurable memories of the good ol' days, when life was simple. Not that things were better or easier earlier, but there's this sense of comfort in things that we "know" and grew up around.

PLE as Consumer Good