PLEs – Partial Learning Environments?
My research colleague : http://nfhood.wordpress.com/ and I continue to be amazed at how much of the dialogue surrounding PLEs ends with the question, “So what is a PLE?”.
We decided early on that we must bind our research to the technological aspects of PLEs. We know that in any broad sense, one’s personal learning environment consists of non-e things. But we ignore them in order for our research to be focused and manageable. We only look at enabling and enhancing PLEs through engagement with Web 2.0 (yes- still using that term. Maybe we should rename it Harold or Jane?) media. So why can’t we agree on a clear definition for a PLE? It’s got a name, but it doesn’t tell us anything. Is that because we have sliced it up, extracted the technological bits, and thrown the rest away? Do we see the PLE out of its essential perspective?
If I cut up a Yeppoon Pineapple so that only the flesh remains, I have the useful bit, but I lose all perspective on the visual entirety of the fruit. Sometimes that matters and sometimes it does not. But I would not understand certain things about that yellow mush if I could not see it in its own context – its own pinappleness.
Maybe we can’t define PLEs because we are looking at a single segment of it, and wondering why it doesn’t look like a total picture.
So – instead of talking generally about PLEs that we can’t totally visualise, maybe we should acknowledge that our research is only about segments of ideas, not entire concepts.
Now it makes more sense. Instead of talking about integrating whole PLEs into our HE courses, and creating a nightmare of accountability and assessibility implications, we just aim to slip in little pieces of PLEs (the thin ends of wedges?), into the gaps and maybe where they embellish the existing design?
Maybe this is what Snowdon & Jones http://davidtjones.wordpress.com/ are on about with their talk of ’safe-fail’ antics. (By George, she’s got it!?)
