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!?)

There has been so much talk about PLEs but very little committed action from those of us who ponder its pedagogical potentials. Graham Atwell’s Slideshare presentation –

http://www.slideshare.net/GrahamAttwell/personal-learning-enviroments-the-future-of-education-presentation?type=presentation

 

is interesting and insightful, until the concluding questions: What is a PLE? and What can we do with a PLE?  Arrrg!. We thought for a moment there that some answers were in the offering. But we understand that this thinking is simplistic.

He talks about the need to contextualise the PLE. Well, yes. My colleague and I have decided to push ahead with our own contextualised understanding, so we can start to reflect upon rather that speculate about our PLE work. But we still keep getting stuck, half way over the implementation hurdle! If we telelogically suggest a way forward for any group of learners, then we are not facilitating a PLE, we are imposing our values. It’s easy to join in the chorus of what a PLE is not!

Atwell points out that in a PLE, learners will set their own goals. Now here is the difficulty. We are trying to fit a free-flowing design into a rigid situation like an assessed and accredited course. Course designers draw up rubrics – boundaries and fences in which learning objectives and assessment strategies are imprisoned. PLEs, if they were released on the system, would, by their very nature, transcend those boundaries.

I think this is why it is so hard to implement PLEs into higher education courses.