1. Personal Learning Environments as a Teaching and Learning Tool Amanda McAndrew, Jacie Moriyama, & Aisha Jackson Academic Technology Consultants University of Colorado at Boulder COLTT University of Colorado at BoulderAugust 4, 2011
2. Objectives Provide a theoretical foundation for Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) as a teaching and learning tool. Define Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). Explore ideas for implementation in your course
3. PLEs Figure 1 Adapted from Continuum of Learning from Formal to Informal (OECD, 2010)
4. What are Personal Learning Environments? An approach to learning directed by your own needs and interests Facilitated by a collection of tools (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2009)
8. Connectivism The connections that enable us to learn are more important than our current state of knowing. (Siemens, 2006)
9. Learning how to Learn Forming a network to draw on for knowledge Distinguishing between the important and unimportant Being able to process various POVs Deciding what to learn Ability to make connections and recognize patterns Understanding when knowledge is a game changer
10. Learning is situated. Learning is a function of the activity, context and culture in which it occurs. Lave& Wenger (1990)
11. A community of practice is the situation. Learning takes place in all different contexts and situations but in a community of practice you can gain and apply the knowledge in the same place.
12. Situated Learning and PLEs Developing a PLE is placing yourself in a situation and building a community of learners where you can: Receive information Organize information Reflect on the information Contribute to the community Collaborate with the community
13. Situated Learning, Connectivism and PLEs Encourages learning after the class is over Creates a continuous space to be active in a community of practice Allows for a method of learning from multiple people, places, and communities.
15. Benefits to Learners Personal Learning Environments can change the “model in which students consume information through independent channels such as the library, a textbook, or an LMS, moving instead to a model where students draw connections from a growing matrix of resources that they select and organize.” (Educause Learning Initiative, 2009)
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17. Suggestions for Implementation Set expectations and explain why Provide guidance on topic choices for students Review the technology options Provide them with a couple of examples Communicate assessment
19. Assessment possibilities Participation, Creation, Distribution Develop a rubric based on information literacy (CARS) Assignment that requires demonstration of content learned Reflection pieces
22. LMS and PLE Software Administered through an institution Structured Regularly backed up Facilitates directed learning Approach to Teaching and Learning Personal Construct Unstructured Service dependent Fosters self-directed learning
29. Works Cited The networked student model for construction of personal learning environments: Balancing teacher control and student autonomy by Wendy Drexler Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation by J. Lave & E. Wenger Personal Learning Environments: User-Centric Learning Spaces by Nancy Rubin Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Siemans Context and main concepts by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 7 Things you should know about Personal Learning Environments by EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative
Editor's Notes
Jacie - Introduction and welcome
Set expectationsThrough our lenseWork for some not for others
Formal learning is what we receive in the traditional educational system such as college. The majority of us choose to go to college to attend learn a structure curriculum within a discipline that might be party to some regulation and quality assurance mechanism. On the other end of the continuum is informal learning. That’s learning that happens when you least expect it to. I think of this as learning that happens by the water cooler, or over lunch with friends where you didn’t intend to learn but upon reflection, you realize that you did. PLEs fall in the middle of this continuum. The Internet and the tools, services and communities it allows, provides many opportunities for accessing learning.
So what are PLEs? Broadly speaking, it’s learning that is self directed. It’s facilitated by a collection of generally speaking – web based tools. Tools provide context, answer questions and illustrate processes. Let’s explore this a little further.
Using a growing set of free and simple tools and applications, it is easy to create customized, personal web-based environments — a personal web — that explicitly supports one’s social, professional, learning and other activities via highly personalized windows to the networked world. Online material can be saved, tagged, categorized, and repurposed without difficulty and without any special knowledge of how web pages are put together. In fact, the underlying technology that supports the web has all but vanished for most users; all that is necessary is to know which tools to use, and any task — from creating and distributing content, to organizing one’s personal and professional time, to developing a library of resources that constantly refresh and update themselves — becomes point-and-click trivial.Let’s take a look at Aisha’s PLE. I use the following tools. I manage my tools using iGoogle. I build communities within my tools. For example, I use a social bookmarking tool called delicious. The advantage to delicious is that when I find a particularly useful resource on the Internet, I can bookmark it so that I can access it from any computer. That bookmark can be tagged or given a keyword that others using delicious can access. I can access the keywords of others or I can create a network of other instructional designers, for example, and we can share our bookmarks among one another.
The tools available in PLEs can be further categorized in various, this is just our take right now. Tools shown merely examples of the types of tools.Tools that make up my PLE might be different from yours. What do you use blogs for? How do the services help you? Access, store, manage vast amounts of information in one placeWhat are the features of communities? Learn from others, build your own learning communities (Frances and Doyle), contribute to the community, get feedback on your own knowledge, skills and competencies.
The great advantage of PLEs are that they facilitate autonomy. It gives you the freedom to study using the tools you want, when you want and how you want. Not something that formal education typically provides. In this way an individual can be empowered. They are not dependent on others for their information. And finally it allows you to those who are unable to access formal learning to organize the learning opportunities afforded by the Internet. These are just a few of the benefits of PLEs. There are others related to how adults learn and Jacie is going to review those with us…
Information and knowledge changes so rapidly that we have to develop and help our students develop mechanisms for keeping up.Skills for students to carry forward after the course is overReally have to use information literacy skillsCapturing the whole 360 degree landscape of a topic – all sides of an issueDeciding what to focus or spend time onConnections to other disciplines, ideas, concepts
The focused, problem-centered, immediate application piece of andragogy….brings us to a situated learning theory. When you create a network within the Twittersphere or wherever, you are creating your own context in which to learn. Example, this presentation, found a whole group of people using PLEs and they have their very own conference. So I added these people to my network and started reading what they were reading.
You can apply the learning in the same place that you gained the knowledge.Like on the job training.
Walk through twitter exampleThese are really the steps we want students to go through in our learning experiences we design for them.
By commenting, communication….Additionally, it helps learners learn how to learn. You no longer need to be able to recall facts or formulas or theories, you just need to remember where to find information about themThis information is really changing to quickly anyway,Brings us to Connectivism
PLEs take advantage of Web 2.0 and social technologies allowing learners to be active co-creators of knowledge. With so much of the focus today on standardized tests, it is useful to consider how to teach students to be better learners instead of better test takers. PLEs change the model in which students interact with information allowing them to make their own connections and draw their own conclusions. A question to consider – How can we move from the model in which students are strictly information consumers to one where they are making important connections between content and subjects and where they are being critical thinkers??
4 areas Contacts - People we can communicate withWays we can communicate with them- synchronousAsynchronousManaging the information and communication we have
We are suggesting that youTreat this as any other activity you do with studentsStill need to provide backgroundStill have provide the basis for why its beneficial to the studentHow it fosters the idea of extending the learning beyond the classroom, that learning doesn’t only in the classroom
Count as a participation grade much like discussion forumsCredibility, Accuracy, Reliability, Support Assessment as usual, what would you have required anywayMetacognitive activities requiring reflection on what was learned, how it was learned, comparison to other learning experiences
Time is an important factor inLearning the technologyIntegrating it into your PLEThe amount of time you expect others to invest
While there are many tools out there, you’ll need to be selective about the types of tools you use and how you use them. For example, there are many tools that you can use to create a blog. You’ll just need to select one that will suite your needs best. Also think about the way you prefer to learn. For example, I read blogs, however, I don’t blog myself. But I do use twitter and google plus to share and collaborate.
DavidShenk published a book entitled Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut (1997). “In 1971 the average American was targeted by at least 560 daily advertisingmessages. Twenty years later, that number has risen six fold, to 3,000 messages per day.We have to figure out ways to filter out information. Even tho PLE help you to organize your artifacts, you may have to go through each tool and set preferences. For example, I use tweet deck to control my twitter feed. I have separate feeds for my friends, professional endeavors, and people that I find fascinating. This allows me to filter what I want to see and don’t want to see
