Tossing the PLE out of the window

There’s an interesting seminar discussion taking place at SCOPE this month, with the two Dereks and others.

My initial contribution is reproduced here:

Who’s willing to toss the PLE idea out the window?

I’m willing ultimately, to reduce the PLE down to something so simple as to be almost meaningless, such as “the browser” or “the internet”. But perhaps there is a case for pragmatism and looking at where a lot of intitutional learning is currently at, and how far it can be pushed in one phase without appearing to threaten their very existence too obviously.

In introducing the PLE concept there are already attempts to contain it within an institutional framework. “Here is your PLE which we have supplied for you, and now you are required to use it if you want the accreditation”. Developers seeking to “implement” PLEs because they’ve been asked to build one by somebody who will never really accept the idea of student autonomy which is inherent in the curriculum based on process rather than content described above.

Yes, I was a student myself quite recently, and I was able to use my own “PLE” as the basis for learning and even assesment which suited me fine. So at the end of three years I came out with a history of accounts with various online services, but also an established blog and a chaotic wiki both running under my own domain which I think is important. I’m a great believer in the “small pieces loosely joined” approach but there is also a danger in encouraging people to hand over control of their PLE to the service providers such as Google, Facebook etc or even James Farmer.

So I say, encourage them to buy and set up their own domain name and installed applications as early as possible, then they will have genuine ownership of a useful and enduring set of tools for lifelong learning which nobody else can delete at the end of the course.