Personal Learning Environments & Personal Learning Networks

Four presentations have already taken place during the past two days during the online PLE and PLN conference . They were all very different. Sharon Peters and John Thole kicked off with a report on the use of PLNs to enhance the learning in South Africa from where John spoke. They focussed our attention to the clear divide that still exist in access to technology between the north and the south and how mobile technology is seen to be the way forward in bridging the gap. They gave an account of how members from two non-profit organizations, Teachers Without Borders Canada and Edunova (South Africa), have utilized their PLNs in order to further empower educators in two countries.
Lucy Gray from the university of Chicago let us have a peek at her own personal learning network and the tools she uses to keep in touch with people and information out on the web and it was very enlightning to see the number of tools she uses for educational purposes. I particularly liked her use of ‘Ning’ and ‘flickr’ to build networks.
This morning Graham Attwell from Pontdysgu in Wales told us about the ‘Mature’ project, a multi-million pound European Commission funded research project in the development of a PLE, but a PLE with a twist; involving knowledge maturing and an organisational learning environment. Their project is researching the relationship between learning and knowledge maturing and it looks at real-life users in real-life working situations and the way in which knowledge is created and matures in a working environment. The learner’s context is seen to be one of the important factors, but what was most striking to me was their use of social interaction to enhance the learning and knowledge development.
This afternoon Josie Fraser was a guest at the Portugese University of Aveiro and had a discussion about their Sapo campus PLE project. The discussion focussed in particular on the institutional perspective, which was quite different again from the earlier presentations. The students were part of the learning community and very much involved in the development.