PLEs in common

In a comment on If PLEs became bulletproof, Alex Hayes left a very useful comment that puts PLE's down under in a context of urgency:

PLE's as a job requirement are already a predominant feature of "unemployed" job seekers in Australia......

That's why we are hell bent as a sector on re-positing the term in order to roll out products and licences to use products that build PLE's for students......much like we've done with LMS's and CMS's and VLE's and a number of other unhealthy acronyms.

In Australia, PLE's are used to credential job applicants. In this context, they can be audited and cross checked by employers. There are questions of ownership rights and of the transferability of the content by the applicant. This raises the similar issues about PLE usage as our "inside the firewall" questions we explored awhile back.

If, or better when, we address the PLE issue on common ground, changing this debate will be easy. We will all have PLE's in common. It will be commonly understood what comes from having too small or no PLE. It will be obvious to us when someone's PLE is lacking the longitudinal or depth dimensions:

• Their own  life long learning will not factor into their decisions or definitions of problems 
• They will not be considering the effects of their actions on us or even see us on common ground
• They will fail to learn from lessons brought on by their extreme, harmful or single minded actions
• They will have no use for feedback, other viewpoints and insights into their blatant ambitions
• They will be obsessed with pointing their fingers at us, not at themselves, as if they are standing on a battle ground facing dangerous enemies

Those of us on common ground will see all this differently:

• Our life long learning will factor in to our PLE's as we learn of other possible decisions and definitions of the problem.
• We will become much more sensitized to the effects of our actions as we reflect on those hidden dimensions among us
• We will learn from crises and setbacks to be more effective, strategic and responsive as our understanding evolves among us
• We will incorporate feedback, other viewpoints and insights into our ambitions as we continually learn from our experiences
• We reflect on our own conduct, point fingers back at ourselves and realize we are all in the same boat.

How will we be able to respond so much more gracefully to evidence of pending disaster? By having PLE's in common and learning non-stop from everything.