Personal learning environments have mostly been conceived as research assistants. They orchestrate the searching and filtering from the abundance of accessible online resources. While this serves academic purposes well, it does not always serve the learners. This morning I've been pondering again how the learners might be better served by PLE's. One possibility I've developed helps learners control the losses they experience while attempting to acquire new knowledge, skills and abilities.
What if PLEs could alleviate:
- losses of curiosity and motivation to explore unfamiliar domains of knowledge
- losing one's sense of direction, path to follow or way through a complex space of alternatives
- the disappearance of one's creativity, inspirations and innovative ideas for self expression
- losing one's ability to digest information and take it deeper than a superficial grasp of the facts
- losses of confidence from realizing contradictions in one's understanding or insistence on a mistaken approach
- losing one's patience with how long it takes for new approaches to sink in and get assimilated
- losses of intended results, desired outcomes and successful strategies to become learned
Solutions for these kinds of problems could not be delivered "prepackaged". They are "skill sets" that each learner would cultivate with practice. The PLE could frame the expectation that these losses were brought under control, but not actually control the losses.
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