PLEs for loss control

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.

Questioning our active questions

Most PLEs I reviewed two years ago appeared to be conceived as digital dashboards. Like personal start pages, they aggregated one's personal selection of links and tagged bookmarks as well as subscriptions to feeds and keyword searches. My experience with organizing my own learning in this way has led me up to question the "digital dashboard" premise. Aggregating resources appears to inevitably result is too much information in need of a staggering amount of additional filtering.

When my personal learning is on a roll, I am much less concerned with managing my sources of information. The active questions I'm using are front and center. I'm questioning my questions in the following ways:

• Am I asking the right questions to delve deeper into this domain and not miss the significance of what I'm exploring?
• Am I asking enough questions to cover the range of issues and not dwell excessively on a few narrow facets?
• Am I asking too many questions, scattering my efforts and raising my frustration level?
• Am I developing new questions from patterns I observe in more familiar domains of expertise?
• Am I changing my questions when I realize I'm losing my curiosity by relying on the same old questions?

These ways to question our active questions provide a different lens to look at the digital dashboard conception of PLEs. From this perspective, aggregating links and feeds looks like a street lamp fallacy. (After losing his keys in the dark, the drunk looks for them under the street lamp where he can see clearly). The digital dashboard is an obvious solution that does not solve what I see as the real problem. Questioning our active questions suggests the "real problems" include losing curiosity, barking up the wrong tree, accumulating too much information and getting stuck with the same old questions. There is no solution to those problems at the level of changing the feed subscriptions and tagged bookmarks. PLE's need to be re-conceptualized to "find the keys in the dark" and solve the "real problems".

Cultivating compatibility with PLEs

Too many academic and employment experiences turn learners off the possibilities of personal learning environments. When learners find PLEs incompatible with their own experiences, they might think a PLE is:

• an absurd idea based on false concepts about how learning really happens
• something that might work only for extremely self-motivated learners
• somebody's head trip that is lost in the clouds and cannot come down to earth
• an approach to learning that's unrealistic in most classrooms and jobs
• a way to make the learner totally to blame for the content that does not get learned
• a device to mislead learners into covering more material in the same amount of time
• a set up to get gamed by a system of course requirements and grading

All these reflections on the "true meaning" of personal learning environments reveals a history of contrary experiences. The ways we get expect to learn, succeed, conform and meet others expectations are convincing experiences. We also pick up impressions from our siblings, parents and own employment experiences. We then believe we have encountered the facts of life or "the way things really work around here". We become skeptical about alternatives like PLEs.

If schooling and employment were breeding grounds for extensive use of PLEs, they would need to be based on different premises like the following:

• The grasp of new domains of knowledge comes about when someone works with our misunderstandings, not when they lecture us again about that domain
• Our thought processes only reliable when we've learned to think for ourselves, not merely think like we've been told is acceptable
• The way to get jobs done more effectively is to rethink how it can be done, not simply execute orders without choices
• The ways to improve our motivation and commitment come about from succeeding on our own terms, not yielding to conformity pressures

These premises occur naturally when we are working with people in relationships as mentors, coaches, colleagues, or friends. These same premises disappear when we're working against people in attempts to control, repudiate, oppress or dismiss them. This suggests that the difficulties with getting wide spread adoption of PLEs calls for an indirect strategy. The breeding grounds need to be created and maintained where compatibility with PLEs occurs naturally.

Prereqs to utilizing PLEs

I've decided to play around with the latest ideas in my head about personal learning environments to see if I have the makings of a chapter proposal for a new book on PLE's.  Here's the first installment in a series of explorations.

PLE's presume that the individual learners will be able to self-direct their own learning. That ability is sometimes conceptualized as "meta-cognitive" skills. Rather than merely thinking, self directed learners can think about their thinking. This power of self-observation enables them to:

• catching themselves going round in circles or hitting a dead end when attempting to achieve a desired outcome
• formulating better questions when their questions in use are "getting nowhere"
• considering a different strategy to find what they're looking for rather than simply trying harder with the same strategy
• inventing tests of what they've found to validate it as factual and/or reliable
• rejecting previous knowledge once it seems over-simplified or even mistaken
• valuing mistakes they make for showing them where they've been jumping to the wrong conclusion
• discovering what missing in their understanding that misleads them when formulating explanations

I have been optimistically assuming that digital savvy youth are functioning with these abilities. They spend large amounts of time everyday using computers, handhelds, console games and social networking platforms without being told what to do. However, much of my recent reading is giving me a different impression. I'm now seeing the possibility that digital competence does not equate with the meta-cognitive skills to self direct one's own learning.

• Hours can be spent online passively following links without any driving questions, curiosity or purpose.
• The voluminous amounts of uploaded "user content generation" may be merely showing off without refining the creators' own concept or execution
• The determination to get back on line may only serve the purpose of checking for the latest inputs from friends, followers and commenters.
• Fascination with the expanse of digital media resources can be limited to a voyeuristic enjoyment of others disrespect, cynicism or flair for the dramatic.
• Active use of online resources can be an avoidance challenges that are more demanding, difficult and serious.
• Immersion in online environments can reinforce a premise that life is meaningless, lacking in purpose and deserving of being wasted.

Clearly these traits do not apply to everyone who might use a PLE. When these indictments accurately characterize any learners, they are incapable of self-directed learning. They are in no shape to critique, guide and redirect their explorations. They lack the prereqs to make use of PLEs.

Assimilation by conversation

Yesterday, Aloof Schipperke expanded the relevant contexts for democratizing knowledge creation in Democratizing Architecture Creation. The transmission of Enterprise Design to clients expertise is as problematic as it is inside hallowed halls of academia. This problematic context also occurs in Instructional Design quarters where the SME's would prefer hands-on rapid development tools than struggling to convey their message to designers. Likewise patient education usually breaks down when the physician's expertise comes across as overwhelming or overly critical of the patient. My own consulting roles have discovered standoffs with prima donna architects, engineers, and even front line supervisors. In a later post, I'll propose that all delivery systems fail to deliver their expertise effectively - their business model is flawed.

Aloof made two excellent recommendations to realize solutions in these contexts:

The true value of expertise comes when it is available for conversation. We refine our own understanding when we expose our knowledge to others around us, so long as we allow the interaction to occur in both directions. As Tom mentions, we reflect on the differences as we engage with our surroundings.

I've noticed an interesting phenomena in the architectural conversations of my day-to-day work. As the conversations evolve, key architectural principles and constraints (stock in trade) tend to be co-opted by others around me. I hear the principles and constraints echoed in conversations around me. The organization internalizes the knowledge and is more likely to provide productive feedback when issues arise.

Said another way, we naturally assimilate expertise "when the network is working". If there is a conversation as Aloof suggests (and is demonstrating), we internalize the expert's concepts to join in the give and take. If there is a connection between us, we pick up the other's expertise to maintain the rapport. If there is a shared context of solution seeking, we see the other's expertise as a resource or a source of exactly what we're looking for. If there is a common container for our disparate activities, we allow that mission and purpose to frame what we're doing. If there is a commitment getting fulfilled, we co-opt the concepts in use by the others making the same commitment. If there is an authentic community breaking down walls of silence, turf or controlled involvement, we pick up on how to contribute to the egalitarian dynamics.

What these solutions imply is a change in the premise of expertise. The expert participates in a democracy rather than imposing an aristocracy. Rights are distributed into the long tail instead of getting withheld by hierarchies. Diversity is nurtured instead of getting vilified by group norms. The network works to make expertise scalable and sharable instead of controlled and centralized.

Democratizing knowledge creation

In his book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson introduced us to the idea of democratizing tools of production and distribution. Music that had to be produced and distributed by record labels can now be done using PC software and Web 2.0 tools for sharing, tagging, commenting and favoriting. Filmmakers that fought over getting into the distribution pipeline via screening their flicks at festivals -- now upload them online and get them seen by thousands more fans and reviewers. Book, software and game publishers who clamored for shelf space in retailer locations now offer their goods online 24/7.

David Weinberger took this thinking even further with his book: Everything Is Miscellaneous. He suggests that authority, expertise and credentials are shifting into the long tail also. Knowledge creation had previously between the province of Ph.D's who are credentialed by academic institutions to verify new concepts and eliminate false ideas. As the web has evolved, we found "the wisdom of crowds" taking effect. Open source software development, and the stellar contributions to Wikipedia -- are showing us another way to create knowledge.

As I've become excited by these developments, it's seemed to me that "self directed learners" could become the norm rather than the exception. Personal learning environments could supplant the hallowed halls of academia. Learning from "ink on paper" could be replaced by digital text that can be linked to, edited collaboratively and searched with any chosen parameters. Learning with self motivation, personal curiosity and contexts of immediate use could become the norm.

As knowledge creation evolves away from credentialed experts, legitimacy will become fluid and intangible. The value of knowledge will depend on it's context provided the person using the knowledge. The expertise will be valued for serving an intrinsic purpose, as a means to an end. The best knowledge will "sell itself" by providing solutions to personal problems, freedom from conflicts, changes without struggles and growth without coercion.

We previously relied on experts to fix our ignorance, superstitious beliefs and flawed models. Now it appears that the experts have the wrong idea. Expertise cannot fix our misconceptions because it operates with a flawed premise. We cannot be fixed without getting that wrong idea ourselves. We become dependent on expertise if we fall for the common misconception of learning. We create systems where learning is a noun, experts exercise their authority over us and knowledge creation is aristocratic.

We have the right to learn what we need when the situation occurs that spawns our curiosity and motivation. We deserve access to the content, processes and support systems to integrate additional complexity. We create the knowledge in a useful format by reflecting upon the differences it makes to our previous comprehension. When these rights are distributed to each citizen within a collective enterprise, knowledge creation is democratized.

Information is not knowledge

We can be well informed while we are also incompetent and ill prepared to respond effectively to unfamiliar situations. We can say the right thing but not do it. We can be twice as smart as we act because we're "book smart" but not "street smart". We're good to go on quiz shows, but not capable of handling real world challenges. We shortchange ourselves and think we're rich. Information is not knowledge.

There's at least four aspects of knowledge creation that information cannot provide:

• Providing Intention: What are we questioning and wondering about? Which objective are we pursuing by acquiring this information?
• Providing Context: How is this information useful to us? In what situation are we going to apply this content to solve our problems, make a difference, or help others succeed at something?
• Providing Connections: How does this information tie into what we already know, reveal a similar pattern or overlap our current map? What sense  emerges from this information by containing it in our overall perspective, predictions and potentials?
• Providing Meaning: What spin are we putting on this information with our worldview? How are we inserting this information into our idiosyncratic story about who we think we are and how the world works according to us?

Content delivery systems only provide information. We can become dependent on these systems and assume it's enough to get informed. We don't know what we're missing. We then cannot provide for ourselves what it takes to create personal knowledge from delivered information. We gorge ourselves on data and wonder why our lives seem so meaningless, hectic and desperate. We figure the evidence of ineptitude and incapacitation is somebody else's problem.

It's easier than ever to get caught up in thinking that getting information is enough. We can get informed through URL page loads, FTP downloads, WIFI connections, GPS satellite data, cell phone connectivity, mobile broadband networks and satellite TV. We can access information 24/7 that used to only be available sitting in seats at a certain time, looking at pages with ink on them, or inserting recorded media into some kind of player. Content delivery systems want us to think that information is all we need for now. Why bother doing the heavy lifting of creating knowledge when we're drowning in lightweight data? We think we need somebody to give us a break, an escape or new toy, not the created knowledge that nobody can give us.

In a world that's well informed, but lacking knowledge, reliable systems quit working. Products get recalled in staggering numbers and services quit serving their customers' real concerns. Corporations do more harm than good to individuals, communities and the environment. Governments deplete their treasuries in endless conflicts and neglect the maintenance of their societies' infrastructures.

Creating knowledge from information is an inside job. It takes intrinsic motivation to pursue the intrinsic learning that provides intrinsic rewards. The process is autonomous and social. We do it on our own and together, outside the confines of control systems. We provide for ourselves what cannot be delivered to us. We make up for the shortcomings of information with our own reflective practices.

PLE's are working when they support this heavy lifting, intrinsically-motivated personal reflection that creates personal knowledge. Otherwise, PLE's are mere "content management systems" consistent with the well-informed ineptitude that serves all customers poorly.

Technorati tags: PLE, knowledge, reflective practitioners

Eating and PLE's

If something is eating you for very  long, your PLE is not working. PLE's naturally complicate a positional stance, bring in other viewpoints and change the debate in the process of juxtaposing different contexts. PLE's provide lots of food for thought. You're the one who should to be eating, not the one getting eaten up inside. Perhaps your PLE has been co-opted into a job requirement that takes making yourself work at it. Perhaps it feels like you're always giving and getting nothing back. Maybe you're always searching for answers without getting that feeling of succeeding. If that's the case, your PLE is junk food and you're only snacking. No nutrition for you.

If you're feeding your face, your PLE is not working either. If you're feasting on a bounty of content, links, and subscriptions, you're missing the point. It's good that you're eating and getting fed beyond your wildest expectations. There's more to this PLE process, however. What about dietary balance, nutritional effects and your eating patterns? How are you benefiting from all this food for thought? What difference is it making in your life? Are you taking time to digest the feast? If not, you're caught up in some kind of rat race, chasing after carrots on a stick and jumping through other people's hoops. It's time to switch to intrinsic motivation and personally significant questions to explore. Take it at a pace of your choosing. Listen to your body's signals and changing inclinations.

If you're obsessed with the value of what you're getting from your PLE, you're on the right track headed in the wrong direction. What about all the rest of us on common ground with you? Have you noticed our strange tastes and peculiar appetites? Have you made any sense of when we're hungry, how often we feel like eating, what we're hungry for, what seems distasteful to us and what different foods for thought we think go together really well? Are you seeing any benefit to you in entertaining such a diversity of hungers. Have you noticed which atmosphere make us lose our appetites or make food for thought seem repulsive? If not, it's time to care for us, serve our interests and relate to our diverse preferences.

If now you're cooking, your PLE is working great. You're creating environments for us to feast on how you're learning among us. You're creating dining experiences where we can feed on what you've cooked up for us to consider and use in our own contexts. You're immersing us in shared events of feeding on food for thoughts. Thanks for the good time and great memories!

Talking about PLEs

PLE's are loaded with potentials and possibilities. When you listen to people talk about PLE's or read their writing about PLE's, you can discern how many of those kinds of possibilities they are saying "Yes!" to.

Some people say "yes, no, no, no" to PLE's. Most of these people don't have PLE's themselves and don't feel successful at finding what they really want to learn. They may help you set up a tiny PLE and that can be a very big deal for you. If all you've learned is what somebody else wanted you to learn, changing to your personal interests is huge. It's like a seed that has not sprouted roots or a stem, but is loaded with enormous possibilities for growth.The PLE is "tiny" because it only explores questions that interest you and misses out on most of things a PLE can do for you. But your PLE does explore your interests with your motivation to make you happy with what you're learning. YES!

Other people say "yes, yes, no, no" to PLE's. They've discovered that PLE's change their mind about learning. They we're thinking that learning is a thing we can make happen and be done with. Now they're realizing learning is a process of continually changing and evolving. Learning stretches out like anything that takes a very long time. One of the ways PLE's gave them this other idea is their learning from other writers, reflective thinkers and sense-makers. It's obvious these writers are changing their minds every day, often coming to new realizations, or frequently rethinking something they had already figured out. Once learning seems like it's never done and it's always a mystery, a PLE becomes a life long journey and a never-ending story. YES YES!

Some other people say "yes, yes, yes, no" to PLE's. They've discovered how PLE's let them look in on other learners and care for them. They realize how other learners are having problems with sorting out what they want to learn, finding what they're looking for, changing their minds about something or realizing a better way to get something done. Their PLE becomes an environment for learning from other learners. Problems with learning, situations and bad experiences get solved together. Thinking together gets helpful ideas to come to our minds that would not occur to us when we're researching topics of interest. YES YES YES!

A few people say "yes, yes, yes, yes" to PLE's. They've discovered how to learn from everything that happens. They see a way to say "yes" to everything, like it's all good and getting better too. They've realized how much they get out of giving to others. They are generating content for others in so many ways that cannot deplete what they've already got. They wonder what to say that could be helpful for others. But they find what they give answers their own question, changes their own mind or lets go of a crazy idea. YES YES YES YES!

Technorati tags: PLE

see also:

• PLE's come in sizes
• Getting it together - PLE's
  
• If this is your first PLE
• Come inside the PLE arena

What is a PLE?

Setting up PLE's for students appears to be the latest meme spreading around the K-12 schooling world. Contemplating all those new PLE's just starting out brought me back to a "beginner's mind" where I could wonder what a PLE is.

First there's the definition in the Wikipedia:

Personal Learning Environments are systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to:

• set their own learning goals
• manage their learning; managing both content and process
• communicate with others in the process of learning

and thereby achieve learning goals.

Then there's the idea that a PLE is a cobbling together of online resources into a dashboard that is continually updated, perhaps like Netvibes or Pageflakes.

There's the possibility of sharing items with other learners, as Karl Fisch mentions in his switch to Google Reader with that capability. Sharing also occurs by subscribing to other learners' RSS feeds if they blog, edit a wiki, routinely update a web site or revise their public content in Web 2.0 sites like del.icio.us, Bloglines, Facebook, Flickr or YouTube.

A PLE can be the kind of learning we do when the content comes to us per our search, request, inquiry or discovery. This learning is intrinsic, self motivated and inherently more satisfying. When get a feeling of "successful finding" from learning this way.

A PLE might be something that grows in an environment of curiosity, wonder and fascination from seeds of personally meaningful questions. Likewise, a PLE is something that withers and dies in an environment of conformity pressure and obedience to imposed rules.

A PLE seems more like a process of successful exploration and personal reflection that identifies with our questions, than the actual resource environment that gets explored by identifying with our learning.

Finally there's the working definition I've come to with all my reflective practice about PLE's lately:

A PLE is the environment we create, for other learners to benefit from our ongoing learning processes, whenever we are:

• intrinsically motivated to question, explore and discover more of what we are looking for
• learning from sources who are changing and revealing their process of making sense
• serving others who are facing problems with learning from their situations and experiences
• generating content that benefits those others and ourselves in the process of giving on common ground

Technorati tags: PLE

Learning from not really learning

Have you noticed people who speak of learning as a thing to manage and control? Does it bother you the way it does for Mark Oehlert? The word "learning" gets used as a noun. Have you caught yourself thinking that way about learning? Can you switch to another way of thinking when you start making a thing of learning?

There's another way to think about learning. The word "learning" changes into a verb. Learning is not a thing; it's a process that is continually happening, growing and changing. You might be in the process of learning right now as you read this. Learning is different every time and different for each of us all of the time. Unfolding developments and realizing insights are subjective and deeply significant to us personally. Our ongoing process and value from changing is idiosyncratic, contextual and emergent from our previous experiences. This is the PERSONAL Learning that PLE's are really about. PLE's are a big no-thing.

Switching to learning as a verb appears to be difficult. We've been spellbound by delivery systems selling us content. We've internalized the idea that we can be given learning, made to learn, spell out our learning and measured to see how much we've already learned. There's a pervasive consensus trance that it works to make a thing of learning and understand it objectively. We're threatened by learning as no-thing -- that cannot be controlled, sold, packaged or made to happen.

Have you noticed what happens when we make a thing of learning? Do you see any harm being done, learners getting damaged or outcomes appearing bogus? Does it make sense to you that "mistaking learning as a noun" could create problems for learners, educators, instructional designers and managers?

Are you seeing yourself or others who are not really learning? Do you see signs of going through the motions, pretending to get value, faking the a-ha experience? Does it seem to you that people are content with pseudo learning in order to stay out of trouble, avoid criticism or play along with the crowd? Could we products of a system that failed to provide us with a real education?

Why do you suppose it is so difficult to switch to learning as a verb? Does it take letting go of ego, all fear and any sense of separation from all of us? Does the use of learning as a verb mean we're being vastly accepting and inclusive of all experiences? Can we think of learning as an out-of-control process without falling into terrifying chaos, the existential void and overwhelming anxieties? Can learning be a joy and mystery without losing our grip, identity and comfort zone?

Maybe "learning as a process" is simply what comes about from innocence? What-if this blog post is a process, not a thing? What would happen if we identified with our questions instead of our learning? What could come about from approaching the next upsetting thing with curiosity, fascination and wonder? What am I really creating with your Personally by posing all these questions?

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.

PLE's down under

I had a wonderful time and learned a lot from my online participation in the New South Wales Learnscope Event yesterday. Having previously uncovered the fact they've been talking about PLE's down under for years, I was very curious about their understanding. Much to my surprise, Personal Learning Environment has a very different connotation in the vocational education and certification community. PLE is mentioned in the same breath with job interviews and ePortfolios.

I've been thinking of "learning" as a verb and a PLE supports processes of continual learning by exploration and discovery. Down under learning is a noun and a PLE reveals what learning has already been identified and completed.

For me, most of the learning supported by PLE's occurs during employment, as a facet of learning organizations, communities of practice and coaching models of leadership. Down under the PLE's serve job applicants and present their learning that's been accomplished prior to employment.

I've been assuming learning would increase exponentially as a result of PLE usage, both longitudinally in life-long learning and in depth from learning about the significance and value of happenstance. Down under, the learning can be decreased by successful capture of latent or tacit competencies already acquired, but not consciously realized by the "portfolio worker".

For me, PLE's are unique creations of individual learners who's personal curiosity, questions and passions would shape the subscriptions, explorations and realizations. Down under, PLE's are being considered as a government program to extend support for job seekers beyond the skill training and placement services.

I see PLE's as movies that constantly change over time and keep us fascinated with their continual surprises and developments. Down under, PLE's are snapshots of what's occurred that could credential the learner as a worthy candidate for employment if the established content was cleaned up and made "less personal".

I've been expecting that utilizing a PLE could serve as a wonderful credential. A PLE demonstrates the learner's ability to increase shared knowledge in an organization, rebound from mistakes or setbacks, identify unfamiliar trends in customers or the industry, deal with conflicts and learn to think through problems from other team members. Down under, the credentials have focused on job skills; what has been learned rather than how the learner continually learns and benefits the employer by learning.

This is a different contention from the LMS/VLE vs PLE  debate I've explored. I learned a lot yesterday about the value of ePortfolios and digital credentials for employment. I'm seeing yet another perspective to include in my evolving big picture of PLE possibilities and success factors. As always, I'm learning from what happens.

Learning in public view

Back in the days of learning from authorities who appeared to us as ink on paper, we learned in private. No one could really see what we were thinking or how we were changing our minds. Those few people who could give us grades, evaluate our performance or correct our mistakes -- could only assume what we must have been thinking. The only evidence was our final product and the content we learned from seemed like an expert's final say.

Of course there are exceptions like newspaper columnists daily writing, draft submittals of works in progress, and the corpus of an author's lifetime work. Yet the dominant impression from "ink on paper" was to be silenced in the presence of authorities. We were learning by internalizing content, not realizing insights on our own.

Now that we've liberated to generate unique content, express our own voice and join in unexpected conversations, our thinking is on display. Instead of making isolated pronouncements (like memos, reports, papers) we are making sense that connects from day to day. People can see us evolve our understanding and change our minds. Our thinking is obviously being affected by others' thinking. We are combining ideas, incorporating other concepts and integrating opposing viewpoints.

With our thinking on display, evaluation can become more balanced and evidenced based. Other's can see where were coming from, how we routinely react and what confines our options. We may even get feedback on how we connect the dots, make sense of the facts or define the problem we're facing. Evaluation of us may eventually lose the chronic problems with rater bias (demonizing) and false positives (halo effects).

As we learn in public view, others can learn from how we learn. We can provide examples of learning from what happens to us or shows up as a big lesson in our life. Other's can make better sense of how we make sense -- because our learning appears as a process of continual adaptation and evolution. Instead of fixing an isolated error, helpful advice will work with our processes of reasoning.

With people seeing how we're changing, we may even benefit from a few others taking an interest in our learning. We may get mentored by someone who is fascinated by our thought processes. We may get a different way of seeing ourselves from someone who has watched our thinking evolve.

PLE's dramatically increase the chances of all these improvements occurring. By generating content that others can subscribe to its RSS/Atom feed, we set up our learning in public view.

Come inside the PLE arena

One of my favorite aspects of learning from other bloggers is realizing my assumptions from others using different premises. The more this occurs, the better overview I get of the entire arena of possibilities.

This morning I imagined a picture of four entrances into the PLE arena. I see my favorite and the chosen access points of others. Together we cover many of the premises for exploring this vast realm of possibilities.

Freedom entrance: Most educators and advocates of PLE's come through this access point. The value of PLE's appears to dwell on the freedom from indoctrination, passive acceptance of expertise and coercion to comply with uniform requirements. PLE's are portals into any free ranging exploration of online resources. Look for Stephen Downes to show you a way into the PLE arena from this perspective.

Life-long learning entrance: PLE's are attractive to educators who support those facing workforce reentry, rebounding from technological obsolescence, upgrading skills levels in their current trade and choosing a career change. PLE's empower the more confident and self-selective learning that grows outside school environments. Check out Michele Martin to get a handle on this door into the PLE arena. 

Community development entrance: PLE's are powerful vehicles to come together to move issues forward, synthesize combined alternatives, or join forces in shifting the narrative in larger contexts. By consciously learning from each other and the processes of interaction, the ensuing realizations create bonds, common ground and collaborative possibilities. Set your coordinates for the Future of Learning in a Networked World to come into the arena on this basis.

Reflective practice entrance: PLE's endlessly juxtapose frames of reference, underlying assumptions and conflicting priorities. There is an amazing supply of issues to reconsider, view from other perspectives, and combine into more inclusive understandings. Observing others gaining new insights fuels this ongoing reflective practice. Here's lookin at y'a kid. Welcome to my door.

IF PLEs became bulletproof

Scott Wilson (University of Bolton UK) is a proponent of PLE's. He admirably seeks middle ground between closed and open systems or IT Departments and student learning processes. Scott is in tune with my recent Changing the Debate post.  In a paper (MS Word doc) he wrote this year with others, Scott proposed the use of PLE's to avoid the calamitous excesses of any typical IT Department in pursuit of a bulletproof, stable infrastructure.

This week Pete Reilly coincidentally provided context to this issue of IT department excesses. Pete enumerated how a bullet proof infrastructure for a K-12 school system feels like a "prison lock down" to its users:

Is it success to tie down a network to the point where teachers and students can't use the A: Drive; can't load software on the C: Drive, have the "right click" mouse feature disabled, can't attach peripherals, can't use applications like Skype, have little storage space for projects, cannot create and/or store podcasts, videos, blogs, and wikis; while having little or no access to "approved applications" and files from home or locations outside of the school?

In his paper: Preparing for Disruption, Scott referenced one of my all time favorite books: Systemantics - How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail, John Gall (1975) I seem to read that book once every ten years or so. I reread it last weekend for the fourth time with all these PLE issues on my mind. I came to lots of new realizations by juxtaposing these two domains in my mind. PLE's could operate in failure mode if they get tainted by effects of large systems and became a job requirement:

• The PLE would be taken as an accurate representation of the person, (the chart is the patient, the personnel file is the employee)
• The PLE would be monitored closely to know the person, evaluate job performance, decide on raises/promotions, and reassign to other jobs
• The PLE would necessitate a large reporting commitment, filed on schedule (number of feeds added/deleted, number of items written, number of links/comments received, etc)
• Those inputs to the PLE monitoring system would be regarded as the outputs of the system; a good week of PLE measures would show impressive increases in the number of feeds added, posts written, comments received, links made.
• Questions about personal learning would be disregarded as: beyond the scope of the PLE monitoring system, mere speculative concerns or unsubstantiated opinions that spawn disunity.
• The PLE's would generate a new set of problems and layer of management to oversee the meetings, training programs and policy revisions to deal with those problems. 
• Those new PLE problems might include:
  • certifying the quality of PLE's
  • terminating substandard PLE's
  • limiting the scope/depth of PLE topics to align with system goals
  • offering incentives to get apathetic employees to keep their PLE up to standard
  • confining PLE endeavors to planned goals and program objectives
  • reprimanding creators of deviant PLE's who indulge in serendipitous  developments
• The devoted keepers of PLE's would become delusional about their value, assuming they must be doing good to get so much attention from management, failing to notice that no personal learning was actually occurring.

In other words, that same pattern of destructive excess that IT Departments exhibit in making an infrastructure bulletproof, could destroy the value of PLE's if management adopts them as a job requirement.

PLEs - Getting it together

Having come from so many different angles to comprehend PLE's recently, a comprehensive picture has emerged in my mind. I now see the challenge of creating a successful PLE as combining and balancing four different processes. While we are starting these processes initially, PLE's appropriately seem like actual things to work on. Once we get it together, a PLE becomes a fascinating, complex process to continually nurture and explore. It works because it's comprised of processes that reverse and evolve in context.

Intrinsic motivating: PLE's involve a big switch from our relying on extrinsic motivations. We stop seeking approval and maintaining dependencies on other's validation. We abandon the "carrot on a stick" or "free prize inside" to do our own thing. We get in touch with our feelings and pursue what we feel like exploring, changing and creating. This is a transition from captivity to freedom and from toxic dependency to self reliance. In our PLE's, we are motivating our endeavors from within.

RSS feed learning: PLE's involve a different approach to learning from what we're accustomed to. We've been bred to learn from ink on paper put there by authorities. We expect to learn the final say from experts who are qualified to tell us what to think. When we learn from subscriptions to RSS feeds, we can see how people (authors and regular commenters) think over time. We watch them change their minds, extend their understandings and create new insights. We get a sense that learning is a process of continual evolution, not a procedure of internalizing established information. We learn from how the learning unfolds in our feed reader and how successful we are at finding what we want by subscribing to feeds.

Common grounding: What comes to mind changes with the ground we stand on. PLE's make it easy and expected to come from common ground. We relate to other learners on an equal basis, as a "work in progress" and "continually evolving". We relate at eye level and see the validity of other points of view. We stop looking down on inferiors or putting superiors on a pedestal where power struggles ensue and debates degenerate into stalemates. Our considerable successes with intrinsic motivation and amazing finds puts in a position to contribute generously. The more we succeed, the more we have to share and give to others' journeys. Our PLE's give us experiences with the power of reciprocation, community and shared interests.

Content generating: If we've been silenced or inhibited by a system of domination, expressing our own viewpoint is a big change. We find our voice is legitimate and useful to others as we speak out and speak of others' voices. We join the conversations and explorations with content we generate. The more we give, the more we get a sense of what we have to give. We see what we can say that makes a difference and serves a larger purpose. We contribute to common ground indirectly by becoming self motivated and learning from others' learning. We contribute directly by generating content.

All four processes are highly inter-dependent. Each affects the other three. We cannot have a successful PLE is we are dependent on a reward system or only assimilating information. Our PLE will break down if we are only taking from others and not giving back. The content we generate will serve neither ourselves or others if our motivations are conniving or we're coming from battlegrounds. Getting it together is essential for each of the components to function effectively.

Successful finding and feeling

My critical reflection on PLE's has finally caught up with Leigh Blackall's. PLE's don't exist! They appear to have substance for a good reason. The urgency to speak of them passionately makes lots of sense too. But in fact, they don't exist. PLE's are a reification to capture "successful finding and feeling".

When we think of PLE's as things, we are operating in failure mode. We cannot get the PLE to work like we want it to. We are failing to find what we want to learn, connect to or simply come across serendipitously. We are feeling like this PLE thing is too much trouble or does not reward us for the effort involved. We cannot fix the PLE thing so it does work because it's not a process.

When we think of PLE's as processes, we are operating in success mode. A PLE is a big nothing and our process works great. We effortlessly succeed at finding what we want to learn, connect to or come across by chance. We are feeling this learning is very enjoyable, this freedom is very significant and this process is very effective. If we get into something that does not feel right, we can put this baby into reverse. It's a process that can go backwards as well as forwards.

The more we succeed at finding exactly what we want, when we want it for our own personal reasons, we find several other ways to reverse any learning endeavor that is not working:

1. We find that seeking is a flawed concept. There is only finding what we want or not. The more we find, the more successful we get at finding more. Anytime we realizing we are seeking, or chasing after something we're not finding, we turn that around and go with what we're finding.
2. We find that delayed gratification is unrealistic. There is only immediate satisfaction or not. The more satisfied we are, the more we become rewarded, fulfilled and grateful. Anytime we're not satisfied with our learning, finding or intentions, we can turn the process around and be immediately  appreciative of the turnaround and more.
3. We find that going against our feelings is clueless. There is only alignment with what feels right to do and intrinsically motivated. The more we succeed at feeling aligned with our inner prompting, the more we will feel that way without trying. Anytime we're going against what we feel inspired to do, we can reverse that process and follow our intuitions.
4. We find that learning is not a thing to measure, account for or substantiate. There is only continual learning from everything that happens. The more we evolve from our experiences, the more evolved we become naturally. Anytime we are making a thing of learning, we can reverse that misconception and learn to dismiss any misplaced concreteness.

We make a thing of PLE's to do battle on the same turf as LMS/VLE things. We speak passionately about PLE's because they represent freedom from failure mode. But PLE's perpetuate unsuccessful finding and feeling until they are regarded as a process and no-thing. How is your finding and feeling going right now?

If this is your first PLE

Yesterday, Kevin Prentiss asked me to provide some concrete steps for launching a PLE. In one sentence, I'd say "think up some personally meaningful questions, search for some juicy RSS feeds, subscribe to them in your feed reader and set-up access to that reader for when you're wireless or on your cell". Here's a longer version of some concrete steps to launch a PLE:

Personal learning environments are very different from completing school assignments or complying with a job description. A PLE is something we make up on our own because we feel like doing it. We learn what we want to learn without formal instruction or training. PLE's are not about jumping through hoops. When we figure things out on our own, they make much more sense to us than something we were taught.

I hope it seems really strange for me to tell you how make a PLE up on your own. Why not just wing it and discover what works for you? All I can contribute is my familiarity with what you can look forward to and what's important about different steps you can take. Your PLE is entirely up to you and depends on how you feel for it to work like it should.

Start with your vague and scattered interests: Most learners I've known have very clear ideas about what is expected, graded, or required to learn. They have much more vague ideas about whatever really interest them. Those personal ideas don't get developed equally because they don't count for whatever hoops they're jumping through. So an online search is going to be difficult and possibly unproductive with these personal, yet scattered ideas. Early searches will mostly about which keywords work best, not what's available to learn that looks interesting. By refining which tags, phrases, people and books -- relate to your vague ideas, you'll get an initial sense of how to successfully load up your PLE with fascinating resources.

Check in with your feelings: While your exploring which keywords work best for your scattered thoughts, notice how you're feeling. If the interest you assumed was yours personally has you feeling energized and more curious than before -- it's the real deal. If you're finding this topic is boring or something you're making yourself explore, forget it and try a different idea. PLE's are self propelled. Unlike homework and jobs, PLE's only happen when they energize and fulfill you. The thing you're learning has to be your baby, not somebody else's that you're babysitting.

Search for RSS feeds to subscribe to: PLE's are different from hanging out in a library or searching archived web pages. The sources for personal learning are alive and growing. The people to learn from are expressing themselves and changing their minds every day. They may link to and quote inert text, but they wrap it in paragraphs about what it means to them, how they find it useful and what else the text ties into. Most everything that changes regularly has an RSS feed to add to your PLE. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed of searches for text or tags in web sites, blogs, wiki and bookmarks. Your feed reader will have new stuff to read and think about every day. You'll get the idea that learning is a vibrant process that defies prediction and control. You'll realize that disagreements and contrasting viewpoints induce more realizations for you than consensus and confirmations of one right answer. You'll discover you're learning from the combination of RSS feeds in your feed reader, not just one subscription at a time or each feed in isolation.

Interact with your best finds: After watching your RSS feed subscriptions for several days or weeks, you'll get a sense of your favorite contributors. You may admire how they think, become fascinated with how they learn, or get inspired by how they continually change. Writing to them or about them online will start a conversation and inspire you with more to write about. Notice how your learning doubles when you start expressing yourself, joining into dialogues and sharing your insights with others. You'll gain confidence in what you've learned, value your process more than before and want to go deeper in this direction because it's so rewarding. You'll appreciate your PLE as a process that continually unfolds and surprises you.

PLEs come in sizes

When we think of Personal Learning Environments as things, we are on the same page as construction workers, factory stewards and warehouse operators. We are dealing with the components to assemble a PLE. We describe the PLE as "what we've got in it" like Web 2.0 tools and archives of our own creations.

When we think of PLE's as processes, we're on the same page as designers of architecture, software interfaces and customer experiences. We're dealing with what components do, how they function, what purpose they serve, and which difference they make. These intangible qualities are more difficult to visualize.

When PLE's are comprised of tangible components, there's a limit to how big they can get. We can only handle so much information before we go into overwhelm, denial or dissociation. When PLE's are appreciated for intangible functionalities, there's no limit to their scope, impact and value. When I speak of PLE's coming in different sizes, I'm addressing these intangible qualities.

Tiny PLE's - PLE's can be limited in scope to a research project. This is most common in academic settings where the PLE needs to "fit under the nose" of the instructor giving grades. The research can be of a personal interest and personal selection of resources, but it cannot get more personal than that. This is the kind of research that journalists do for their next story, legislative analysts use to draft new policies and academics rely upon to create new articles for their journals.

Elongated PLE's - PLE's can last a lifetime if they serve continual competency development. Networks like TENCompetence support personal career changing, reentry to the workforce, closing skill gaps and life long learning. The focus on personal skill development is a much larger scope than any research project. It builds on previous learning and requires more intrinsic motivation to succeed. The personal context involves more issues like financial obligations, social acceptance, personal confidence and family commitments. The PLE reaches into the past and extends into the personal future.

Deep PLE's - When PLE's explore why things happen and what they mean personally, they take on an enormous, new dimension. They becomes a source of anxiety relief, comfort and personal growth. The continual contrasts of personal perspectives with others' frames of reference clarifies one's own voice and gifts for the world. We find how we differ that then serves as the basis for how to contribute in ways that are deeply satisfying and significant. We construct "mental models" that gives us ways to accept, forgive and even utilize what happens in our world. We bring compassion and deeper understandings to dramas, conflicts and breakdowns of dialogue.

Infinite PLE's - When a deep PLE is sufficiently robust, we are set-up to learn from everything that happens. We become fascinated by occurrences and open to life's mysteries. "Life is our PLE" because everything imaginable is welcomed as something to possibly explore, reflect upon or incorporate into our understanding. Our reflective practice becomes more significant than acquiring new information. We learn as much or more going within meditatively.

In discussing portions of this with a colleague over the weekend, we concluded that a deep PLE can be started at a young age. His experiences with elementary school children has revealed the ability to "go deep" after the primary grades. The sooner we establish that tradition of personal meaning, the more likely the learners will develop the habit of graciously  "learning from everything that happens".