I was honoured to be asked to moderate a session at the PLE Conference in Barcelona (#PLE_BCN on Twitter) to talk about what exactly is a Personal Learning Environment. In this session, myself and 3 other educators (Cristina Costa, Ilona Buchem and Wolfgang Reinhardt) that are located all over the world, will work with participants to figure out a definition for the PLE term.
My brother, Alec Couros, talked about PLN’s vs PLE’s in a previous post and it is definitely a great read to see how he used his PLE to further his own learning on the very same subject. The fact of the matter is that a mutually agreed upon definition will never happen but it is beneficial for educators to think about key components of a PLE and how they can use this to further their own learning.
We are starting with the following visual with 4 key areas to help define a PLE (Learning, Content, Social Interaction, and Technology):
I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic with some guiding questions:
- Are there any key main components that are missing from this category?
- Are there too many main components and if you were to eliminate one, which would it be and why?
- What would be some sub topics under the four components that are listed?
As I stated earlier, a mutually agreed upon definition will not likely be reached, but it would be great to hear your ideas. This will also help further my own learning. Isn’t this is what a PLE is about?
