Personal Learning Environment

I'm going to try to write a map of my PLE...

My initial take on the topic was largely based around the LE I would/will set up/configure/modulate for this particular subject, or perhaps this particular degree. I note from some of the other discussions that the opportunity exists to looks at the question in a wider context - indeed, I have found the supermarket a very rich site for learning. In China supermarkets learned* me: lexis, cultural patterns & embedded language, circumlocution, and some recipes.

* I'm on personal crusade to rehabilitate this usage (well-attested in the OED from the C14), partly because it annoys the grammar nazis, and partly because I think its useful to have a non-agentive verb to hand, for at least 2 reasons - supermarkets don't form intentions & student-centred-learning needs to de-privilege the language of the teacher-role.

I'm definitely going to expand my analysis into that space (the undifferentiated whole world space) at some stage, but right now I think I'll stick with purposive leaning sites/tools.

Physical Environment
I've noted elsewhere that I'm a reluctant fan of e-learning: eyestrain is a big problem for me as I approach legal blindness in one eye. I also spent a LOT of money on medical support for my back/neck/shoulders during my last MA, which wasn't even paticularly "e"; but essay & dissertation writing caused a lot of problems. So one feature of my PLE now is that I have invested heavily in mechanical tools; giant screens, customisable keyboards, adjustable chairs, lighting. I have always felt that the physical environment should be invisible, in a sense. One of the great comforts of pen/paper for me is that I am not aware of them as I work - whereas typing, fan noise, screen lighting, all form irritants sapping energy & motivation. We'll have to see how that all goes - but at least I'm meeting it with a plan this time around.

(Semi-)Social networks
I have to say that one of the great aspects of this program seems to be the commitment of the students to the content (as opposed to the qualification). I'm really excited about that - it hasn't been a feature of previous tertiary experiences. This is one way in which I think e-learning has tremendous potential; in some way it should always be possible to find a critical mass of interested people by looking to other institutions/sites. It doesn't look like we particularly need to do it on this course, but of course the opportunity still obtains. (This idea of students in a cross-institutional class parallels another of my academic dreams - the non-institutional degree; or perhaps the idea that one could get one's degree and one's education at separate places. In fact, already quite possible in Europe, but not so in Australia, although RPL is a movement towards it. )

I think that forum-type environments can be very powerful - I've used them very successfully in the technology world, to deal with very specific questions. They need a lot of moderation to maintain an accessible structure, though,and for geneal discussion they can be a lttle unmanageable. It will be interesting for me to see how/whether NING-type sites can avoid some of these traps.

In the past (and I assume the future) corporate intranets have been a site for networking/data sharing. They also suffer from indexing problems, like forums, which search functionality doesn't always solve. There isn't much difference between most corporate intranets I've worked with, and Blackboard.

Email is an important tools for me in terms of maintaining contact with people who don't use social networking sites, and also establish contact with authors.

Tools
I use specifically Google Docs, Reader, Gmail, Blogger, Picasa, Adrive, Panoramio as online tools. Typically I try to use Opensource software for offline tools; thus, OpenOffice, Kinovea (video editing), Super (codec management), Audacity (audio editing), Wavepad (audio editing), Perl & CSIProlog (programming), Bibus (bibliography), SQLite (database), but occasionally I succumb to Microsoft-itis; hence Windows XP, Windows 7, MovieMaker. It's along list of tools (probably not comprehensive) but it's lead me to think over time about how to manage such a complex environment, and one of the key ideas is "standards". It's kind of boring, but as I have been forced to move from one tool to another, rebuild data collections,waste time on developing & understanding interfaces, I am acutely aware of how, while on the one hand enabling, on the tother hand, digital tools are terrible time thieves. The proprietary non-standards imposed on us by manufacturers are at odds with the scholarly (well, maybe it's just my idea) idea of ready information flow. To counter that, we need to build proprietary-independent standards - and then learn and use them. Perhaps this is not thinking digitally, but it is looking to create a kind of common digital language.

Of course, learning has always had to adapt itself to the world; the compromises of the pre-e-learning world are to some extent hidden in compromises made before us, and inherited invisibly by us, with limitations that are not particularly questioned.

Sources
Online newspapers are a great source of information about Education, both because it is a highly politicised topic & because teachers are a major customer group of newspapers. Online newspapers often publish quite detailed research notes,including bibliographic information, so they can be a great starting point for research.

Google Scholar seems to me to be an almost complete waste of time; I would much ratehr make the journey to the State Library (when not a student of a tertiary institution) and search the scholarly databases there. But the mechanism access is perhaps beside the point, the resource is the publications online.