The middle of September, from 13th of September to be precise, I will be involved in another open online course. After our course on Critical Literacies over the summer the course this time will be about our bread and butter, Personal Learning Environments. Stephen Downes and I will be working with George Siemens from the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute of Athabasca University and Dave Cormier from the University of Prince Edward Island to get at the heart of PLEs .
The course aims to discuss the research literature that is now available on PLEs and we will for instance talk and think about questions such as:
Is the PLE a technical environment, or a concept?
Is it even possible when learners are in control of their online environment to produce a PLE at all?
What could such an environment look like? How could environments and developments of this nature be evaluated?
Can PLEs be linked to institutions of education or is that connection a contradiction in terms in a learner-controlled environment?
Should people have a particular level of autonomy in their learning to make the most of PLEs and would some literacies be critical to working with PLE/Ns?
How do PLE/Ns relate to social , informal, non-formal, incidental, formal, networked and self-directed learning ?
How do PLEs related to the eXtended Web?
If you’re interested, you can sign up here
The format will be similar to the Critical Literacies course we held this summer. It is also a connectivist course and you can find a course outline and a programme here.
