Another exciting open learning event will start on Monday!

I am really pleased to be involved in another connectivist course. A Massive Open Online Course on Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge this time; #PLENK2010. I was a student at CCK08 and CCK09 and was facilitator this year at a Critical Literacies course with Stephen downes, and I will also facilitate at this one on Personal Learning Environments, which promises to become another cracker. Already over 900 participants have enrolled and the last few weeks in Moncton have been frantic with anticipation and preparation to ensure a learning environment would be ready on time to accomodate such a crowd of learner

This time there will be four facilitators, Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Dave Cormier and I and that also promises to bring some spice to the online debate as from our pre-course discussions it has already become clear that we don't have the same views on learning; on how personal or how social it is for instance.

I really like the hustle and bustle of this type of courses and the initial confusion, which slowly moves towards clarity via lots of moments of excitement, insight and pure joy to be able to communicate worldwide with people who are interested in what I am interested in.

And this time the course is also part of the research that we at the National Research Council of Cananda here in Moncton are currently carrying out. We're trying to research and develop a PLE that forms a pedagogical platform on which people can truly learn; not just aggregate information. That is my challenge here, to ensure that that happens.

I see this course as a great opportunity to learn from participants what their ideas are of what a PLE should or could look like, but also of how they like to learn themselves and what tools and support mechanisms they would find helpful with that.

 http://ple.elg.ca/plenk2010/
Let it all begin!