Wednesday, September 15, 2010

First day of PLENK2010

The questions that are rolling around in the back of my mind as I dive in to the readings:

1. Can concepts of PLE be incorporated into corporate training?
2. How does metacognition factor into PLEs?
3. How does motivation factor into PLEs?

The learners who come to my organization for training are looking for professional development and certification.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Ed tech nerdery

So what's PLE, you're wondering.

PLE = personal learning environment

I'm setting up this blog to document my participation in PLENK2010 (Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge).

The PLENK2010 course is a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). You can read more about it here.

All of this stuff is related to connectivism, which you can read about here. Worth noting is the discussion at the end that argues that connectivism is not a learning theory (though it's titled that way in the article).

What kicked off this impulse to research and document some of the newer ways humans are learning? I'm reporting out to our Board of Directors about the future of learning in a few weeks. So instead of going about my usual business in my own informal personal learning environment, I've been reading and researching some of this stuff more formally. I believe this is the future of learning, because it's how I learn. Okay, that's clearly not scientific enough, but when I look around, these concepts align with the way most people seem to be learning these days. The designer in me is interested, because while I know most individuals are learning in what can be called a connectivist manner, I am very curious about how these principles of information-gathering and knowledge-building can be put to use in corporate settings.