Week 11 -- General Assignment 2: A PLE

Get excited !

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Today's lab session has been an eye-opener for me and has widened my understanding of Web 2.0 tools in facilitating learning. 'Personal Learning Environment' ( PLE ) is one of them.

PLE offers the learner opportunities to engage in learning activities at a pace which is comfortable and customised to individual needs. The learning platform is distributed enabling the learner to construct knowledge gradually. As it is much bottom-up initiated, it offers flexibility to the learner.

On the contrary, 'Learning Management System' (LMS) has a centralised learning platform. It is initiated by the corporation with a top-down approach, learners and facilitators are not given a choice but to use it resulting in rigidity in implementation.

Let me end by sharing an apt summary on the concept of PLE by Ron Lubensky :-

' ... a Personal Learning Environment is a facility for an individual to access, aggregate, configure and manipulate digital artifacts of their on-going learning experiences '.

Therefore a PLE is a mix of the formal and informal tools and processes that a learner uses to gather information, reflect on it and process it which, in a nutshell , what we mean by learning.

( See C-Map below for a visual integration of learning tools in PLE )

Constructivist Views Of Learning

As a visual learner, I need pictures, drawings, maps to help me understand. Therefore I need to construct a pictorial structure of learning items.This helps me to the link various aspects of a topic giving me a holistic picture. Listening to a lecture will not do as it helps only about 5%. Constructing it as a map ( mind-map or C-map ) gives me about 90% understanding.

Sketching a concept map manually has its advantage as I can quickly jot down the ideas as I progress. It is readily available. However in the long run, I prefer to use a software like C-map to construct learning. It is editable, neat, impressive...it adds another dimension to learning... being creative with colours and shapes to stimulate interest in reading it!

I will be using it more often to organise my lessons and encourage my students to use it as a learning tool to help them comprehend, recall and apply what they have learnt.

Using a CONSTRUCTIVIST approach, the retention rate of learning is high... as shown in the following C-map.