PLEs include the capacities, skills, contacts, tools, and resources that Learners use to direct learning and pursue personal and professional goals. Placing students at the center of their learning environments encourages students to take charge of their learning. PLEs provide a unifying concept that can address a number of promising educational practices.

1. Personal Learning Environments
Sustainable Learning

2. Horizon Report: 2011 K-12
Personal Learning Environments
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf

3. Independent School Fall 2011
Spotlight on Research
Empowering Students with
Personal Learning
Environments
By Wendy Drexler

4. “…a PLE is the method students use to organize their
self-directed online learning – including the tools they
employ to gather information, conduct research, and
present their findings. As its name implies, PLEs give
learners a high degree of control over their work by
allowing them to customize the learning experience and
connect to others, including experts in the field.”
- Wendy Drexler p. 20, Independent School, Fall 2011

5. As a master learner,
where is the edge
of your learning?

6. Students at the mercy of the
entire Internet
Students build their own
information spaces to
control the Internet

7. “Fragmentation is a
[Picture of a skier, skiing down new reality. Our
an avalanche in progress.]
learning models
Permission to use picture was
given only for the live
need to embrace it.”
presentation however a copy of
the picture can be seen on the -- George Siemens
cover of this book:
Staying Alive in Avalanche
Terrain by Bruce Tremper (Sept
2008)
October, 2011
Athabasca
University
http://www.sl
ideshare.net/g
siemens/open
-access-week-
athabasca-
university

8. Confusion about the term PLE
PLE’s are not
exclusively digital:
include taking in
experiences and
realia, and learning
through TV, music,
paper-based
materials, radio
and more formal
contexts.
Content not as
important now as
knowing where (or
who) to connect to, to
find it.
Tools used to support
lifelong learning.
FROM
http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.s
g/technology-in-
pedagogy/articles/Technol
ogy-in-Pedagogy-6.pdf

9. Key:
Personal = Capacities/Literacies
= Skills
Learning = Categories of Tools
Evaluating
Environment Dealing with
Technology
Resources
Searching
and viewing
text audio
and video
Practicing Digital
Literacy
Avoiding
Inappropriate Tagging
Content
Communicating Practicing Digital Organizing Note
Respectfully Responsibility Content Taking
Managing
Using Multiple
Technology
Accounts
Properly
Collaborating
Synthesizing and
and Creating Socializing
Reflecting
Producing Debating Communicating
Content
Questioning
Source:
http://bit.ly/95fLAC

10. Don Tapscott

11. The Rise of the Age of Networked Intelligence
Agrarian Age Industrial Age of Networked
Age Intelligence
Printing Press Internet
Don Tapscott - Aspen Ideas Festival
July 18, 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDIwIyft3fU

12. Why are networks so powerful?
The value of a network increases by the square of each
member who joins.

13. As a node in the network you can potentially
connect with any other node and that action
distributes your intelligence.

14. “There is no such thing as information
overload. There is only filter failure.”
- Clay Shirkey

15. Activity: Key:
= Capacities/Literacies
identify the = Skills
areas you are Evaluating Searching
= Categories of Tools
Dealing with Resources and viewing
familiar with. Technology
text audio
and video
Practicing Digital
Literacy
Avoiding
Inappropriate Tagging
Content
Communicating Practicing Digital Organizing Note
Respectfully Responsibility Content Taking
Managing
Using Multiple
Technology
Accounts
Properly
Collaborating
Synthesizing and
and Creating Socializing
Reflecting
Producing Debating Communicating
Content
Questioning

16. Push Models
Push models treat people as passive consumers
whose needs can be anticipated and shaped by
centralized decision-makers.
from
Pull Models Push to Pull
Pull models are emerging as a response to
growing uncertainty. Instead of dealing with
uncertainty through tighter control, pull models
do the opposite. Pull models help people to
come together and innovate in response to
unanticipated events, drawing upon a growing
array of highly specialized and distributed
resources. Rather than seeking to constrain the
resources available to people, pull models strive
to continually expand the choices available
while at the same time helping people to find
the resources that are most relevant to them
-- John Seeley Brown & John Hagel
The Power of Pull, 2011

17. An information dashboard utilizing widgets such as iGoogle,
PageFlakes or Netvibes can aggregate many aspects of a PLE in a
compact digital display.

18. ’What can you do?’
has been replaced with
‘What can you and your
network connection do?’
Knowledge itself is
moving from the individual
to the individual and
his contacts.
--Jay Cross
“Informal Learning”

19. -- Everyone needs to find their “Inner Librarian” in order
to become efficient with information management.
-- The library of the future will include the one you
make yourself.
Organizing
Content
Shift: Push to Pull

20. Synthesizing
and Creating
LINK to student project:
https://sites.google.com/site/virtual
museumoftheorigins/
GOAL: Students come to believe their contributions matter.

21. It’s Personal!

22. “It seems critical to ask whether new digital media are giving rise to
new models – new “ethical minds” – with respect to identity,
privacy, ownership and authorship, credibility and participation…”
Practicing Digital
Responsibility
Reputation and
Identity management

23. Example Mindmaps
Everyone’s
Learning
Environment
Is Different
BIG LIST OF PLEs
http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/PLE+Diagrams

25. Personal Learning Environments
Sustainable Learning
Seattle Academy, Seattle, WA
Kathleen Johnson, Librarian kjohnson@seattleacademy.org
Vicki Butler, Director of Academic Technology
vbutler@seattleacademy.org