Sunday, September 26, 2010
DIGITAL PLE
There has been so much discussion about the precise nature of PLEs in this course. Some people think the term should be inclusive and encompass everything that is part of the environment from which we can learn. Others clearly think that because we generally mean the computer environment when we discuss PLEs, whether in PLENK2010 or elsewhere, that we should be more restrictive in our usage. I suggest we resolve the issue by using the restrictive term digital PLE when we mean the latter. While that won't eliminate all the subtleties and nuances that some people clearly prefer, it at least makes it clear for me.
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Hi Veronica,
ReplyDeleteInteresting suggestion; you're right about it not resolving things though; what about those aspects of the PLE that span both online and offline spheres? For example - the colleagues I share an office with who also share my blog space, my personal learning partners with whom I brainstorm around tables with big sheets of paper and also exchange tweets and bookmarks?
It's interesting how we are struggling to find words for concepts that are very much subjective and individual. I wonder if scientists in other fields - genetics, psychology, etc.. struggle as much as we do to agree on words and definitions for the processes we engage in, and I wonder whether we really do need to bother? We are lucky these days - written communication is becoming less formal and technology offers us more options for adding meaning to our words with video, audio, diagrams, images. We are freer to use gesture, expression, metaphor - perhaps we can stop relying so much on finding exactly the right phrase to convey meaning?