Personal Learning Environments - the e-portfolio that never was?

13-February-2006

comments (1)
[ ICT and learning ]
Commentary on Jeremy Hiebert's article on e-portfolio - who considers if the Personal Learning Environment is picking up where e-Portfolios should have been before they were hijacked by vendors and institutions. Plus some thoughts in profiling.

Interesting article by Jeremy Hiebert on e-portfolios - picked it up through Dave and I am sure it will excite more comment.

Jeremy and Dave speculate that the Personal Learning environment (PLE) is in essence what the e-portfolio was supposed to be, before it became hijacked by vendors and institutions trying to turn the concept into a single tool used to measure student achievement.

PLEs essentially are being conceived as a selection of leaner configured and controlled tools, allowing individuals to develop their own work spaces, their own communities and their own working methods.

PLEs may interconnect with institutional learnings systems but critically that is for the leaner to decide. And institutional provision will be aggregated, mixed or worked with alongside inputs from outside the walled gardens.

Now on to Jeremy's diagramme.

E-Portmap

The problem I see with this is the separation of leaner profiling from leaner activity (and this is reflected in the direction of the arrows). There is much interest and activity in learner profiling as the importance of informal learning is increasingly realised (and being cynical accrediting and examining bodies see a new market opening up). But to be effective leaner profiles must be dynamic. they need to be updated regularly to reflect new learning and to reflect new sources of learning.

Besides profiles of past learning and experience and of future aspirations, learners need a way of recording and reflecting on their knowledge base, on their ideas which will change as they work and learn) - which goes beyond a blog and far beyond a tree file structure. George Siemans has stumbled towards this with his idea of connectivity but he isn't there yet.

That is the bit I still can't work out how we do with the PLE and requires in depth discussion .

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Graham Attwell; 13-February-2006 13:21:46;

1 Replies (comments)

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1 Update (posted 2006-02-17)

I've tried to improve on the original diagram by taking out the e-portfolio from the center and seeing it more as one of the available tools: http://headspacej.blogspot.com/2006/02/personal-learning-environment-model.html

Thanks for the feedback on the e-portfolio model, Graham. I had thought that by situating the entire activity within a user's identity/profile, it was assumed that any activity would update their profile...but admittedly, it's a little blurry.

I've tried to improve on the original diagram by taking out the e-portfolio from the center and seeing it more as one of the available tools: headspacej.blogspot.com/2006/02/personal-learning-environment-model.html

This anonymous comment was originally posted 2006-02-17 21:33:48.77

Jeremy, 17-February-2006 21:33:48