This week I gave a presentation (or rather led a discussion) at a Multimedia Workshop at Goethe University in Frankfurt on Personal Learning Environments from the perspective of media pedagogy. We had a very interesting discussion which really came down to the basic questions and problems of formal education. I presented together with Sebastian Fiedler and so we shared the PLE subject and looked at it from different perspectives: me from the perspective of media pedagogy and Sebastian from the socio-historical perspective.
I focused on different forms of use and different examples of PLEs (especially from the PLE Conference 2010 in Barcelona and from some key EU projects) and on how PLEs change learning/teaching/organisational cultures. In the introduction to the PLEs I avoided providing definitions (as we agreed this would be Sebastian’s part) and instead showed the different metaphores that are used to describe Personal Learning Environments. As a linguist I find it fascinating to deconstruct metaphors and abide by Geoge Lakoff claiming that metaphors play a crucial role in shaping our collective thinking. I need to write more on this soon … oh well, once I find some time 😉
As far as different types of PLEs are concerned – me, Graham Attwell and Ricardo Torres are preparing a paper for the PLE Conference in Southampton which we base on a meta-analysis of over 100 papers on PLEs. One of the outcomes of this analysis are differnt possible ways of categorising PLEs that we are trying to arrive at.
You will find these three basic ideas in the slides:
(1) Based on type of technological implementation
- individual, dispersed aggregation
- integrated mash-up system with personal dashboard
(2) based on locus of control/ownership
- private, owned by the user
- institutionalised, integrating institutional resources
(3) based on duration of use
- long-term (longer episodes in a life long process of learning)
- short-term (e.g. project-based, within a particular course, conference etc.)
Unfortunately I could not attend Sebastian’s part as I had to rush to the airport after unexpected 2 hrs of my own presentation woven with discussions and sharing of positions on PLEs. So @Sebastian – I hope to learn more about your standpoint in a blogpost 😉
So here is my presentation. Let me know what you think:
Medien-Didaktik 2.0 