7 things you should know abou PLE

Today I am going to write about the article "7 things you should know about PLE" written by "EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative". The article has given me a more concrete and clear vision about what does it consist of to create a Personal Learning Environment. 

The text presents the following definition of the term "PLE", which in my opinion it's very useful to understand this complex idea: "The term personal learning environment (PLE) describes the tools, communities, and services that constitute the individual educational platforms learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals".

From this definition, I would like to highlight two ideas:

• Learners use PLE to direct their own learning

• PLE describes tools, communities and services

About the first idea, I have reflected upon the fact that, until now, we are used that the teachers are the ones who give us the resources from which we have to select the information that is useful and interesting for us in order to learn. But, with the PLE, it's we ourselves that have to take care of our own learning process and this makes us be more critical with the resources and materials that we are using both for learning and for teaching. In this way, we are also more aware about what do we understand in terms of "quality education", as we are the ones who select the websites, the blogs, and all the other tools that we found appropriate according to this idea about quality education that we have built. As an example, until now I have already chosen some resources that I will include to my PLE and by only choosing these few tools, I have already noticed in which characteristics of a website I put more emphasis.

Otherwise, as it is also said in the text: "the process of self-directed learning requires a degree of self-awareness, and it must be given time to mature." To my mind, it is essential that students have enough time to reflect upon the way we learn and, as a consequence, upon the way we want to teach. By doing this reflection, the ideas integrated in the PLE will be more meaningful and truly useful for us.

On the other hand, as a "negative point" I can see that it could be very difficult to know what is going to be useful for us in the future taking into account that until now, not everybody has got many opportunities to get involved in the real education world (except for the practical trainings). Moreover, the theory studied at university is not always applied as we imagine in the real life and that can make us chose the wrong resources. However, this weak point could be balanced by another idea noted in the text: PLE can always be updated with new resources. Personally, I believe that we never stop learning and that's why we are always adding new ideas and thoughts. For me, it is important that this platform allows this kind of actualizations because then it can be really used during all our career as it will be adapted to the new necessities according to every moment and situation of our lives.

Another idea I liked about the text is that it could be very helpful to direct our own learning process the experience and advices of other people. Sometimes, it is very helpful to listen to the opinion of people around you in order to see the same thing from different perspectives and, it this way, enrich the own learning. That's why I like the idea to include other's feedback in our PLE. It could be written by our university partners, or even by professionals, ...etc.

Moreover, about the second idea of the PLE definition cited previously, I would like to point out that the platforms which offer creating a PLE also include all kind of "tools, communities and services". That is to say that you can find a wide range of resources in the same PLE.

This, despite can be seen as an advantage because it contains a big variety of facilities, in the text there is also mentioned a more "dangerous" part with which I agree. It says: "Despite their ability to quickly learn new online tools and computer applications, many students lack the information fluency necessary to recognize when a writer speaks from authority, for example, or when a nar­rative is opinion". Personally, I think I have pretty good judgment when I have to evaluate if a resource is valid or not. Nevertheless, I also think that it is really difficult to find good tools and resources and having a good criteria to evaluate them. That's because on the Internet you can find whatever you can imagine and more but this lack of "filters" can also be disadvantageous. In my opinion, it would be interesting to do a lesson in order to talk about what do we take into account when we have to chose a "good quality resource" or a "valid" website, ...etc as these terms for me are very subjective and even a bit abstract.

Another idea connected to the one about the wide range of tools and services we can add to our PLE is that, nowadays that in the schools the words "transversality" and "interrelation" are increasing, as it is said in the article, PLE represents a "model where students draw connections from a growing matrix of resources that they select and organize." This skill of creating connections that we can improve doing our PLE, can be very useful for us to develop this transversality that we, as children, almost didn't see in the school and that I personally found difficult to achieve but at the same time necessarily to do so because it is totally meaningful for the learning of our future students, especially thinking that, in the real life, the knowledge from the different areas is not divided but instead it is interacting constantly and we should identify and apply them together.

Finally, I believe that, specifically the platform "Symbaloo" can be very appropriate and helpful for doing our PLE. Considering that nowadays one can have access to the information from everywhere and this sometimes causes some difficulties in order to find the adequate information quickly, with our Symbaloo we will be able to access faster and more efficiently to the resources that we would have selected previously as the ones that are useful for us. They will be organized and gathered in the same place and it will be very easy to find the one that we need at every moment because we ourselves will be the creators of our Symbaloo.