Personal Hard Drive

Mark Oehlert made some very sparky comments as he enters into the "raging PLE debate." (I love being part of raging debates -- it's really fun, isn't it?) Mark writes,

"You wanna know what a PLE is? Its called your head."

I said a similar thing in a comment on Tony Karrer's blog the other day:

Isn't the main tool of the PLE our very own little brains? It's the best software around and completely portable. I can take it with me from job to job; from hobby-project to family life. It's personal and personalized. It's mine and a corporation can never ever own it...or can it?

Tony came back talking about all the tools he uses as an extension of his brain. This is true. We use technology for storage. But as Mark points out, that's different from "learning."

So maybe the PLE that we're all talking about here is really a Personal Hard Drive. It's a storage place for all that information. Late, we go back to our various storage facilities for all the hard-core processing we do with our brains.

Nevertheless, the storage facility does support the learning process, doesn't it.

My Personalized Personal Work Learning Environmental World

Tony Karrer asked in the comments on my PLE post yesterday,

I'm curious if you distinguish your learning environment (tools, skills, etc.) from your work environment (tools, skills) in any significant way (especially in the context of tacit work)?

Well, this is a good question. One that I'll have to consider for awhile here...the slow learning of blogging...thoughts trickle down and excited ideas bubble up. It's just a giant percolating coffee pot inside my brain these days.

At first glance, I'd say that most of my "personal" learning does not happen with technology tools at all. I read books, I talk to people, I experience. Most of what I'm doing outside of work these days involves the care and feeding of two small people, ages 2 and 4.

Those of you who've done the small child thing know there's not a lot of time for extras, especially if you work full-time. There are plenty of opportunities for learning: usually it's at least one lesson a day in patience and deep-breathing.

But the boundary has gotten fuzzy for me. e-Learning creeps into the world of parenting. Through blogging and access to this wonderful community beyond the walls of my office, I've started to get passionate again about my work.

Through watching my kids play with technology tools, I KNOW that things are changing; that e-Learning will be a fact of life for them. So I feel the need to understand e-Learning more from the education and lifelong learning standpoint than just boring old training. Their school days will be quickly upon us. I need to be prepared.

Because I work in the technology field and because the world is becoming increasingly technology-driven, the boundary between personal and work has gotten really really fuzzy.

(Oh boy, am I going to start making a big map of my learning world now? It just might happen....)

But the truth is, I do use some "tools" to manage my personal learning:

• iGoogle kind of changed my life. I have links to sites I like to read that may or may not pertain to my work world. I have a Big Lebowski quote generator on my home page that always makes me laugh. (Not learning, but humor is essential!) I keep track of the phases of the moon. I read the NY Times headlines. Because iGoogle goes with me, it has become a place for both work and personal interests.
• I use Google bookmarks to manage links of personal learning interest. Increasingly, I'm also using deli.ci.ous, but that's mostly for work-related links so far.
• Google Reader. Well, let's just say that I have to force myself to NOT check up on things after I've put the kids to bed. If I make that mistake, I end up dreaming about PLEs all night. Good lord. Learning never stops, does it?
  
• I have a huge wish list in Amazon to help me track all of the books I'd like to read, when I have the time....this list spans e-Learning, parenting, fiction, spiritual....The ideal is that I'd go check the book out from the library, but my schedule hasn't allowed for many library visits these days. Sometimes I actually buy a book. And then, sometimes, I might just start reading that book. When the stars are properly aligned, I might even finish said book. (I currently have at least 5 books in progress next to my bed).
• I started a private Live Journal, but I've only written there a few times.
• I blog, therefore I am. Personal is work; work is personal. I blog at work, I blog at home. It's all relevant to the big picture that is me. Blogging has a positive effect on my work-life expertise -- countless client conversations have gone all the better because of something I read just yesterday or wrote about the day before.
  
• I have an old-school paper-based journal that is sometimes about personal and sometimes about blog entries. Even that's starting to get fuzzy.
• Our home computer sits in our kitchen (we have a tiny house). It's really easy to search for anything at a moments notice.
  
• YouTube is our tv. We don't have cable tv and get about two channels on broadcast. Is YouTube learning or just entertainment or a bit of both?
• I read the New Yorker at home. It's paper! Always something cool to learn. Implicit lessons in how to write good. I mean well.
• * UPDATE: I've recently started using Google Notebooks. (OK, yes. I'm a Google Girl. But it's so easy. All in one place and in my face). Trying to implement some form of GTD action lists, keep track of blog ideas, research lists, etc. This is still messy as I do a lot of that "tacit" work upkeep in a paper notebook as well. I tried using Google Calendar, but that got overwhelming. I've stuck with Outlook Calendar -- which is all work and any outside appointments that might conflict with work. And I also keep a datebook in my bag -- I like to flip through the pages and see what I did, what I have to do. I don't keep this up as much as I used to now that so much else is electronic. But I do miss that palpable record of my life. I've got engagement calendars that go back 20 years.
  

So that's some of where my life is right now. As my kids get older, I'm sure (I hope!) that there will be room again for my old and new personal interests. They were many. I used to do pottery and yoga and hand-drumming and provide professional therapeutic massage and get a lot more exercise and do random artwork and sewing projects and some knitting and much more *personal* writing (and yet I write more now than I've written in years!) and and and....

And although I didn't always think about it as learning, I certainly was learning a lot. And still am. These days the topics are different. And I suppose the truth is that the topics always change. That's what keeps this journey so darn interesting...

Personalization does not equal Personal

I've been catching up this morning on all the recent PLE posts, particularly Tom Haskin's recent entries. Today, Tom mentions that "James Ryan left an extensive comment on Enterprises that love PLE's. He reveals the thinking about PLE's inside the financial services industry:

(A PLE/Education Portfolio owned by the learner) also requires a means for the learner to accept updates to their PLE, made by people providing training, so the student has a verified training record, verified qualifications and ce points/hours or other measurement."

This got me thinking more about the words "personal" and "personalization".

Corporations can "personalize" a Professional Learning Environment (aka an LMS), allowing users to add their own widgets; they can allow trainers to update a user's training record; they can let the user set preferences.

But that does not equal a Personal Learning Environment. That's just a personalized Professional Learning Environment.

The line between Personal vs. Professional is not alway clear. For some folks, there is a distinct demarcation: I leave the office and I leave behind my work and my work-related training environment. And then my real life and learning begins. Work pays the bills and that's it.

Where the boundary between the personal and professional is less distinct and more Permeable -- that's where you will find Passion. Folks who are passionate about what they do will find their personal and professional learning environments co-mingling. Work does not end for the day and then life begins.

For folks who are not passionate about their work -- many who reside within the traditional, corporate firewall -- the PWLE is Pointless.

Personal Learning Earthquake

Sometimes tectonic plates shift and earthquakes form cracks in the crust. Tidal waves appear. This happened to me yesterday. Although it wasn't that violent.

A whole bunch of things just clicked into place and I almost audibly said "aaah, I get it now" in the middle of a client meeting.

My personal view of e-Learning is from the corporate side of the aisle. My career-wide client list includes banks, supermarkets, manufacturing companies, insurance companies, department stores, more banks, pharmaceutical companies, and yet more banks.

So the PLE conversation has been, for me, framed in terms of the LMS and tools. How do you make an LMS into a PLE? And why bother? I didn't really get it. Michele Martin wrote that excellent post, which got me thinking and then Tom Haskins wrote some more excellent posts....

And it started dawning on me that the PLE was about a revolution in learning -- about teaching people to learn -- about empowering individuals to take control of their own learning environments, their futures. And -- maybe -- also providing them with tools. And teaching people how to use the tools for their own growth.

Yesterday I was sitting in an e-Learning strategy kickoff meeting with a different kind of client for me: A non-profit organization of women that has strong affiliations with higher education. Their membership spans a lifetime. (With very little imagination, you can probably figure out what kind of organization I mean). Not the type of group with which I have had a lot of personal interaction, and certainly no professional contact.

It's a very exciting project. My job is to help this organization think about how they can use technology to support learning and community. (This is a good time to be me!)

As I sat in our kickoff, I realized what a noble vision this organization has. They take a wholistic view of education and learning. Empowering members to live their lives fully through personal development, career development, leadership, community. The care of a whole person.

And then my little earthquake about PLEs. Again, probably a no-duh for a lot of you thinkers out there: Schools -- secondary and higher education -- should be empowering students early-on to take control of their own learning, to learn how to learn, to have a PLE, to think of their own growth, to help individuals take control and expand their minds. Universities are starting to do this.

Tony Hirst writes In Personal Learning Environments are also Social... (thanks again to Downes for the link):

So if I talk of a PLE as a thing, I really mean enabling technologies that let me aggregate a range of tools into a space. And why would I want to do that? So institutional providers can give their students something - a place to go - when they arrive on day one that will provide them with access to tools and information services that they are likely to find useful over the course of their studies.

Organizations like the one I am working with now are in a unique position because they may have relationships with individuals over decades; not just over the course of their studies, but over the course of their entire adult lives.

PLE is a concept. An approach to living. Lifelong learning. Lifewide learning.

The tool, the environment can only belong to the learner.

Tom Haskins wrote, "Life is my PLE." Education and academia and parents are in a good position to teach that notion. The PLE is not a corporate responsibility, but a societal one.

Be the Node

To Michele Martin's most excellent post on the Psychology and Skills of Personal Learning Environments....

First off, I have to say that this entire PLE conversation hasn't really sparked much for me. It just seems like a no-duh. Karyn Romeis talked about "lifewide learning." Yes. That's it, isn't it?

So all the talk about tools and maps has struck me as odd. How do we quantify or control something that is so unique to each of us? For me, I add -- why bother? Just do it. (I'm a practical person at heart; not a theory-based one).

All the many cool tools and widgets and features that really smart people are creating -- that's all we need. More and more of that so we can all pick and choose and figure it out for ourselves.

And maybe not even that. People have been learning forever without widgets and web2.0. Maybe it was even "personal learning" before the term PLE came along.

I don't see a traditional corporation every truly embracing the theme of PLE -- at least in the pure sense of the term "personal". Most corporations want way more control than that. A truly empowered employee may not be the one that sticks around. With PLEs, there may be just way too much personal learning happening on company time for a CEO's comfort.

We're all learning in our own personal ways and we're each going to figure out how to best support that...

To paraphrase Stephen Downes, "be the node, Danny."

So, you have a PLE if:

If you're interested in personal growth and development. If you don't want to stagnate. If you do want to have some element of control in the random direction that your life might take. If you do get excited by new interests, new directions. If you don't want to go crazy. If you don't want to be bored. If you've even got the time to spend on anything beyond the job, the family, the stress, the balancing act.

To have a PLE, do you need to first be aware that you are learning? Stephen Downes makes the point that you can't separate life from learning. But is the awareness of the fact that life is learning available to everyone?

To have a PLE, do you need to be aware that the term PLE exists? I have a PLE, therefore I am learning on my own terms.

OK. So my practical side says, stop talking about it and just do it.

But then Michele says, "My personal motivation in all this is the desire to figure out how I can empower others to explore creating their own personal learning environments." And then that dormant social activist in me sees how I can do more good in the world than just recycle. (You people are so inspiring!)

I think maybe PLE is another word for the upcoming Revolution of Enlightenment.

It's a Personal Learning Evolution.

If you're aware that you have a PLE, do you get to advance to the next level?


(Be the node, Cammy. Be the node. Stay up late on a Saturday night blogging in a bleary sort of way, that's a start.)

Please PLEs Me

I've just been dying to use that title.

Anyway, who of you Google users noticed today that your homepage is now iGoogle?

I did about two hours ago...but I thought it was just a cute Google thing, the way they make the logo all green and earthy for earth day. It's not that, it's actually the Race to Personalize the Web. PLEs here we come.

(I just listened to Stephen Downe's PLE presentation, so the topic is fresh on the brain).