BeyondManagement:ThePersonalLearningEnvironment

StephenDownes

EdMedia,Honolulu,Hawaii

June24,2009

Prologue

• Itturnsouttobeveryeasytoteachpeoplethings‐peopleareveryimpressionable

• Whatprovestobeveryhardisteachingpeopletherightthings‐hownottolearn

http://www.surgeryminor.com/showcase/propaganda.html

WhatIdo

16000Posts

Whatdoes16,000postslooklike?

common links topics conversations

publications terminology memes

language and nationality causes

social networks comments feeds

CHAOS

Complicated,Complex

http://www.gapingvoid.com/complicated128.jpg

The(First)ButterflyThesis

abutterflyflappingitswingsinSouthAmericacanaffecttheweatherinCentralPark….sowhydon’twegetthatbutterfly?

TheThreeBodyProblem

http://www.dynamical‐systems.org/threebody/index.html

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Three‐body_problem

Connectivism:Engagement

• Thereisnocurriculum,notheory,nobodyofknowledge– (or,moreaccurately,thecurriculumistheMcGuffin)

• Theproductisnottheknowledge,itisthelearner

• It’snotthatthere’snothingtolearn,it’sthatit’scomplexandneedstobenavigated… notmemorized

ThethreeLs:language,logicandlearning

FirstTheme

activeengagement,notpassiveobservation…– abitlikeANT,butnopresumptionofcommonality,translation…

– abitlikeactionresearch,butnopresumptionofacommunityofpractice

http://www.emtech.net/actionresearch.htm

http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/ant_dff.html

Thinkingforyourself

Critical thinking and reflection

FreeLearning

• Thepictureoflearningyoushouldhaveisoneofalargesetofconnectednodes(liketheneuronsinabrain)

• Teachers arenodes, studentsare nodes• Both teachingand learningconsists ofsending andreceivingcommunicationsto other nodes

ARRFF

Aggregate

Remix

Repurpose

FeedForward

It’sariver,notareservoir

SurfingSensingExperiencing

pattern recognition

The Idea of the PLE…

http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/ple/resources/edf.ppt

Plex Personal Learning Environment Example

http://reload.ces.strath.ac.uk/plex/

Collecting andFiltering RSS

http://www.downes.ca/mygluframe.htm

RSS Writr

http://www.downes.ca/editor/writr.htm

FeedForward

http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/feedforward/

SecondTheme

Learning….vstherightlearninghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin

UnderstandingInterdependence

=nosimpleprinciples

=nosimplecause&effect

Meandmynetworkoffriends

AggregateRemixRepurposeFeed Forward

NetworkStructures‐Tree

http://middleburydemocrats.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/college‐democrats‐getting‐obama‐to‐go‐viral‐no‐really/

Central

Influence

Power Law

Viral

Hierarchy

Traditional social network

NetworkStructures‐Mesh

Peer-to-peer (Email) Network

Distributed

Discussion

Balanced

Reflective

Democracy

http://www.daniel‐lemire.com/fr/abstracts/DIVERSITY2008.htmlhttp://www.mailchimp.com/blog/using‐email‐to‐uncover‐hidden‐social‐networks/

IndividualismvsMutuality

Independentvariablesvsdependentvariables

eg.Rationaldecision‐vsrolemodel

The myth of solitary autonomy

Whenweourselvesbecomethestory

TheSharingThesis• Notjustcompetition‐cooperation

• OpenEducationalResources(OERs)

• Theonlysustainablemodel

http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2008/06/university‐learning‐ocw‐oer‐free.html

The(Second)ButterflyThesis

http://www.flickr.com/photos/durhamskywriter/2858347734/

Connectivism

“Atitsheart,connectivismisthethesisthatknowledgeisdistributedacrossanetworkofconnections,andthereforethatlearningconsistsoftheabilitytoconstructandtraversethosenetworks.”WhatConnectivismIshttp://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/02/what‐connectivism‐is.html

CourseComponents

• TheWiki…

http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Connectivism

CourseComponents

• CourseMoodleForum

http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/course/view.php?id=20

ThirdTheme

Groupsvsnetworks

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/109/252157734_9e6c29433b.jpg

NancyWhite‐Me,We,Network

http://www.yesandspace.com.au/wp‐content/uploads/2008/04/open‐space‐metaphor_small.jpg

Open Spaces

ObjectsWeCareAbout

• NancyWhite‐networks,notjustaboutconnectingthepeople,buttheobjectstheycareabout

Theobjectsystem,revisited

Distributed Resources

RepositoriesandSyndication

• Academic‐OAI‐PMH,Dspace,Fedora,Eprints,SWORD,Connexion,OCW

• Web‐Flickr,YouTube,Slideshare

RSS

OAI

DC

Atom

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue55/vandeventer‐pienaar/

Self‐organization‐metronomes

http://salt.uaa.alaska.edu/dept/metro.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1TMZASCR‐I

Network Learning…

• Hebbian associationism• based on concurrency

• Back propagation• based on desired outcome

• Boltzman• based on ‘settling’, annealing

Self Organization

Architecture

Theapplicationprovidesmechanismstoinput,process,anddistributecontent.

PageCreation

Pagesarecreatedautomaticallyfromadatabaseofcontenttypes

FeedManagement

ContentinputcomesfromRSSfeedsharvestedbygRSShopper

Mapping

Incomingcontentcanbemappedtoanyofavarietyofdatatypes

CourseComponents

• TheDaily

http://connect.downes.ca/

CourseComponents

• FeedHarvesting

TheStudents

• TheCourseMap…

http://x28newblog.blog.uni-heidelberg.de/2008/09/06/cck08-first-impressions/

SocialNetworksblogsandbloggingwikisandcollaborative

writingtaggingandDiggand…

Web2.0

Stallman

The Internet of 2007

TheInternetof2009

BeyondWeb2.0

CreatingCourseComponents

• PageflakesSite

http://www.pageflakes.com/ltc

WidgetsandGadgets

http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets‐land/

WidgetLandscape

http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets‐land/

GoogleWave

http://wave.google.com/

OperaUnite

http://blog.mynetx.net/windowslive/opera‐unite‐how‐client‐server‐future‐look‐like/

WindowsLiveMesh

https://www.mesh.com/welcome/default.aspx

FirefoxPlainOldWebServer

https://addons.mozilla.org/en‐US/firefox/addon/3002

• Networksofinteractions(aggregate,remix,repurpose,feedforward)–syndication

An ecology…

• Thepersonallearningcentre

http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/2006/11/more_on_mles_and_ples.html

Autonomy

• TheNetworkisDiverse–multipleviews,multipletechnologies

http://flickr.com/photos/11242012@N07/1363575474

• TheNetworkisconnectedandinteractive(not‘integrated’)–smallpieces,looselyjoined

http://www.biography.org.uk/real.htm

• TheNetworkisopen

http://park.org/Japan/NTT/DM/html_f4/F4_10600_e.html

StephenDownes

http://www.downes.ca