Ann Foreman's List: Personal Learning Environments

• How can we possibly organize all the work that students are doing so that they can find each other’s work and so that I, as an instructor, can review all their work?
• How can we possibly organize all the work that students are doing so that they can find each other’s work and so that I, as an instructor, can review all their work?
• How can we possibly organize all the work that students are doing so that they can find each other’s work and so that I, as an instructor, can review all their work?
• I put the onus on the students to copy/paste a link to each of their blog posts, to important comments they had made structuring other people’s work (one of our students or not) and important connections that they had made between the information/knowledge we were covering and their experience during the course.
• A colleague of mine habitually allows students to choose the grades they are going to get based on the amount of work they are willing to cover and the depth to which they are willing to cover it
• I created a lowest common denominator and a highest reasonable work quota.

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• PLEs enable individual learners to build their own learning network.
• PLEs can include fairly basic tools (such as blogs) to more complex structures.
• Numerous tools can be overwhelming
• Skill levels/digital literacy competency

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• It seeks to determine how a teacher can scaffold a networked learning approach while providing a foundation on which students take more control of the learning process.
• Personal learning suggests learner autonomy and increased self regulation
• However, increased responsibility and control on the part of the learner do not necessarily equate to learner motivation
• how to search, where to search, and why certain content meets a learning objective
• Such a scenario further presents challenges to traditional forms of assessment. If the learner has primary control, the teacher must consider alternative assessments (Pedersen & Liu, 2003). The role of a teacher within a student-centered approach to instruction is that of a facilitator or coach (Wang, 2006).
• "He or she supports the students in their search and supply of relevant material, coordinates the students' presentations of individual milestones of their projects, moderates discussions, consults in all kinds of problem-solving and seeking for solutions, lectures on topics that are selected in plenary discussions with the students and conforms to the curriculum" (Motschnig-Pitrik & Holzinger, 2002, p. 166).
• a model for the student construction of personal learning environments that balances teacher control with increased student autonomy.
• The networked student constructs a personal learning environment one node at a time
• The skill to identify valid content and expertise, recognise questionable sources, and compare conflicting viable points of view is essential in an ever-expanding information age.
• As more control is shifted from teacher to learner, increased responsibility falls on the individual to make decisions about which nodes in a network are most important. This decision making process comes with experience. Networked learning provides a means for K-12 students to become comfortable in this rapidly changing environment.
• Ultimately, meaningful learning occurs with knowledge construction, not reproduction; conversation, not reception; articulation, not repetition; collaboration, not competition; and reflection, not prescription
• Construction of a personal learning environment does not necessarily facilitate comprehension or deep understanding. Learning potential exists in what the student does with the compilation of content and how it is synthesised.

• The teacher is necessary to help the students navigate the breadth of content, apply the tools properly, and offer support in the form of digital literacy skills and subject matter expertise. Yet the teacher may not be the only expert in the learning process. The ability to locate expertise beyond the classroom walls is one powerful benefit of a well-structured personal learning environment.  
• A final project for which the student received a grade provided assessment of each student's ability to synthesise the research.
• Documentation data include the unit plan, teacher lesson plans, researcher field notes, assessment rubrics, and a reflective survey.

• This course has been different from others you have experienced in a number of ways. Please reflect on your experience in each of these categories with regard to difficulties, positive and negative outcomes, and how it impacted your learning. 

   
  1. Three days face to face, two days online 
  2. Moodle as a way to organise the course 
  3. Use of technology to complete projects 
  4. Creation of a personal learning environment in place of a traditional text book (blogs, Google Reader, articles, connecting with experts) 
  5. Managing your time and work load for the course 
  6. Do you feel equipped to study other topics in this type of format with less guidance from a teacher? Explain why or why not. 
  7. What was the most enjoyable aspect of this course? 
  8. What was the most difficult? 
  9. What advice do you have to make the class better? 
  10. What advice would you give other students who may take this course in the future?
• Points were earned for meeting the following requirements:
• The student's ability to synthesise the research was further evaluated with a reflective essay.
• The essay was the culmination of the reflections along with a thoughtful synthesis of the learning experience. Students were instructed to articulate what was learned about the selected topic and why others should care or be concerned.
• As part of a final exam, the students were required to access the final projects of their classmates and reflect on what they learned from this exposure.
• Analysis and assessment of student work was facilitated by the very technologies in use by the students. In order to follow their progress, the teacher simply subscribed to student social bookmarking accounts, readers, and blogs. Clicking through daily contributions was relatively quick and efficient.
• Four key areas were targeted to assess the success of the project and determine whether an effective balance between teacher control and student autonomy was achieved:
• A student's success depended upon his or her motivation but also greatly on the strategic guidance of the teacher. The teacher's ability to gauge students' understanding and progress were key to achieving a balance between student autonomy and teacher intervention.

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