Flickr photo by merry heart. CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0
Responding to Alan Levine’s post (be sure to check out his links and the comment stream):
If the phrase “personal learning network,” or “PLN” (guess that makes me Dr. Evil), has really become CLICHE then I’m happy to drop the term. But I don’t think it has, or should. I’ll take the words in order.
Why does it matter that it’s personal? Because for many people, the only learning network they think about is school, and school is typically not very personal–at least, it’s not something we feel we should be personally responsible for constructing for ourselves. Educators make our schools for us, and we go there to consume an education, work hard, get good grades, get our degrees. Yet I’d say that the deepest engagement with education comes only when we act as if we really are bringing the learning network into being, ourselves, every day–just as every course should write itself into being. So “personal” implies “personal construction and personal responsibility,” not just ownership and right of use, which is why the analogy with cars and hammers doesn’t work for me. (When I wrote my piece on “a personal cyberinfrastructure,” I was thinking along these same lines: we are the web, the machine is us, and the best way to get the best out of that macro-cyberinfrastructure is to practice building our own on its platform.)
Why does “learning” matter? Why not just “network”? Because that word “network” gets used for lots of things, not just for deliberately self-directed learning. My network consists of friends, birds-of-a-feather, various information resources, etc. My *learning* network is my personal suite of trusted and inspiring experts. That’s not the same as the folks I share experiences and interests with, though the two may (actually, do) overlap.
(Digression: I miss the energies of 2005 and 2006, when so much of this conversation was exploratory instead of polarized and polarizing. That polarity is one of the reasons I’m finding it difficult to blog these days. Though I understand both are valuable, I like exploring more than arguing. While everyone else debates Beatles vs. Stones, the lads themselves are sharing a good time at the Scotch of St. James–while still enjoying their rivalry.)
So I think all three words in PLN are important, and that their biggest value is that they suggest deliberate actions that don’t depend on someone else’s curriculum, degree program, or institution. Not just the open web, though it’s the open web that makes them possible–and that’s why the word “network” is vital as well.
That said, it’s the wrangling and the seemingly inevitable hype cycle for these terms that really get me down. I remember all those arguments about “Web 2.0”: it is real, it’s not real, it’s hype, it’s O’Reilly branding, etc. etc. In my experience, Web 2.0 is a useful concept that has its limits, just like a bunch of other useful concepts (actually, they all have their limits, don’t they?). And believe it or not, I still talk to rooms of faculty where half or more of them haven’t heard the term, let alone the ideas it represents. Sometimes I think intensity of the edtech community makes us forget that the things we argue about or abandon are still news to lots of folks and have a lot of good left to do.
P.S. I don’t know what a TLA is. I’m also iffy on CBDs, TYAs, ORCs, JUTs, and KWEs. But I am curious. Maybe I should ping my PLN.
P.P.S. Whatever my PLN is, it’s not a Nixty, at least so far as I can see. On this count Alan and I are in total agreement.
The question boils down to this for me: Are we still interested in encouraging the actions and attitudes represented in a PLE/PLN (distinctions optional)?
If so, I don’t see much detriment to that goal in using this (admittedly annoying) acronym, and we have to talk about “it” (whatever it is) somehow.
I still say “web 2.0” because, generally speaking, people know what I’m talking about. When they don’t, or if they misunderstand, I can clarify, and that is often the basis for a constructive conversation. Same for PLE/PLN.
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We’re not on the opposite sides of the stadium, my friend, we are right down there in the front together. And while I am not all that personal about my hammer, my new truck is pretty darn personalized to me.
And while a learning network is something we form around our education experiences, do we leave it for a Personal Work Network? A Personal Bowling Network? I just don;t see anything uniquely different about a learning network than any other kind we may form.
But those are morsels.
I don’t care WTF we call it, I am more interested in the *doing* of the ______, the process of it, than talking about abstract constructs.
For me, it is just a plain “N”, but I dont begrudge people calling it whatever they want.
PS I make up stuff all the time 😉
Personal is understandable. Learning is understandable. Network not so much. To me network is impersonal. And, yet, for a number of us, the network is all we have. We do not all get the opportunity to meet face to face. We gather likeminded individuals where we may.
The interesting thing for me about a PLN is just how open individuals are to non-colleagues, for lack of a less winceworthy term, joining in. I observe inclusion versus exclusion. I read a lot. I listen a lot. And sometimes I tap on the sides of the glass. Patience is my best ally. I figure that people will figure out my value, colleague or not. I figure it’s lopsided. Other people are probably more value to me than I am to them, and that inequality is not so bad.
I am uncertain where I fit into a PLN. I am a bat among educators. I am neither beast nor bird. It is easier for me to fit people into my PLN than for people to fit me into theirs. Does it matter? Not a whole lot. I think my personal learning is more organic than the term network would imply. The term “network” may be exact enough, but I prefer something cozier. What if I just think in terms of valued teachers? I like that and it doesn’t make me all twitchy like “network” does.
People can consider me part of a PLN, but, no, I do not have a network. I sit at the feet of people who inspire me, and hope that I can give them something in return.
There’s a great man named Chris Lott who once roamed the lands of educational technology. His pen was a formidable one, and his mind chopped cinder blocks in half with one thought. Road on a horse in the mountains of Alaska, one of the last prospectors of all that is good and right online education. He saw out best the bearing straight to Kamachtka—he saw clean through to the other side, and this is what he said about PLEs.
http://chrislott.org/story/tired-of-the-ple-flak/
A wise man, and the PLE certainly has its limits, and I agree with Alan and D’Arcy on that to some degree, but conceptual thinking around a model can have its uses, even if limited.
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Gardner, I’m with you on feeling tired with the snark and polarization (while admitting I likely have contributed to my share of it). Isn’t the debate around the usefulness of terms, definitions and acronyms like this at the very heart of what it means to educate – if we offer these up for newcomers simply as fixed things they need to fit into, then we simply continue to promote a model of learning and knowledge that sees learners as empty vessels to be filled. But if we offer them up as starting points that learners need to dissemble, critique and come to inhabit on their own terms (or not), then I think terms like this are just fine. It’s not about the term itself, it’s about the way we relate to terms and to learners we use them with. That is why for me the term/approach “PLN” incites such debate, because, by definition (ha!), it resists simple reification and requires us to really think about the best way to help newcomers engage with it without either “dropping them in the deep end” or prescribing single ways of learning/connecting.
It took me awhile to figure out that CogDog’s TLA was a Three Letter Acronym.
That said, your analysis is spot on and a reason you are part of my PLN. There may come a day when we no longer need to label it, but most faculty are blissfully unaware of the power that networked learning enables…for them and their students. So this conversation remains important.
@Jared We do need words to talk about what we mean. I like your emphasis on actions and attitudes. The only word I’d add is “awareness”–no, too neutral–ok, “expectations.” Too many students, in my experience anyway, expect too little from their experience of learning. The idea of the PLN offers a way to get high expectations going regardless of the success or failure of the local instructional context (which can be good, bad, or ugly).
@Alan But we gotta have some kind of word to indicate what we’re talking about, even if the boundaries of that word are fuzzy (all of them are). There’s no substitute for Being There or for Actually Doing It, but the words help us generalize from our own experiences and share the idea. Problematic and annoying things, these words, but what else we got? 🙂 Like you, I don’t want to wrangle about the words–but I do want to use them like miners’ flashlights to help me go exploring.
@Debbie I understand completely how “network” starts to sound like wires and switches and such. We could substitute “community,” but the word “network” emphasizes that all-important activity of building connections, and thinking about “connectivity,” both literally and as a metaphor. Me, I view the Internet as a metaphor for civilization–and a map for it–and a platform on which to build it–just like the neural network inside our heads (and here I think of Jon Udell’s idea of the Internet as a global nervous system). It may be that PLNs can be more inclusive because the word “network” suggests looser or more flexible affiliations than “community”–but I’m just speculating here.
@Jim Not for the first time do I find that Chris Lott has gotten there way ahead of me. Great post, and thanks for that link. You know me: I’m all about the models and metaphors and “conceptual frameworks” a la Engelbart.
@sleslie I agree that the flexibility (maddening ambiguity?) of the term PLN is useful as a pointer and as a framework for all sorts of emergent behaviors. I’d say it’s suggestive, not descriptive or prescriptive–though I also think it’s important. Maybe even an imperative. The ethical component to all of this, especially while Rome is burning (as it certainly is), makes me walk the tightrope between suggestive and urgent. I love the amplitude of discussion and consideration (until the snark piles up as we all snack on each other–snark is the faeces of conversation, or at least I’ll try that aphorism out today). But I also insist that some actions are better than others, especially at times of crisis. If I were a better polemicist or a truer evangelist, I wouldn’t walk the tightrope, I guess…. Maybe I’d feel better too. Who knows?
@Britt Thanks for that tip. Cogdog is a very clever dog. You should see the way he regularly thrashes me in Words With Friends (WWF–sounds like wrestling, now that I give it a TLA). That blissful unawareness is exactly what I’m trying to get at and get around. On my cynical days I wonder how much of the blissful unawareness is a deliberate strategy. Time for another cup of coffee….