Personal learning network

A Personal Learning Network (English personal learning network) or PLN is an informal network. It consists of the caregivers that interact with a learner or a learner in their learning process. The connection to profiles in this network is the intention of being able to cope with it a certain step in the learning process.

Background

The term wins in a digital learning context in importance, allowing the learning as an individual process. The Internet also represents a vast wealth of information available that will ever only be processed with filters (eg search engines, RSS feeds, social network stream ). Informal learning processes in which no requirements in terms of methods, content or learning objectives exist are only of students, but not by caregivers such as a teacher or a teacher designed. Learners seek out their own teachers and build as a PLN to be the same but also to teachers in it. Lisa Rosa describes the importance of such networks:

"I need exchange for the depth of my knowledge, that I need the same in my systems. People with similarities in basic positions where I not only rub with whom I do not always start with Adam and Eve, when it comes to a commonly shared understanding. "

In theory, access to the PLNs Connectivism, a learning theory of Canadian educators George Siemens. The Connectivism sees learning as networking via nodes in networks. Here, learning and meta- learning ( ie understanding how learning works ) equivalent and can not be separated. Philippe Wampfler notes about this:

"Ideally, PLNs fulfill two important didactic demands: First, they individualize learning processes fully, secondly, they allow permanent reflection of the learning processes that lead to a continuous improvement of the learning methods and the PLNs. "

The concept of PLNs is closely related to that of Personal Learning Environments ( PLE).

Building a PLN

According to Howard Rheingold, the structure of a PLN of eight steps:

The construction and maintenance of PLN basically consists of three activities that can be done efficiently with digital tools:

  • Collecting and processing information
  • Producing and publishing content
  • Cooperation and exchange with other learners

Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs are examples of courses, to meet which a PLN can be helpful.

Importance of PLN

A PLN or a personal learning environment allows for self-directed learning independent of institutions. The educational researcher Lisa Rosa calls, therefore, to firmly anchor the building and maintaining of PLN in teacher education as well as in school:

" Such a learning environment is now possible solution of the problem that everyone needs to learn individually and collaboratively at the same time, if it is to be capable of creative services. In my opinion it should be the goal of the next decade, to enable each student to institute such a PLN. " Teach " for student teachers, those words, others, younger, learning learning should include development, use and maintenance of a PLN for basic task. This is the prerequisite not only for their own self-directed ( self-taught ) learning activity, but of course, also a prerequisite for the additional amount of necessary skill, others learn to lead in learning. "

PLN in the sociological sense

For the purposes of the Social Construction of Technology a PLN or Personal Learning Environment can be understood as a network in a sociological sense, obtained in the technical developments through a social process meaning. Social media would be thus a learning environment, because they are used in building PLNs. It is crucial that individuals are not solely responsible for their PLN and they create through their digital skills, but their position in the network determines its possibilities of action with.

PLN can be in terms of actor-network theory of Bruno Latour understood as networks between people and things (eg, smart phones, Internet infrastructure, etc.) that are in a constant process of coming into being and re-creation, ie Relationships must be completed constant, so that the network remains. Specifically, this means that a PLN disintegrates when it is no longer used and no longer interact with the various stakeholders.

Further reading

References

  • Media Education
  • Media Psychology
  • Media Studies
  • Didactics
  • E -Learning
  • Learning
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