10 Ways to Promote Learning Lifestyle in Your School
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A Learning Commons1 |
On the 14th, I wrote a blog post (Applying PLN — a Continuing Question for Me), questioning some of my own assumptions about expecting educators to embrace learning practices — cultivating personal learning networks. I wrote about my feeling stumped by administrators in Colorado last week, wishing that I had the answers to their questions about promoting more relevant learning in their classrooms. In truth, like most of the rest of the session, some excellent ideas came out of the conversation that erupted, after it was revealed that I had no easy answer. The thrust of the discussion was the culture of the school, and the expectations that the culture places on its members.
So, what does that culture look like? What do we see in the school and classroom where learning lifestyle pops to mind? I think that we see is conversation — and not just conversations between teachers and students. There is a much broader conversation that permiates the entire building and beyond, about new learning and about learning new things. It is a school that says, out loud,
“We go beyond the basics.”
“Standards are the starting place for what’s exciting here, not the end goal.”
“This is where learners of all ages are not just memeorizing facts and mastering skills — but working with new knowledge, constructing new knowledge, and impacting others through their work.
Here are just a few suggestions for administrators for promoting these conversations:
- Hire learners. Ask prospective employees, “Tell me about something that you have learned lately.” “How did you learn it?” “What are you seeking to learn more about right now?”
- Open your faculty meetings with something that you’ve just learned – and how you learned it. It does not have to be about school, instruction, education managements, or the latest theories of learning.
- Make frequent mention of your Twitter stream, RSS reader, specific bloggers you read. Again, this should not be limited to job specific topics.
- Share links to specific TED talks or other mini-lectures by interesting and smart people, then share and ask for reactions during faculty meetings, in the halls, or during casual conversations with employees and parents just before the PTO meeting.
- Include in the daily announcements, something new and interesting (Did you know that a California power utility has just gotten permission to start buying electricity from outer space?).
- Ask students in the halls what they’ve just learned. Ask them what their teachers have just learned.
- Ask teachers and other staff to write reports on their latest vacation, sharing what they learned – and publish them for public consumption.
- Ask teachers to devote one of their classroom bulletin boards to what they are learning, related or unrelated to the classroom.
- Include short articles in the schools newsletter and/or web site about research being conducted by the teachers – again, related or unrelated to the classroom.
- Learn what the parents of your students are passionately learning about, and ask them to report (text, video, Skype conversation, or in person to be recorded).
—————————————- added later ————————————– - Find ways to be playful at your school — and perhaps feel less grown-up. (see Do Grown-ups Learning?)
- Lower Columbia College. “Learning Commons.” Flickr. 19 Feb 2009. Web. 19 Jan 2010. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowercolumbiacollege/3293381635/>. [↩]
January 14, 2010
Applying PLN — A Continuing Question for Me
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I’m pretty sure that, at this point, the learning had already started happening |
I had a great couple of days, last week with folks in Loveland, Colorado, starting off with a wonderfully stimulating dinner conversation with some of the district’s (Thompson School District) tech coaches. I wrote about it here. The next day (Saturday) started off with a keynote for area educators involved in a district initiative and other invited members of the local ed community — great to meet Jim Folkestad, from Colorado State University.
The keynote seemed well received and was followed by some closing remarks by the districts superintendent, Ron Cabrera. All was well until I spent forty-five minutes of casual conversation time with some of the districts administrators. First of all, being a conversational session, I tried to extract answers from the audience, going for conversation rather than Q&A — and it always makes me uncomfortable, not being the source of all answers. I admit it.
Then someone asked, how to get teachers on board with transforming their learning environments — and all eyes were on me. I launched into my position that although formal professional development opportunities are important — we will not be able to just workshop teachers into the 21st century. Then I touched on personal learning networks, trying not to give away too much, since that was the presentation I would be doing after lunch. I started to run through a process that I have suggested in previous blog entries, of starting with about four or five teachers, and introducing them, at-ready points, to a progression of Web 2.0 tools, starting with asking them to start blogging about their daily experiences.
Heads started shaking, almost immediately. Now these administrators were there because they chose to spend there Saturday with other educators exploring technology. So they were not looking for excuses — which is often the case. They saw real barriers to what I was suggesting, which was particularly disconcerting, since I’m just started that chapter in my current book project on PLNs. They rattled off a string of challenges facing their teachers, foremost being Colorado’s high stakes tests.
It’s forced me to table my writing for a few days and think through how to promote personal learning in your education community. I’m actually wondering if it might it be unrealistic to be expecting all teachers to take on the role of “Master Learner.” There’s just too much of the instructional industrial complex that’s standing in the way. It’s one of many reasons why high stakes tests are actually harmful to our children and their opportunities.
Mainly, I am telling this story because of a link to a recent Alfie Kahn article, to be published soon in Education Week, Debunking the Case for National Standards. He does a much better job than I of making the case.
Also, contributing to my current mood is Chris Lehmann’s wonderful keynote address at the ‘09 NYSCATE conference. One of the big takeaways from Lehmann’s words was this paraphrasing:
While our students can do so much more as active learners than ever before, we are measuring their learning in the oldest and most limiting ways possible.
Another one that resonated with me was his comments about project-based learning, a concept that nearly everyone agrees with and subscribes to. But he said that if a teacher is applying projects to meet standards and improve or maintain test scores, then it isn’t project-based learning.
It’s doing projects along the way. …The work that students are doing is the most important thing, not the answers they can put on the test.
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December 29, 2009
Predictions Questions about the Next Decade
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Four Crystal Balls, by Valdemar Horwat1 |
Obviously, this started out being a list of predictions about 2010 and beyond. But, after working on it for about a week, I concluded that the questions we are asking, as we move toward the future are much more interesting. ..and, of course, the biggest and most interesting question for 2010 is, “What are we going to call it, two-thousand and ten or twenty-ten?” Anybody? Anybody?
Let’s get down to brass tacks, and getting down to brass tacks is actually a great way to begin. It’s not a very old expression, as expressions go — first used in an 1863 issue of The Tri-Weekly Telegraph, a Texas newspaper. The line said,
When you come down to ‘brass tacks’ – if we may be allowed the expression – everybody is governed by selfishness.2
..and this, more than anything else, is what drives the future. What we are able to imagine and invent is easy. It’s limitless. We can go in any direction we want. The “want” is the question. What will help us answer our questions, solve our problems, or accomplish our goals — as we perceive them or as we are persuaded to perceive them. Will this new 3Gs iPhone help me do my job? Will increasing my taxes bring down greenhouse gases, feed and house the poor, and provide a more relevant education for our children?
So, perhaps the best way to predict the future is to explore our questions/problems.
- This first one really isn’t want-based. But it’s one that nagging at us all. What is Apple going to unveil at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, on anuary 26?3 My prevailing question is, “Will the built-in features of Apple’s alleged Tablet make it a (the) ideal learning technology? ..or will Apple have to contrive instructional applications as they (and others) have done in the past for their new ‘game changers’?”
- This is a big one for me. Does learning performance, as measured by annual test scores, accurately and appropriately predict success in a future that is characterized by change? I’m looking for research to be done that correlates the level of life success in adults to their success as students.
- Even if we conclude that high stakes testing is harmful to our children, no tipping point in the greater education conversation is going to kill it. An alternative is necessary, and I wonder what kind of killer app might emerge that makes electronic portfolio assessment (or other procedure) simply look too perfect to resist. Is there some new digital tool on the horizon or, might there be something that’s already out there, but has not yet reached a critical mass, that is going to change the game? What’s the next big thing? What will be the buzz at ISTE 2010? (see this conversation David Jakes started on Posterous)
- Are we (teachers) going to become digital users or subscribers? For decades we have been comfortable using packaged instructional content (textbooks, etc.) to help students learn, and this was probably necessary in closed learning environments. But with astoundingly abundant information, might we become our own packers. I’m curious about the emergence of video search. Hulu, the web-based TV service, now allows viewers to search the closed caption text of qualifying movies and TV shows.4 It’s a bit quirky, but another step toward making a universe of digital content more accessible and workable by teachers and learners. Will we take advantage of all this abundance of content, or continue to limit ourselves to the comfort of subscribing and prescribing?
- What’s to come of social networking? Will we, as a larger defining education community, come to accept social learning techniques and integrate them, or will we continue to fear and block these opportunities?
- Will the current economic bottom-drop curtail the proliferation of 1:1 learner to computer environments, or might it cause an acceleration? There are two other prevailing questions that nag at me,
- What technologies constitutes a true ubiquitous personal digital learning tool?
- How will ubiquitous personal digital learning tools affect the learning cultures of schools, classrooms, and our larger learning environments?
- A huge question-mark resides over the future of textbooks. I continue to wonder if we might discover that going digital could be a cheaper way to help students learn than continuing down the road of pulp-wood based learning resources? ..and “Will somebody (textbook industry or open source community) create a new “textbook” platform that truly harnesses the qualities of digital networked learning? Kindle is not the answer!
- Where does my job as a teacher stop? I think that much of the network conversation, that will continue to take place out there, will be about this question.
- Just how much influence might I have, as a teacher, on the learning that my students are engaged in outside of my classroom and outside of the school’s bell schedule?
- How might emerging ICTs enable more interesting and potent learning experiences beyond the confines of traditional schooling?
- How responsible am I to pursue these opportunities or do I continue to follow the traditional role of teacher and leave tech and the networks to the “natives?”
OK, so I do have some predictions after all for 2010
- Personal Learning Networks (PLN) will not get easier to explain.
- We will see some form of augmented reality in the exhibit hall at ISTE 2010, so watch where you point your 3G iPhone.
- Increased acceptance of social networking applications will continue, as security concerns are addressed and as we come to realize the benefits for conversational learning and learning management.
- High stakes testing will die, and it will die quickly and embarrassingly. But this will happen only after there is a compelling alternative.
- The next big “cool” thing will be augmented reality. But, although it will enable some interesting and useful instructional opportunities, like so many big “cool” things before it, AR will not live up to its hype.
- Mobile and cloud computing will continue to rise in popularity and application, but not as fast as we wish. They are both limited by infrastructure and penetration.
That’s it for now. I may revisit this blog post in the next minutes or months.
Happy New Year!
- Horwat, Waldemar. “Four Crystal Balls.” Flickr. 28 Mar 2009. Web. 27 Dec 2009. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturalturn/3393185440/>. [↩]
- Martin, Gary. “Get Down to Brass Tacks.” The Phrase Finder. Web. 23 Dec 2009. <http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/get-down-to-brass-tacks.html>. [↩]
- Gelles, David. “Exclusive: Apple to host event in January.” Financial Times 23 Dec 2009: n. pag. Web. 28 Dec 2009. <http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/12/exclusive-apple-to-host-event-in-january/>. [↩]
- Wei, Eugene. “Search Captions on Hulu.” Hulu Blog. Hulu, Hulu LLC.. Web. 28 Dec 2009. <http://blog.hulu.com/2009/12/21/search-captions-on-hulu/>. [↩]
November 23, 2009
Community – Formerly Known as Audience
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A bridge is a sticky connector only if people need to get to the other side1 |
It appears to have started with a Facebook status update from Science Leadership Academy Principal, Chris Lehmann.
When having audience is no longer novel, simply having one is no longer motivating. We still must help kids have something powerful to say.
Saskatchewan educator, Dean Shareski, continues the point in a blog post, Why Audience Matters, followed by fellow Canadian (Snow Lake, Manitoba), Clarence Fisher in his post, Those Formerly Known as the Audience. Finally, it all came to my attention, when Jeff Utecht tweeted a link to his installment on the conversation, Audience as Community. I strongly recommend you read all three of these blog posts because, together, they cover a wide range of reasons why audience is important to student learners.
My immediate response to the whole issue was a mild disagreement with Chris’ initial post. He may be right, and he’s certainly in a better position than me to see it first hand. But I’ve had numerous Class Blogmeister teachers say that “classroom” as audience seems to be just about as motivating as arranging for people around the world read and respond.
I suspect that the world-reach thrill of blogging might be novel and might wear off. But it occurs to me that the true power of working within an audience, as opposed to performing in front of an audience (writing to the teacher, what you thing the teacher wants to read), is the power of conversation. It’s knowing that somebody (even the guy in the next row) is reading what you are writing (not measuring it), and that the reader may respond to what you’ve written, pushing you to rethink and respond back.
It’s the potential of adding something valuable to somebody else’s thinking — the potential of becoming valuable.
I usually mention three qualities of personal learning networks when I do presentations on the subject — that PLNs are:
- Personal — They’re shape and function is completely up to the the ongoing needs of the learner.
- Both Spontaneous and Directed — Some learning experiences can result from careful cultivation of the network, and some simply happen because you are connected.
- Connective — The network of people and sources are held together not by wires, routers, and HTML links. It is a network of ideas.
It’s this last one, connectiveness, that I think may be pertinent to this conversation. There has to be something between the network nodes besides the concept of audience. There has to be something sticky there, something that helps, something that offers value, an intrinsic reason for the conversation. If you are connecting your class to another class in Scotland, then there needs to be something in the perspective or experience of those Scottish students that helps your students accomplish their goals, and it must be a goal that is more than academic or schoolie. It has to be a goal your students identify with — that they want to accomplish.
This network of ideas is one of my favorite aspects of personal learning networks. The people I am connected to are not part of my network because we look the same, speak the same native language, follow the same religous doctrine, or share identical cultural traits. We connect through our ideas, because what we do provokes us to share those ideas, and we all benefit. Even the photo that I include at the top of this post comes from a temporary PLN connection with Janusz Leszczynski, simple because he (she) once took a picture of a bridge and labeled it bridge and I, months later, was looking for a picture of a bridge to symbolize connection. The ideas were experienced at different times, but the ideas’ stickness lasted on.
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- Leszczynski, Janusz. “Alexandria Bridge.” Janusz L’s Photostream. 28 Aug 2009. Flickr, Web. 23 Nov 2009. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/januszbc/3865004558/>. [↩]
September 10, 2009
Do We Trust the System Enough
I crave routine. For the past week and a half, I have started my morning with a bowl of Cream of Wheat (It’s better than grits) followed by a mile walk to the local Starbucks, a bag (above) over my shoulder. Unpacked, I have my mobile office — Acer Netbook with Ubuntu waiting for login, a wireless mouse, and a mug of Cafè Americano. I’m writing a new book about network professional development — how learning is like gardening ;-)
Tim Holt recently wrote an interesting entry (Do I Trust the System Enough) in his blog, Intended Consequences. In it, Tim describes his plans to write a book for administrators about a particular type of professional development. He is planning to follow my example of self-publishing the book, hopeful that “..enough people purchase it so that (he) can put (his) kids through college.” My experience with self-publishing has been almost entirely positive and fruitful. I’ll never make a living at it, and I’m still working on my son’s tuition, but writing for yourself is a true pleasure.
His central question, however, is an interesting one — a “test of faith.”
I talk a lot about collaborative work. I talk a lot about sharing. I talk a lot about using professional networks to enhance learning and your professional work. So here is a perfect example of something that I can put “out there” for my PLN to critique, add to, subtract from, tell me I am full of it, or give me a pat on the back. I want folks to work with me through the process, to share, to be part of the product. Everyone would get credit.
There are a number of notable examples of books written publicly on wikis or in similar environments. I’m not absolutely sure, but it seems that one or more of Lawrence Lessig’s books were written publicly, as was Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, through his blog.
But Tim is concerned.
..I just hesitate putting it out there because I keep thinking that it is going to be ripped-off before it is done and someone will take my idea and run with it.
I’ll say here that I have been working on a short (hopefully) book about networked professional development for a little over a week now, trying to take advantage of an almost three week stint with no traveling. I explained a little more about the project in my comment on Tim’s blog.
But that asside, I also tell a story where several years ago someone (I do not recall who) sent me a package with a note asking if I was aware of this. The note indicated the page number, in a paperback book enclosed in the packaging, for a chapter which was, word for word, an article I had written a few years earlier and published through a now defunct online journal. I was furious and immediately shot off an e-mail to the publishers, who were in India. There was never a reply to that e-mail. I quickly settled down, realizing that there was nothing I could do that would be worth the expense, and I forgot about the whole episode until now.
Things are different now, aren’t they? India is not nearly so far away. I would probably have no more success with the publishers. But today, I have a blog. And many of the readers of my blog have their own blogs. And we could fill the edu-blogosphere with our indignation about an instructional technology book that so blatantly plagiarizes the work of another.
I think that Tim has a valid concern. He is talking about investing a lot of work into a project — A LOT OF WORK, and he has a right to be concerned about the property that will result. But our community is so much more transparent today that if I were considering writing my book publicly, fear of theft probably wouldn’t stop me.
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September 9, 2009
A PLN Activity — Does anyone know what this is
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Click the images to enlarge |
Brenda pointed these out to me yesterday evening. They are in a wooded area of our backyard, at the base of a Maple tree. It’s been raining and yesterday was the most humid day I’ve seen this summer (75% — not at all high for most NC summers).
They are mushrooms of some variety, but I have never seen something like this before.
So you know what it is?
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June 13, 2009
Pre-requisites for Personal Learning Networks
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After speaking to one of the most hospitable audiences of education leaders ever (Texas Association of School Boards), I spent most of yesterday in airports — and eating all manner of Mexican food. Just left a note on the kitchen count, “No Breakfast for Me!”
I sure didn’t get far into catching up on e-mail before I came up with a question for the smarter part of me — my readers. The quesiton is this,
What are the pre-requisites for learning to establish and maintain a personal learning network? Of course, I’m talking about the digital/distant kind of PLN. I’m going to start things off, but if anything occurs to you, please post it here as a comment.
- Computer savvy — practiced mouser; capable at opening, saving, and navigating files; accustomed with working multiple windows; able to connect to WiFi networks; and able to identify and even download and install software appropriate to a variety of file types.
- Internet Savvy — Browser literate; experienced Web navigator; able to keep and manage bookmarks; able to capture and save (download) text, images, audio, and video files (under most circumstances); Confident at signing up for online services.
- This is the most important — Willing to redefine your job as a teacher. Willing to call yourself a master learner.
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March 30, 2009
Don’t like Learning Alone?
Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht, wrote a blog post today that really resonated with me. Just back from the EARCOS Teacher’s Conference (ETC), Utecht reflects on why he attended only two session, other than the four that he presented.
It’s the first conference that I’ve gone to where I truly did not “do” the conference. Other than my own four presentations I only went to two others….one if you don’t count Kim’s.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why I didn’t feel motivated to go to more sessions. I like learning so what was my problem?
Then it hit me…..I don’t like learning alone!
I don’t like Learning Alone! « The Thinking Stick
      
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I’ve had this same experience, though I am more likely to attribute it to fatigue. But the thing is, if learning is the only reason we are going to conferences, well, then, who needs them. I have been at home most of the day, sitting in my office and working. Principally I have been preparing for tomorrow’s ISTE Eduverse talk show in Second Life. As a result, I’ve been teaching myself how to build and install animations and gestures and to face the person I am talking to. I also learned to install a captcha on the Education Podcast Network, to try to prevent spam from getting in.
Jeff says, “I don’t like learning alone.” At no point did I feel that I was learning alone today. At least, I was learning from blog posts and YouTube videos posted by people just like me.
I think that the loss of social interaction that results from unreliable Internet at conferences is a huge part of the issue. But I also suspect that we are becoming accustomed to working within a greater brain — no longer limited by our own dendrits. We have become accustomed to having quiet conversations within our networks, to asking questions and getting answers back from people we respect, and to contributing knowledge and insights to a larger community — and not just for the sake of helping others, but for the value-added that occurrs when it comes back.
<em>It’s like trying to learn with half your brain tied behind your back</em> — or a full three-quarters in my case. I think that his extension to students is a valid one.
And then I started thinking about our students. Our students who spend there day not just in front of screens but connecting with people, learning in the moment and creating content.
They play together, learn together, work together, and grow together. Then, in the classroom, we value the space between their desks more than their tendency to connect and the power of it.
I think that this is something that conferences need to understand and facilitate. It’s no longer merely about sharing. Today the conference has to be about growing the knowledge.
Added Later: Kim Cofino made a particularly interesting contribution to this conversation here:
I love learning. I used to love professional conference too – mostly because they were a great place to learn. But, last weekend, at our regional teacher’s conference (ETC), I made a realization… (more here)
March 29, 2009
One of the Best Conferences I Never got to “Attend”
I finished off last week, and a pretty exhausting string of engagements, with one of the best organized and idea-rich conferences that I have been a part of — better than any I can remember. What’s more, it was a local school district conference. I’m seeing more and more of these events, conference-style professional development days that bring the big ideas to the teachers, rather than sending them all to the big state or national events.
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Of course, the 2009 Educational Technology Conference should be good. It is the eleventh put on by The School District of Palm Beach County. The event was organized by the ed tech staff and it ran smoothly with the help of more than a hundred volunteers. There were nearly 2,500 attendees (large by the standards of just about any state conference) and the keynote was broadcast into overflow venues.
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The district’s Television station, T.E.N. (The Education Network), had a tent-covered studio set up in the courtyard of the school, where they interviewed presenters and attendees about using technology in their jobs. The interviews where piped into various locations in the school, where attendees were resting and re-organizing their agendas.
They worked me hard at this conference, presenting during each of the three concurrent slots. I started with the opening keynote, in front of one of the most responsive audiences I’ve presented to in a very long time (Something about Southerners — they know when to laugh at a southern speaker ;-). That was followed by a session on casual ongoing professional development (PLN) — two hours to administrators and an hour in the afternoon to teachers. I was very happy to do this, but it meant that I missed the more than 100 local teacher and vendor presenters and a lineup of features speakers that would be the envy of almost any state conference. They included Dr. Mark Benno from Dallas, Steve Dembo from Chicago, Karl Fisch, who barely got out of Denver before the snow storm, Kate Kemker from the Florida Department of Education, and Dean Shareski from Saskatchewan.
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Another interesting feature of the conference was the competition that is held each your with the students, to design the cover art for the conference. The winner, who also designed the conference posters, was recognized at the conference.
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I think that it is worth noting that she, and the school chorus, who opened the opening session with an inspirational singing and signing of the Star Spangled Banner, were both recognized for skills that most of the teachers in the audience could not match. This doesn’t mean that all teachers should be able to do digital graphic arts or harmonize along with the American Sign Language. Certainly not.
However, I do believe that it is important, because it is another demonstration of how we need to come to respect the learner — not just demand respect as the teacher, but pay back with respect for the learner and the places they’ll take what we teach.
I can’t close without commenting on the conference program, which was very effectively organized, illustrated, and offering just enough content to supplement the conference. This is worth noting because often conference programs are seemingly organized with little or know consideration of how the attendees will be using it to support the best possible event experience.
The School District of Palm Beach County was a wonderful way to end a long and exhausting tour and begin an extended rest at home. Thanks!
Tags: warlick, education, elearning, conference
March 22, 2009
Personal Learning Networks — The Beginning
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I’ve gotten this question several times over the past week, via Twitter, “Who coined the phrase, Personal Learning Networks?” I’m not sure why I’m the person being asked, but I first used the term in a 31 December 2005 2¢ Worth blog post, Year End Reflections. In that post I wrote:
I’d not heard or read the term before that time, at least to the point of acknowledging it. My intention was not to lable something new, but to find a way of expressing what I was experiencing at the time.
To look further back, I started with a Technorati search — and although typically find this tool to be very good at this sort of research, it was no help, since we can’t sort results based on date. Then I went to Google’s Blog Search, which will sort by date. I searched for blogs from 1 Jan 2000 to 31 Dec 2006 that include the key phrase, personal learning network. The earliest was Heidy Trotta’s 13 December 2005 post, Contributing to the Whole. In it, she refers to Personal Learning Network while discussing George Siemens 12 December 2004 paper, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age — in which he uses the phrase on page 3.
A Google Scholar search lit up with George Siemens’ groundbreaking work, but also listed a 2005 book, The New Learning Revolution: How Britain can leade the world in learning, education and schooling, by Gordon Dryden and Jeannette Vos, where they devoted a section to the book to “Your Personal Learning Network: Linking home, school and the real world together” (pp 113 – 127). However, the secion was more about learning environments in general than personal digital networks.
Moving on back, I found Yann, Denaual, Tapio Koskinen, and Vana Kamtsiou’s Scenario Planning and Gap Analysis, 8 Apr 2004. It seems to refer to “Relatively homogeneous types (of) learning groups, which (are) geographically widespread…” as “highly sophisticated training environment(s) already in place compris(ing) LMS, (or) Smart Personal Learning Network(s).” It was difficult to gain more from this work, as it seemed to have been a translation from Dutch.
At any rate, I would have to say that the phrase, as we typically use it today, was most likely coined by George Siemens in his discriptions of connectivism, and that I probably, subconciously, captured it in reading Siemens work, and used it in that 2005 blog post.
Added 10/6/09 — Stephen Downes has done even deeper research on the origins of PLN/PLE. Check out Origins of the Term, ‘Personal Learning Network.’
Photo taken by Ewan McIntosh in a Cab in Shanghai
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