Personal Learning Environments

Yesterday morning I saw a LinkedIn post about Personal Learning Environments. It got me thinking about the Covid-19 pandemic and how education has changed our teaching and working practices.

I’ve worked in education for a long time, specifically in learning technology, and I’ve seen systems come and go and opinions shift from one ‘next best thing’ to another, mine included. In the past, if you weren’t on the newest platform you were banished to the corner. In the geeky world of technology, where nothing stays still and every day is a CPD day, the pandemic is showing us a mix and match of platforms, apps and skill sets.

From one-stop-shop to mix and match

We used to talk about Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) as the one place learners ‘have’ to go to do all their learning, submit assessments and gain feedback, all on the preferred VLE of their organisation.

Is the current situation creating super-dooper-maximum-strength differention?

Gone are the days of the VLE as a one-stop shop, and in my opinion that’s a good thing. Take Moodle: it’s a full-on learning environment and a cracking system for those who have it down. Organisations that use it half-heartedly end up with a resource dump and a high bounce rate. Student logs in, student gets work, student leaves! That may seem bad, and it used to look that way, but less so now. What you don’t see in that scenario is the teaching, learning, assessment and feedback that happen ‘off’ platform.

In lockdown everyone seems to be doing things differently. People happily use Office 365, syncing documents and working collaboratively with peers, while others work in the Google ecosystem with Meet, Drive and Sites. Apply that to teaching: are we now performing super-dooper-maximum-strength differentiation?

I’ve been supporting staff and students who normally use 365 with Google Meet, and helping people who never leave the Google sphere to navigate Microsoft Teams. Each has its merits and pitfalls, but it’s clear there’s no ‘one size fits all’. Everyone is different, and we all prefer a different operating system to our peers, which normally results in a conversation over a pint or two about the merits of iOS over Android.

My own Personal Learning Environment

I love working from home in the current situation. I get fewer distractions than at work, and I can take a breather, smell the roses and do some CPD, which is a daily thing in learning technology in education. So much so that I haven’t had time to write up my CPD forms!

My personal learning environment is two Windows 10 PCs, a laptop and a desktop, and my Android phone. My phone gets hammered the most. It’s become my webcam, and I use Teams and Meet on it daily. The laptop gets bounced around the house for a change of scenery, but for more comfort and two wide screens I use the desktop, even though it has no webcam, speakers or microphone. This is my personal learning environment, and I’ll take it over a work desk all day long.

We now find ourselves teaching and learning in new, very personal learning spaces. I love it and don’t want to go back to the ‘old’ way of working. I miss the social interaction at times, but the ‘new’ ways outweigh that enough to satisfy my intrinsic nature. I’ll miss looking out of my window and grabbing a tea while talking to the cat, but I guess I’ll have to make do with chatting with real people when this is all over.