The term PLE is going to come into its own in 2009, because of the prominence of the digital literacy/academic literacy and lifelong learning debates. There has been much discussion of PLEs over the past four or five years (yes, that long). I was led to this reflection by Graham Attwell’s post, How my Personal Learning Environment is Changing.

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ESRC/EPSRC commentary (pdf) edited by Neil Selwyn, with contributions from Charles Crook (University of Nottingham), Diane Carr (London Knowledge Lab), Patrick Carmichael, (University of Cambridge) and Richard Noss (LKL/TLRP-TEL), sets out to challenge the confident portrayal of web 2.0.

We’ll see.

A. J. Cann asked 200 first years, “…to draw a mind map of their personal learning environment (PLE).”  The PLE chickens come home to roost
He says, “following what these students were reading on Google Reader and bookmarking on delicious throughout the past term has been a fascinating and for the most part rewarding experience. The students however, hated this task, and comments on the module questionnaire show a complete lack of understanding why reflection on learning might be valuable.”
….
“Clearly formal education alters a PLE. We just don’t know how, or how much.”

How much does the new multimedia experience and the extract “A Mental Note” on our home page (as I write, today) map onto the Brookes we know? It is tempting to dismiss this as marketing fluff but it does say something about Brookes that the first seven images on the video are of Oxford University. Then, we see the new Oxford Radcliffe Children’s Hospital, Microsoft’s Reading campus and a few carefully selected shots around our campus, lingering on Headington Hill Hall, with very quick snips of Buckley, fast cars and the Cheney Student Village. Brookes is all pumping bass, Oxford lite and cappucino culture. Where is the  sustainable development of global citizens?