Brains working towards machine consciousness

Having said that, we can take a step back, and consider the whole learning environment for an individual (which I will denote as their ILE here), by way of comparison.  Included in this ILE is everything they encounter - other people, physical artefacts in the world, books and the information in those books, animals, and so on; all of them provide some opportunity for learning, and thus support learning to some degree.  The learner has some degree of control over what they interact with in their environment, but not total control.  You can choose to avoid certain people or things by not frequenting the same geographical space, for instance (although, with the advent of the mobile phone, that has become more troublesome).  You can also go out of your way to interact with something or someone; "Does that dog bite if I try to stroke it?" the enquiring mind may ask, as you approach one waiting patiently for its owner to come out from the shop.  So there are elements of the ILE which are included within it on a voluntary basis.  On the other hand, compulsory education, lightning strikes and the like are not within the individual's control.

The same distinction applies to the technological toolset afforded us by modern technology.  Some of it we cannot really avoid, particularly when studying in an institution.  For various reasons, such as economy of scale in training staff, matters of desire for control and provision of 'safe' environments, many institutions provide a Virtual Learning Environment or Managed Learning System, and the learner is expected to interact with it as part of their learning process.  Many students find creative ways to avoid this interaction, mind you, but in theory, at least, the VLE tends to be a compulsory part of their ILE and their PLE. 

The JISC CETIS project which reported on PLEs concentrates, essentially, on the optional aspects of the toolset, although there can be some overlap with the email system, for instance, being quite likely to be a part of both the compulsory learning environment and the personal one.  This report highlights the idea of the PLE's importance growing out of perceived dissatisfaction with the institutionally provided systems, and this is a valid view, although we can also regard the accumulation of tools as being a natural response to the learner having access to the technologies.  The enquiring mind seeks out new experiences, and the learner tries out new things to see whether they will help in their learning experience. 

How should we use the term PLE?  Including everything in the ILE makes the terms synonymous, whilst excluding the institutionally compulsory elements may mean we miss some connections.  There is a further problem when institutions decide to design what they call PLEs to provide to their students.  To my mind this just becomes another institutional system, and experience suggests that learners exhibit the same types of avoidance procedures in order not to use them.  So, despite the potential for some issues of connectivity going awry, I will use the term PLE to describe the set of tools which the learner chooses to use, which support their learning.  They may not always be aware of the support, and may choose to use the tools for other reasons, but that is another matter.  This use of the term PLE is the opposite of Dave Cormier's use "It’s PLE as “thing we should pay for and get designed and write scads about” that referring to… not the kind that is a major broadcast platform for an individual.".  

Now, does it make sense to separate the tools from the affordances they give?  Many of the tools are set in a social networking frame, and provide interaction with other people.  Some are 'merely' ways of organising one's own thoughts, and others provide ways of interrogating information sources (other than humans).  The benefit of using tools is that they facilitate an activity - either providing the ability to do something which one could not have achieved without them, or making it easier to do it.  A mindmapping tool, for instance, generally only makes it easier to organise one's thoughts, whereas some programs allow you to analyse data in ways in which you would not be able to if relying on your own grey matter to exclusion.  Social tools leveraging the internet provide the ability to have conversations with others who you may never have been able to meet without the tool, or may just make communication in a crowded office easier.

In all these cases, I would argue, the relationship between the learner and their tools is part of a continuous network of information flow.  The continuity of the network extends within the skin of the learner, and out through the communications channels into other systems (learners, databases etc.)  In many of the social tools, the 'tool' as such is merely a framework, and the users gain advantage from using the system because of information made available through that framework by themselves and others.  In delicious for example, it seems quite reasonable to consider the tool to be the information which is held there, rather than the software or hardware which provides access to it.  

Regarded in this way, the PLE holds information - indeed, at least some parts of the PLE are comprised of information.  Because the information element of the tools is continuously being updated, changing the nature of the tool, some extra-personal learning (or adaptation) is occurring.  But where does learning happen for the individual?  The mainstream view would be that our learning is housed 'in our heads', although there are reasons to believe that some, at least, is in other parts of our central nervous systems, and, indeed, elsewhere in the body.  With the increasing ability to outsource memory to computer based systems, and possibly even understanding in a similar way, there is a challenge to this view - Connectivism holds that the learning is in the network, for instance.  The priority for the individual is then to master know-where (or know-who) rather than know-how.  However, we still need the know-how relating to making the connections; which means that a pre-requisite to accessing knowledge in a Connectivism based learning environment is knowing how to use the tools in our PLE.

People often complain that the number of tools available from which to choose, coupled with the rate of technological change (including changes within a specific tool) mean that students end up having to learn how to use their PLE before they can make use of it to learn domain specific objectives. Under Connectivism, the PLE is the essential interface with the wider network (leaving aside the older, slower methods of connecting such as meeting up for a conversation, writing letters, etc.) and if the knowledge is in the network, learning how to use one's PLE is, in fact, the fundamental personal learning requirement in the new highly connected digital world.  The next level of competency required is how to manage one's Personal Learning Network(PLN) (although this may be considered as coming first because you need to be able to gain access to the overall network somehow, and it will probably be through your offline PLN that you can achieve the skills and access to the equipment to do that!)

The PLN is, essentially, the people who you connect with to support your learning.  It can, in fact, also include non-human nodes on the network, although at the moment these can probably still be regarded as being proxies for the humans who produced the knowledge they hold rather than information providers in their own right.  The skills necessary for maintaining ones PLN are social; to be able to request information or help from someone, you have to be on relatively good terms with them, and approach them in the right way. 

It would be possible to maintain a limited PLN without a PLE, of course.  But the ability to choose the tools you use means that you have access to all the people who don't have access to the institutionally provided tools.  In the same way, it is feasible to be able to tap into the learning framework of Connectivism without a PLE, but only in a much more limited way than with one.  Knowledge in Connectivism is an emergent property of the network, and limiting the number of connections through using institutional walled gardens severely reduces the number of connections which can be made.