Brains working towards machine consciousness

We all live within an environment.  Part of that is obviously our physical environment, but the bit I am writing about is our learning environment.  Looking at what each of us, as an individual, uses to support our learning gives rise to the concept of a Personal Learning Environment, or PLE.  The term PLE, however, is typically used with regard to the technological toolset an individual uses, rather than the sum of all factors in the learner's environment.

 There is a fascinating distributed dialogue about the nature of instructional scaffolding, the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and how they can be viewed in the domain of today's learning landscapes.  Graham Attwell identifies the issue of the role of Teacher in the work on ZPD.  He points out that a lot of learning occurs without one person acting in a Teacher role.

In many ways, your Personal Learning Network is like a personal Community of Practice.  Something about the people you choose to have in your PLN links them to the things you want to learn, in the ways you want to learn it.  You get to decide who is in your PLN, adding and removing people in order to meet your learning needs.  Consequently, you are the 'benign dictator' in a network of people who may not even realise that they are a part of it.  Additionally, of course, each of those individuals has their own network, of which you may, or may not, be part.