Personal Living Networks... AHA!!!

One of the best education blogs out there is Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed. It's one of my regular stops in the blogosphere and should be one of yours too.

In a recent post he talks about "Personal Living Networks", and I had an AHA! moment. He quotes Chris Lott:

“In the emerging model, students learn to navigate, assess, construct and participate in a living network that comprises the heart of their learning network and they take that with them when their time as part of any particular institution’s offerings come to a change…’Going to school’ is an activity that has a life and dies; learning is a continuing process. Enrollments and degree programs terminate; personal living networks accompany learners through life– the ultimate educational institution– serving as companion, confidante, and oracle alike.” Chris Lott

Chris Lott is another must read for educators, and he in fact uses the term "personal living environment", feeling that limiting it personal learning environment is too narrow a focus.

Anyone who has read my blog know that I personally believe that PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) are the future of education - they will get us out of our neat rows of desks in classrooms, away from one-way lectures, and allow us to deliver education when, where, how, and why, learners want it. They will place more responsibility on learners to become engaged in their learning, to collaborate with each other and their facilitators, to use mobile devices to get learning when and where they are at and to participate in an open educational environment. In other words what I have coined as ECMO - Engagement, Collaboration, Mobility, and Openness.

What Will Richardson and Chris Lott are saying makes so much sense - it is more than just personal learning - it has to be personal living, that education is a life-long process that they have to manage along with the rest of their life.

I love what Chris Lott says:

"“Going to school” is an activity that has a life and dies; learning is a continuing process. Enrollments and degree programs terminate; personal living networks accompany learners through life– the ultimate educational institution– serving as companion, confidante, and oracle alike."

This is what we as educators have to instill in our learners - if we do nothing else, we must do this...


(Photo - "Collaborative Technology Labs"- by MSU Libraries)