Weller\u2019s (2020) discussion of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) immediately connected with my own experience as a learner. PLEs give learners greater control over the tools, communities, and resources they use and can support learning beyond formal institutional systems. In 2011, while living in Colombia, I was completing my Bachelor of Professional Communication through Royal Roads University. Although I would not have called it a PLE at the time, my learning environment extended far beyond a physical university classroom. I relied on technology to connect with my university, classmates, instructors, and learning resources from another country. Looking back, the concept of a PLE describes much of what made that experience possible. Today, as both an online graduate student and an educator, the idea remains immediately relevant because learning continues to take place across multiple digital spaces rather than within one platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Weller\u2019s (2020) discussion of social media presents a more complicated picture. In 2009, social media offered new opportunities for connection, participation, and networked learning. However, its educational potential looks different today. Social media can still connect learners and communities, but it also requires users to navigate misinformation, unreliable sources, algorithms, and overwhelming amounts of information. Greater access to people and information does not necessarily result in greater learning. For educators, this makes critical thinking and digital literacy increasingly important. Perhaps the lesson from 2009 is not simply that social media can expand learning networks, but that learners also need the skills to evaluate the networks they enter and the information they encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reference<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech<\/em>. Athabasca University Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Weller\u2019s (2020) discussion of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) immediately connected with my own experience as a learner. PLEs give learners greater control over the tools, communities, and resources they use and can support learning beyond formal institutional systems. In 2011,… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru321\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}