PLE bargaining

The first conference on PLEs took place in the humid but tranquil Cornella area of Barcelona this week. For two days, the 'unconference' event hosted delegates from all over the world at the silubrious and very impressive Citilab Cornella. Those attending the PLE Conference found themselves quickly immersed in discussion, dialogue and debate over the nature and ethos of the personal learning environment. For me and many others who attended (both physically and virtually) it was probably the most connected event we have experienced. The Twitter stream alone went wild, and by midday on the second day there had been over 5000 messages inserted into the #PLE-BCN hashtag stream. Every session, including the breakout sessions, was streamed live over the web, and many people participated from outside the event. Many of the photos of the event are already up on Flickr at this site. A great set of photos by David Alvarez is also available here.

The unKeynote was quite a feature of this event. Day one kicked off with Alec Couros and Graham Attwell performing a double act in which they managed to engage just about every member of the audience in some way. We discussed issues such as the definition of a PLE, the tensions existing where binary representations of institutions vs individual provision of web tools is used, and the future of learning in the context of personalised pedagogies. Assessment and accreditation of learning were discussed, as was the curriculum. Ilona Buchem (on Twitter @mediendidaktik) has written a useful summary of Day 1 and Lisa Harris offers her personal reflection of the event. In the unKeynote speech by Jordi Angel and Ismael de Pena (all in Spanish with live mobile translation) on Day 2, the speakers promised chaos. What they got was chaos and also a tinge of anarchy, as the entire audience ran around and voted with their feet in a quadrant of options a the back of the room. The conclusion of this exercise? We couldn't agree. What we did agree on though, was that the PLE is 'all about me' - it's what each of us personally creates around us as a means to support our lifelong learning. A number of questions were posed such as: should the PLE remain outside the institution. The super edupunks were at loggerheads with the conservatives, and there were many, many shades in between. Some preferred to remain in the centre of the quadrant to be counted in all four camps. It was fun, dynamic, and thought provoking all at once. I think the picture above by the wonderfully effervescent Joyce Seitzinger (follow her on Twitter as @catspyjamasnz) epitomises the experience.

When I have more time I will try to capture some of the true essence of this astounding event. But right now I have to pack for a flight back to the UK, so I will blog later. Hasta la vista!

Image source

PLE bargaining by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.