outside the fence

Today's CCK11 discussion apparently focused on PLEs. Traveling and having sporadic access to a crash prone computer I'll have to pick up the actual discussion when I get home. For now some points:

My PLE contains mostly non-institutional content. I'd guess that its being mostly self-assembled means I "own" it more than, say, were it also to contain content built by others. This is a fine thing but of course worthless in a world where things are measured by third party licenses, diplomas, degrees, certificates and etc. So what if my urge to life-long-learning enables me to participate from outside the fence? It seems to be a persistent myth of education that mastering learning is the core goal when really it's about certain learning paths arranged in certain ways that lead to certain permissions. All the rest is unqualified activity. The inability to see this is kind of sad but natural in a course full of people who already have the permissions and have forgotten their pre-permission lives.

Something not mentioned in the PLE discussions is the power of learning that comes from out of the blue. Serendipity is one word for it, chance encounter might cover it too. The point is not all learning springs from deliberate effort, some of it ambushes you through the kindness of others or the reverberations from an accidental encounter or crisis. A person's PLE isn't all professional development or something that can be translated into a more spendable marker like the "transferable skills" employment councillors go on about. Some of it is yours for you that doesn't need recognition from others to be valuable.

Scott