Collaborative Development of Educational Modules - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 208

more. Furthermore, this conversation
should form a rich matrix of resources, dy-
namic and interconnected, created not only
by experts, but by all members of the com-
munity, especially the learners.

tion with mentors or instructors - will be
embedded in the learning environment,
sometimes presenting themselves sponta-
neously, sometimes presenting themselves
on request.

• Creation over consumption: PLEs high-

light the idea of making learners move
beyond content consumption and memo-
rization into stages of critical thinking,
collaboration, and content creation. On
the other hand, content creation sites have
formed the vanguard of Web 2.0, em-
phasizing the idea that the web is a place
where people can create and communicate,
i.e., to network. The possibility of making
the content creation occur, or be largely
supported, online, converts the act of cre-
ating content into a social and connected
act, broadening the learning opportunities
to actively involve learners in their own
knowledge construction process. Learning
therefore evolves from being a transfer of
content and knowledge to the production
of content and knowledge.

The main goal of PLEs is to allow a learner (or
anyone) to engage in a distributed environment
consisting of a network of people, services and
resources. Taken together, the ideas that underlie
the PLE constitute an instance of a more general
approach that may be characterized as Learning
Networks . If properly designed, such networks
can represent reliable producers of high-quality
knowledge and learning. Through the process of
interaction and communication, the entities that
constitute the network will form a mesh of con-
nections. Knowledge is embedded in this mesh
of connections, and therefore, through interaction
with the network, the learner can acquire the
knowledge (Downes, 2007). In this sense, talk
about Learning Networks implies on considering
not only the use of networks to support learning
but also networks that learn . The core concept of
Learning Networks is that these two things are
one and the same.
Downes (2007) also describes the properties
of the network that are known to most reliably
lead to network knowledge:

• Context over class: According to Downes

(2007), when learning becomes the cre-
ation of content in the context of a commu-
nity of practice, it also becomes something
that is characterized not by instruction in
a classroom, but rather by dialogue and
communication within a given context.
In an increasingly global world, learning
environments are becoming ever more
multi-disciplinary, i.e., learning from a
large number of disciplines is required.
Such environments cut across disciplines.
Instead of studying subjects in an isolated
way, students will learn the subjects as
need, progressing more deeply into them
as the need for new knowledge is provoked
by the demands of real world applications.
Learning opportunities - either in the form
of interaction with others, in the form of
learning objects, or in the form of interac-

• Diversity: Entities in the network should

be diverse. Diversity allows us to have
multiple perspectives, to see things from
a different point of view. As a conse-
quence, the learner can reach beyond him/
her groups and to connect with, and learn
from, a wide range of influences.

• Autonomy: Each entity operates indepen-

dently of the others. The network operates
according to an individual and internal
set of principles and values. Autonomy is
what allows diverse entities to respond and
react in a diverse manner.