FLE Assignment 1 – Personal Learning Environment

Supporting My Learning on Prezi

The above presentation outlines how my online personal learning environment supports my learning. You will be able to see all the feeds and widgets mentioned in the presentation in the sidebars of this blog.

My  PLE (personal learning environment) made up mainly of this blog, twitter, bookmarking and RSS, really defines me on the web. It is a collection of my thoughts, links, videos and photos that are relevant to me, and that I feel might be useful to someone else in my network. I started with my blog, and grew a very strong PLN (personal learning network). A PLN refers to the connections that have been made through tools such as blogs and Twitter. It is a group of people who can guide your learning (1) and you help to guide theirs. I suppose you could say that your PLE is where you play, and your PLN are the people you play with!. I cannot imagine life without either now. Both my PLE and PLN have become such an integral part of the way I work. When I have a question, the first place I go to ask it is Twitter. When I have some ideas to write down, I put them on my blog. When I want to connect with teachers to talk about projects, I go to the various ning networks I’m part of, and when I am looking for new ideas, I go to my Google Reader to see what’s happening in the feeds I subscribe to. The best thing about all this – the network and the tools, is that it supports ongoing learning. It never ends. It’s always developing, and there is always more sharing and connecting being done. As my learning grows, my PLN grows. As my PLN grows, so does my learning and my PLE.

It’s the connecting and sharing of course that allow PLEs and PLNs to be so powerful. These tools are all geared towards giving and receiving feedback. If you don’t reach out and make connections, and if you don’t offer things to share, then there is little point in being part of the online environment. I get ideas from reading other people’s blogs, I use photos that other people have taken and shared under Creative Commons (using Flickr), I find useful resources through the bookmarks that other people have saved (using Diigo).

References:

History of Personal Learning Environments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_learning_environments, accessed 6/06/10

Lubensky, Ron, The Present and Future of Personal Learning Environments http://www.deliberations.com.au/2006/12/present-and-future-of-personal-learning.html, accessed

(1) Tobin, Daniel R, Building Your Personal Learning Network, http://www.tobincls.com/learningnetwork.htm, accessed 6/06/10

Some comments I’ve left on FLE blogs:

http://oettveevers.edublogs.org/2010/04/18/my-new-little-distraction-and-idea-for-vle/#comments

http://mhadden.edublogs.org/2010/04/21/learning-objects/#comments

http://julietbuchanan.blogspot.com/2010/04/100-top-educators-to-follow-on-twitter.html#comments

http://flexilearnenvirons.edublogs.org/2010/04/14/does-virtual-refer-to-the-learning-or-to-the-environment-in-a-virtual-learning-environment/#comments

http://flexilearnenvirons.edublogs.org/2010/03/30/rss-definition-based-on-educational-theory/#comments

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=847911489205866888&postID=8692820751743499502