Page+3-Attic+Annex-Personal+Growth


 * Page 3: Personal Growth (Personal Learning Environment)**

My Personal Learning Environment (PLE) has changed a great deal this year. As I showed on my mindmap, my original PLE (on upper right of mindmap) was a combination of traditional college classes along with independent reading. Part of that would also include in-services, interactions with teachers and students (our technology natives), attending conferences, and whatever classes were offered by various departments of LPS. During my graduate work, I became more involved in reading and researching professional journals to learn about best practices, especially in gifted education. The computer was added to my toolkit when I first took a computer class back in 1987. My learning curve was slow-going through the Apple II-Es, Tom Snyder simulation games, floppy disks, TIE conferences, Hyper-Studio, MacIntosh, IBM compatible machines, to building primitive websites and using flashdrives. This semester has been different; a new PLE is emerging.

While last year I read my daughter's blog as she toured the Arctic during the International Polar Year as part of her PhD work, this year I have been writing one. I also know now how I can set up a way for students to blog or to react to one. As part of my PLE, while I'm working on the last lesson in this course, I saw the note from Peggy Brinkhuis showing how to integrate the blogs directly into the wiki. I haven't tried it yet, but making that link answered a question I had in the back of my mind before I read her remark about wiki features today. This also is part of my PLE-reading what other students post-I learn a lot that way. I am really glad that we will be allowed to access the lpslearning2.oh wiki next semester. I will be anxious to learn from those students as well. It will be like ripples in the pond as far as information rippling out and the PLE enlarging. While last year I got most of my news by buying a weekly local paper, an occasional regional one, and searching endlessly online for various news stories (and being distracted by a dozen tempting headlines that had nothing to do with what I was looking for), now I am enjoying the efficiency of a free RSS feed on Google Reader, saving both time and money. I have also discovered how I can help students set up tools to track stories and changing information on issues of interest. One of the tools I am most excited about is the wiki. I was frustrated by the limitations of the district-provided website and feel that I now have a viable option to help my students change their PLEs as well. This is power. I go into more details on this tool in Page 2-Application of the Tools. I know that as I build on my wiki, my PLE will grow. My students will be asking for more, as will my parents, and I will need to keep up my learning curve.

In the past, I had used Google Earth to zoom in on my home and hadn't allowed myself the "luxury" of digging around on it to see the real capabilities. As our world grows smaller and countries and cities change boundaries and names, this tool will allow our students to become global citizens with a real awareness of their world. The depth of the tool provided by Layers is far greater than I had anticipated. Although I teach only language arts and math, I feel it will be a great asset to both my students and to me in providing greater depth in both of our PLEs. Reading the tips on the features that other classmates added, I was intrigued to see that I could see the US government information in Layers, but hidden under More. Obviously, I haven't learned everything there is to know about this tool. So part of my future growth will be to explore it in greater depth. I think it would be neat to add a math tour with the birthplaces of different math concepts and theorists, one on global fairy and folk tales, and one for my other 5th grade Asian-American novel. (On a personal note, I want to take my son's Naval deployments and import his photos to help provide him with a special gift.) I figure each time I use this, I will grow in my understanding, efficiency, and capabilities in using it. I would love to know what features are on the paid software versions of it; I also need to explore Sky more fully.

The final extension of my PLE is through Del.icio.us. I was introduced to this at a Monday Models' class last winter, but I didn't use it real intensively until this fall. Now it is just about the only way I bookmark. I used to use Favorites, until I had to had to switch computers. Although I did figure out how to import my Favorites to my new machine, I decided it was a bit of a pain. Then I tried I Keep Bookmarks, but I like this tool much better. The social aspect makes it a juried search tool as well as a bookmark location. I have a lot of widgets-timelines, story writing, grammar, math page creators, etc. marked and ready to explore when I am ready. I am also very excited about the other web 2.0 tools that were provided. I spent hours on that site, and for all the looking I did, I'm really enjoying learning from the rest of the class which tools they "discovered." So this is yet one more way my PLE has grown and changed. The advantages to this evolving PLE are shown on the lower right of my PLE mindmap link in Page 1 of the Attic