Report:
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| Oleskevich, K. (CC) 2015. |
Pictured to the right is the Personal Learning
Environment Diagram (PLE) as created by myself on my exploration of the ways in
which my everyday tools look to develop my education. I chose to focus
primarily on the tools that I use most often and are most important to my
learning experience. I have separated the tools through their type (digital or
non-digital) and then those have been divided further into online and offline
tools.
The non-digital tools that I have chosen to
include aid in my mental and physical health in some sense, which in turn
allows for a stable and focused approach to learning. I have chosen to include
a car, friends and family, smoothies (I drink them every morning), books,
newspapers, and my own brain of course! All of these privileges are essential
to my personal learning environment, because fostering a positive home and work
environment provides the basis for a successful learning environment.
I chose to allocate an entire category for
social media as I am very involved on multiple platforms daily. This
involvement shapes the way in which I receive information, and subsequently, the
way in which I develop my knowledge. I have chosen to allot a separate category
for WIFI/ Internet connection because without this, my learning environment
would be severely hindered. The majority of my work is not only developed using
online tools, but it is often submitted and used for comparison through online
digital platforms.
Reflection:
After
completing my very first PLE diagram I have gained a better understanding of
the ways in which I learn and the tools I use to progress my education. I have
learned from ADED 1P31 that I am a visual learner, that is I often require a
visual representation of concepts in order to more fully comprehend them.
Although I can absorb information in other ways, it is more beneficial for my
mental process to simplify concepts into visual representations. By laying out
the ways in which I use the tools around me to learn, and subsequently
categorizing them, I can more easily develop action plans when faced with
learning new concepts.
Developing
this diagram has also provided context for my lifelong learning goals. Through
exploring the unconventional tools that I use regularly (ex. my non-digital
tools) I am able to more fully understand the tools I need to employ to
continually, and successfully learn.
After
completing my PLE I noticed how different PLE diagrams are between myself and
other people. The tools that I use to frame my learning environment are
dependant both on my learning style and learning tendencies. This can be seen
in the composition of the diagram itself. Many other diagrams that I viewed
were set up with very different categories, tools and graph formats. The graphs
that we all produce, I believe are a representation of the different
organizations we have in our mental processes. Therefore those processes are
reflected in exercises such as these and act as differentiating samples of our
learning.
While
creating my word cloud, I realized not all of my tools were set up properly (I
had to update my Java and change browsers on my computer). This initial realization
set me back a few minutes in my creation of a wordle. This acts as a
representation of the way in which we prepare ourselves for digital learning
can alter the effectiveness of our learning endeavours.
After I
had completed the wordle, I was provided with an alternate perspective on the
way in which I use language to express my learning priorities and reflection.
As I said previously, I learn through visual representation, the development of
the blog post for week 1 into a word cloud altered that perspective I had on my
previous post.
I enjoyed
creating alternate representations for my learning in the digital environment,
and I feel that it ultimately provided a new context for the ways in which I learn.
