Week 2: Defining my personal learning environment

As a university student in this technological era I have been engaged in a learning management system (LMS) throughout the past four years. An LMS such as the one Brock University uses (Sakai) is a software that controls how students learn, while a personal learning environment (PLE) gives you control over how you learn by integrating a number of Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, Wikis, RRS feeds, and Facebook.

Krahn, A. (CC) 2014

To the left is a diagram made using Gliffy that maps out the sites I use, as of today, in my PLE . It is not concrete, however, since my learning environment is always changing as my goals change and as I come across new sites. Envisioning myself in 5 years I see myself in research, having obtained a PhD in Neuroscience. Because technology is rapidly advancing, it is important to keep myself up to date in order to be confident with my skills if I want to evolve as well. As a researcher, it would be beneficial to collaborate with other fellow researchers through tools such as Google Drive and Wikis to expand my knowledge on current topics. A social PLE empowers learners to obtain information through peer-to-peer learning. After creating a diagram of my PLE I realize I haven't allowed myself to explore new tools and have limited my learning to basic tools such as Microsoft Office Suite. As a science student, most of my time on the Internet is spent on research, relying heavily on Google and the Brock Library database to find scientific journals. As I have mentioned before (and I'm sure I will mention it multiple times again), I have not been very social on the Internet for fear of damaging my digital footprint. I would like, however, to engage myself in online activities that will allow me to become more social, such as following people on Twitter who have similar interests as me, or subscribing to RRS feeds for journals of professors and researchers in my field of study. I believe it would be beneficial to get into the habit of keeping up to date with such feeds, perhaps starting by checking them once a week and hopefully checking them more often as I assign more time of my day to Internet activities.  I would also like to explore new tools that could expand my PLE, as well as find tools redundant to the ones I have, since at some point in the future some of the sites and tools I use for my PLE will cease to exist. This week I explored Dropbox, a site similar to Google Drive. Although I highly doubt Google will cease to exist (or could it?), not everyone I know uses Google Drive and prefers to use Dropbox. 

Krahn, A. (CC) 2014

I have also explored a REALLY cool site called Wordle. It generates "word clouds" from text that you provide. To the right is a word cloud I created using text from my last blog about digital footprints. As I dive deeper into the World Wide Web and explore potential resources to expand my PLE, I still hope to have a balance between the time I spend staring at a computer and the time I spend interacting with people in the real world.