Personal Learning Environments 

This week, as part of the course readings, we're learning about Personal Learning Environments (PLEs).  Let me say right now that if I have never had an aha moment, I had one today! I need to back up, reverse to come forward and move ahead, so you understand the genesis of this amazing moment!  We started this course four weeks ago, and it's been non-stop! I've tried Web 2.0 tools that I would never have tried unless I was required to and at times it's seemed like a never ending deluge of applications that do one thing or another. Some I've liked a lot, some I've loved, some I've outright hated (talking about you Reddit! #sorryaintsorry).  It was a whirl of learning activity that looked like this in my head: 

CHAOTIC!!! But you know that there's supposed to be order in there; some pattern that makes sense.  Like looking for Waldo, sometimes you have to relax your eyes, look away, then look again and there he is! Then there are times when you need a template, the picture on the 1,000,000 piece jigsaw puzzle box that lets you know where this 99,000th blue piece out of 1,000,000 pieces belongs.  Dr. Dennen gave us that picture, the template, this week and suddenly it all made complete sense, totally logical, of course -Duh! 

You have to read Personal Learning Environments, Social Media, and Self-regulated Learning: A Natural Formula for Connecting Formal and Informal Learning (Dabbagh  & Kitsantas, 2011).  It's the picture, the template, the DUH! Dr. Dennen and Taehyeong are supporting us as we move  through Zimmerman's three phase cyclic SRL model:

Level 1- Personal Information Managment

"At level 1 of the pedagogical framework, instructors should encourage students to use social media such as blogs and wikis to create a PLE that enables them to engage in self-regulated learning processes of Zimmerman's forethought phase such as goal setting and planning" (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2011, p. 6).    

Action 

• We've read about and tried out online bookmarks - I love Diigo! 
• Media Resources - We've tried and continue to try an amazing list of Web 2.0 tools
• Personal Journals - Hey you're reading it and each of my classmates has written a fantastic blog. Each is different and very personal.  We tell a story (or haven't - that's a choice too) about ourselves even when the discussion is scholarly.  

Level 2 - Social Interaction and Collaboration

"social interaction and collaboration, instructors should encourage students to use social media to engage in basic sharing and collaborative activities" (Dabbagh  & Kitsantas, 2011, p. 6).

Action

• We've shared stories from the web on Twitter, completed challenges and looked at some hilarious Snapchat photos.  
• We've commented on classmates' and Dr. Dennen's blogs about everything from journal articles to Pokemon.  
• We're co-creating the class wiki! I've looked around, but I haven't posted anything yet but kudos to Ernest, who knocked it out of the park.  
• We've talked behind the scenes and in full view on Twitter about our projects and offered advice.  

Level 3 - Information Aggregation and Management

"Instructors encourage students to use social media to synthesize and aggregate information from level 1 and level 2 in order to reflect on their overall learning experience. These social media activities allow students to take greater control of their PLE, customizing it and personalizing it around their learning goals"  (Dabbagh  & Kitsantas, 2011, p. 6). 

Action

• We've done some curating. Some of us are becoming Pinterest Jedi Masters (not me - I'm not even at the Padawan level yet).  
• We're creating (or trying to) create our knowledge sharing assignment and talk about and use analytics.  
• We're going to present the results of the knowledge sharing (fingers crossed) using Videothread (hey friend!) 

AHA Moment!

So today, I went from CHAOTIC!!! to this: 

I got it! I saw where the 99,000th piece goes. The next challenge is to put it in place