Personal Learning Environment

This diagram shows my Personal Learning Environment. My PLE feeds me - mentally and emotionally, so I thought of using a place setting to represent it. The “meat and potatoes” of my PLE is Twitter and Facebook. I access these communities several times a day and they are the first places I go to when I need a resource, a question answered, support, or information. However, one cannot survive on these alone, so there are “side dishes” - other communities and resources that enhance and supplement my learning. These include Moodle, G+, Hangouts, LinkedIn, Discovery Educators’ Network, etc. All of this together makes up the basics of the “meal” which feeds me daily. But just as with any meal, there are the extras that we don’t necessarily always partake in, just like bread or dessert. These would be my “sometimes” resources like Goodreads, Blogger, Edmodo - great things that I always enjoy, just not necessarily on a daily basis. Wordpress is like the drink - I use it throughout to both share and access information. Finally, the tools we need to access all of this are Google, Chrome, and iOS, represented as the flatware.

As I was creating this diagram I learned that I prefer to have a relatively small PLE, focusing on a few high quality resources. I'm a 'quality over quantity' type of person. Each of the resources represented in my diagram is something I'm truly invested in and have made real connections with people through. The process of creating the diagram was interesting because I had to critically evaluate each resource I use and determine its place and relative size and position. It helped me focus on what is most important to me and which tools help me learn best. I truly value my PLE and feel fortunate to have it so well-established. 

As I compared my diagram to those of my peers', I found a lot of similarities in terms of the tools and resources included. Twitter and Facebook appeared in every one I compared mine to, and most also had Blogger, Edmodo, Google Plus, and Moodle. Everyone's diagrams seemed very personal and reflected the individual who created it. Some people chose to explicitly follow the PLE models such as the "collecting, reflecting, connecting, and publishing model" while others just designed a diagram in a way that is most meaningful to them. My diagram fits into this latter category. Many of the diagrams included the person who created it as a part of the diagram, but not all did. I chose not to include myself on mine because it made more sense with the metaphor not to. Some classmates chose a more graphic-based, creative approach while others went with more of a diagram or mind-mapping type product. Overall, I thought it was very interesting how my classmates' diagrams were really similar to mine, yet different at the same time. I suppose that is the same as the larger idea of PLEs - we all have the same tools and resources available to us, yet we access them in ways that are most meaningful to us and our individual needs.