PLE for Me

Personal Learning Environments (PLE) helps learners take control of their own learning by creating a learning space tailored specifically to their needs. I can pull in any tools I need and use the best content as a e-portfolio (this is something you can present to potential employers as a vehicle to showcase what skills and ideas you can bring to their organisation). I’ve decided to use a WordPress blog. You can use other blogging websites but WordPress is free and open source – so the users with some skill can extend its capabilities. It’s also possible to create PLEs from other platforms such as Wikis.

I’ve recently added Delicious to my blog which I’m setting up as a Personal Learning Environment or PLE. I discovered Delicious a few years ago now and use it all the time to keep track of useful websites. It’s so handy when you move from one computer to another or when you get a new pc! I’m reaching the stage of ‘normalisation’ now (Stephen Bax) – it’s just part of my everyday practice to save things on Delicious. I’ve had a look at Diigo and it looks good. I will make a point of getting better acquainted with it. I’ve incorporated my Delicious link and Twitter feed into this blog in an effort to start making it more PLE. But a PLE isn’t a strict construct it can be designed and customized to a particular users needs. My PLE is going to be a place for personal reflecting on professional practice. The eventual aim will be to pull an e-portfolio out of it that I can use for promotional purposes.

I’m also quite enjoying blogging – self-publishing is a beautiful thing! I think I might go and make another blog.

I’m aiming to gradually transition the PLE into a fully fledged Personal Learning Network (PLN) over time. A PLN is an informal learning network that the learner builds up with other practitioners in their area of interest. The purpose of setting up these connections with other practitioners is learn new ideas that I may not have otherwise have thought of or known about.

Twitter Basics – YouTube

All that Twitters ain’t necessarily gold

I’ve been pretty slack with over the last month or two making posts to this blog. But the deadline for the Emerging Technologies presentation is fast approaching and there is nothing like a deadline to focus the mind! I’ve reevaluated the best way to use Twitter on the Endnote Libguide over the last few weeks and come to the conclusion that Twitter is not the right tool to use as a  Q & A archive or as an alternative to our current Endnote discussion group service.

There’s a couple of reasons why I’ve had to rethink this idea. Firstly, Twitter is limited to 140 characters per tweet making it difficult to answer technical questions that require a bit of background explanation. There is also the question of support – Twitter is a very instantaneous medium and someone would need to track it’s activity. However, it’s great for getting your message out there to a wide audience. I was looking at Shane Warne’s Twitter the other day in the aftermath of his run in with a cyclist. Shane’s celebrity status ensured the story got oxygen in the mainstream press and it was only really his version of events that were being presented. The cyclist is taking legal action and the matter is soon to be before the courts – but I digress…

The other major limitation with Twitter is that tweets are temporary – here today gone tomorrow. They disappear after a certain amount of time – hmmm. Not quite sure the circumstances under which they disappear though – but definitely something to be aware of. This has been explained as due to the volume of traffic. I think it’s all about instantaneous communication with Twitter and not archiving data. There’s no doubt much better tools to use for Q & A – ideas? Facebook? I have created a link to the Research Ambassadors FB page – some the ambassadors have good Endnote skills.

I’ve been having a look at how other organisations are using Twitter and found that they generally use it as a promotional tool to feed information out. And this is how we should be using Twitter on our Endnote page – to promote upcoming events or put out information that we want the VU Endnote community to know. I’ve also noted in the course of my research that everyone is using Facebook too. They both have different roles to play in promoting an organisations activities.