Analysing our PLE´s

Hello, it's Cristina 

Have you ever thought about your personal learning environment? Well, neither had we until we studied it earlier this week, realizing just how important it really is to us both as students and professionals. This task required us to consider our PLE in the context of post covid-19 as primary teachers who need to provide online communication channels with students.

By far the best part of this activity was researching the numerous ways we could use an online announcement board, Twitter and YouTube as permanent forms of online communication. It allowed us to explore the ways in which it could be used and it was fascinating to see how it has been applied in other schools. 

The worst part was putting together all the information as it took quite some time to organize our information. We are a big group which means it can be more difficult to put together our research and decide how to transmit this information.

The best moment of the week was when we created our diagram for the class presentation, we are all quite creative and we bounce off one another easily which means we thoroughly enjoy these creative parts of the tasks. 

The worst moment of the week was probably one of the mornings where we spent hours on videocall, organizing, researching and resolving doubts. These take quite some time and can be draining.

The personal learning environment is a new concept for us but in fact we are constantly using it without realizing. Bringing our attention to this concept, means we can learn to use it better and thus, improve both our learning and teaching. 

As a group, we must maintain our hardworking approach and continue to support one another. Our greatest strength is that we always want to do better and we motivate one another. We have spent so much time together that we have really got to know each other and we play to each others strengths. 

As a group, we need to become more efficient at times. As we are 7 members, it means that doing tasks can sometimes take more time as we want to listen to each other and sometimes include all our ideas. This sometimes results in us being slower and less concise at times when carrying out the task. 

There is no doubt that what we are learning is fundamental to our studies and professional career. The concept of PLE requires us to reflect on how we currently carry out research, how we do tasks and our personal learning network which means we can improve on this. Inevitably, it will have a positive effect on all our other studies during the degree. 

The main aspect that has been made clear is that PLE is everywhere and everyone has a PLE whether they are aware of it or not. In fact, it has been a particularly hot topic during the last year due to Covid-19 changing our PLE completely. Just take a look at this BBC News article.