EDTECH 543: My PLE

Because of my Michigan roots I decided to design my PLE around the Great Lakes.  Anyone who is from the Mitten State understands our great pride for the lakes that surround our state.  Like any good PLE you should have connections and communities outside your comfort zone.  I put the Home Button in the lower peninsula and my school's logo where I teach.  The lakes connect Michigan to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.  The lakes also connect Michigan to Canada (actually Windsor, Canada is only about a half hour from my house).

Like the Great Lakes, my PLE connects me to other educators around the United States and internationally.  I named my five great lakes - Create, Communicate, Connect, Reflect, and Curate.  All the lakes are connected and flow together.  The water is the same in one as the others.  Each of these tools work together to gather information, communicate, and allow a teacher to grow personally and professionally.

Reflection

I have learned that before this class I did not realize how connected I am.  PLN and PLE were new concepts before this summer, but after creating my PLE most of the images I put on my diagram are communities I have used frequently.  Where I find my strengths are in my communication and creating.  During my EdTech classes is where I use the connect, reflect, and now curate.  What stood out most was how these all work together and need each other to be used effectively.  I understand there are ways I should grow professionally and hope to incorporate more connecting and reflecting in my future as a teacher.

Comparing my PLE to my classmates was fun, especially since we all had a unique way of sharing our ideas.

Joanna and I both had the curate and connect, which now that I look at the images we provided in those sections I believe we curated long before we understood the details of it.  Connecting is a strong point for both of us as we have discussed our faith and connection through the photos she had posted.  Sharing has been a great tool because as a members of our PLN we have used Google Drive in creating and sharing projects.  She used the term share, where I chose to use the term create for our Google Drive.

Michelle and I both used the terms connect, curate, and create.  We shared a lot of the same applications in our PLE, but she added additional descriptive words to get her ideas across.  I like how she personalized it with an cartoon connecting all the processes to herself - thus being empowered.  The differences is how we identified our communities - she had collaborate to create.  She made good connections in her communities we just created different pairings.

Ariana and I used the terms communicate and create, yet she used collect instead of curate and collaborate instead of create.  Using collaborate was a good choice because it makes a broader connection to both creating and sharing.  We used a lot of the same communities to fill our PLE.  I really liked the Teenage Mutant Ninja "Sea" Turtles as her visual. As a history teacher I love connecting that to the Renaissance artist because my students are able to remember them more easily.  I will remember Ariana's PLE.

Josh's PLE was similar to Ariana's when it came to communities, but I like his image of the Earth and how our PLE communities connect.  I tried to do something similar with my image of Canada and how we can connect internationally. I represented it on a smaller scale and Josh represented it on a large scale.

Kim had a great PLE with her baseball reference.  She added a lot of communities to connect her groups.  Like my PLE she used the terms connecting and creating.  We had similar communities like YouTube and Diigo, but she used Google as a whole where divided into Google+ and Drive.  A unique aspect of Kim's PLE is she put the same community at different bases showing the connection.  I made reference in mine that the lakes flow into each other.

Kristin had a clear and clean looking diagram with an easy flow of communities.  Like my PLE all the communities flow into each other, she just used arrows to make the connection.  I liked the diversity of communities.  We shared the same communities - Pinterest, Scoopit!, Twitter, Edmodo, and Facebook, just to name a few.  Different communities she incorporated were edWeb.net, Messenger, and she added other Google suite tools.

Kayden had a fun PLE showing how we connect to our communities.  I like the use of the smart phone, tablet, computer and television to frame her communities and connect them to each other and herself.  She had a lot of communities in the curate and communicate with Blogger, Drive, Twitter and Facebook.  The create/share she used YouTube, where I added Google Drive, VoiceThread, and Weebly.