My Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

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Dear all,

In the image above you can see my PLE (Personal Learning Environment). As Sarah (my English teacher) told us, there isn’t one single definition of PLE; however, I’d define it as “a mindmap through which you can organize your learning process, both formal and informal. It can be built on various nodes, such as the tools, places, people, skills, technologies that are somehow involved in your learning”. This is a very generic and wide definition because, as Sarah said, in the end “a PLE is yours, there’s no right or wrong, there’s just the way you see it”. (For more information, have a look at the links Sarah suggested us in e-tivity 9). As for my PLE I must admit that, after reflecting for a while upon the possible key nodes of my map, i.e. the nodes that had to function as the roots of the whole structure (language competence, cultural competence, information,…), the building process was quite straightforward since this map is actually the result, the product of what I’ve been thinking about all these last months, from October onwards.

Before starting my English course with Sarah, I was completely aware of what formal education could offer me to improve my language acquisition, and maybe I had never felt the need to think about other possible learning contexts more informal than university. I mean I had such a narrow vision of my ‘Learning Environment’ that it coincided more or less with university! A radical change started taking place in October for two reasons: October marked the beginning of my last year at university and the beginning of a surprising and revolutionary English course as well that was going to change my too restricted idea of ‘Learning Environment’. As regards the first reason, the fact that this is my last year at university urged me to reflect on how to keep my language knowledge ‘alive’ and how to achieve those goals I haven’t fully met so far at the uni. Considering the second reason, i.e. the course with Sarah, this has allowed me to discover the potential of Web 2.0 for language learners. Now I’m keener on the use of technologies to learn a language; in these months I’ve felt like a baby who is exploring the world and the people living in it for the first time! Well, I’ve been exploring a virtual world that is offering me what I’ve always dreamt of since when I was 14 and decided to study foreign languages: the opportunity to exchange ideas with foreign people, thus testing my language and cultural competence.

Going back to my PLE, I must say that, though I’d like to make a PLE for my German learning too, I built it mainly focusing on my English learning. Given that you can look at it, I think that a detailed description of my PLE would be boring and useless, that’s why now I’ll give you only a brief explanation of some choices I made while building it that can help you to read and understand the map. Let’s start with the four core branches:

1- LANGUAGE COMPETENCE

This was the most complex and difficult part to represent graphically. I pointed out what learning tools I’ve been using or I’ll use in the near future to increase my ‘language competence’, by making a distinction between the four main skills it consists of (listening, speaking, reading, writing); then, within each skill I distinguished between formal and informal learning contexts. Remember that with ‘formal’ I don’t mean only formal education (i.e. education at school, university or other courses), but any context that can help me to learn formal English (e.g. future jobs, media, academic writing); in other words, it is a matter of register. In order to highlight tools that are helpful to develop two or more skills at the same time, I used the same colour; for example, SkyPe is written in light blue so you can easily notice that it’s a tool I make use of for all the four skills: to practice listening/speaking if you have a phone exchange, or to practice reading/writing if you have a chat.

2- CULTURAL COMPETENCE

The ways through which I can increase my knowledge about English or American culture (lifestyle, food, traditions, holidays, educational system, religion, government, history, literature, etc.); again I distinguished between formal and informal tools.

3- INFORMATION

Under ‘Retrieving’ I tried to answer to the question: “How can I gather new information, i.e. material that can be exploited for my language learning (grammar rules & exercises, handbooks, podcasts, essays, software, social networks, etc.)?”. Under ‘Storing’, on the other hand, I included all the devices I use for keeping and arranging information (feeds, bookmarks, tags, folders, and links in my blog).

4- PLACES & PEOPLE

This node contains the places where I can find useful ‘information’ for increasing my language and cultural competence and the people ‘living’ in those places who can contribute to my learning process. At present my ‘learning environment’ is mainly made up of university education (English courses, lab lessons, literature classes) Web 2.0 (my blog and those of my classmates, podcasting, del.icio.us, Bloglines, YouTube, Myhappyplanet, Facebook) and some young students I’m coaching in English (sometimes giving private lessons allows me to refresh ‘real life English’, that is the basic vocabulary used everyday at home, at the restaurant, on the telephone, in a shop, etc.). In the near future I hope to travel a bit abroad and find a job that allows me to enrich my language knowledge (e.g. translator, clerk in a foreign trade office, English teacher).

All things considered, representing my own PLE was very useful; it forced me to categorize the tools I’ve got at my disposal to improve my English; this way I realized that in the last few months I’ve begun using tools through which, finally, I’m learning informal and colloquial language. I’m especially referring to social networks such as Myhappyplanet.com; this is a language learning community, a place to learn a language naturally by interacting with people around the world that speak the language(s) you want to learn and want to learn the language(s) you speak. Lastly, my map shows what a small role formal, academic education plays in my ‘Learning Environment’. That was a bit surprising but quite good now that I’m finishing university and need to find out new ways to keep up my lifelong learning!

Elena