Sunday 25 January 2015

ADED 1P32 Session #2- Weekly Report & Reflection

Well, week number two again introduced me to a brand new concept; Personal Learning Environment (PLE). It was a little foggy to me at first what it actually meant (with a lot of similar yet different definitions), but eventually I found a definition from the resources which worked best for me. PLE can be described as “the tools, artifacts, processes, and physical connections that allow learners to control and manage their learning” (Lalonde, 2012). I would add, being that we live in such a technological world, that an emphasis should be made on the "digital" aspect of the tools at our disposal. The examples of PLE's that were given provided a diverse range of styles, with some detailed and intricate, while others favoured a more general approach. When I created my own, I went with a simple format, mainly because I find I don't use nearly as many online tools as my peers. I split my PLE into two halves, with one focusing on use for personal matters and the other focusing on my professional/academic life. I'm a pretty simple and linear person, so it makes sense that my PLE represents that.
van Bolhuis, M. (CC) 2015.
At the end of the lesson we were asked to think pretty seriously about how our PLE will effect us in the future. Thinking about the future can be tough, as so often I just want everything to slow down and live for a little bit in the now. But here's my best shot.

In 5 to 10 years I want to begin to settle into a steady position somewhere in the sport industry. In the preceding years I will have been getting my feet wet, working in the trenches, and just steadily building that experience base. But at this point I want that work to begin to payoff. I'm not too fussy about where this is taking place, but I think I'm leaning towards the non-profit or public sector, running a city's youth sport league or some similar sport program. From a personal stand point, I want to be involved in my community and be the part of something bigger than just me. The biggest difference between now and then is fairly obvious. It's simply a different life stage. There's a big journey in between now and then.

How do I get there then? Well, as I touched on before, it's about building up that experience. You have to start somewhere, and that probably means at the bottom, doing a lot of grunt work. Besides just the basic skills required of any position, I will work on honing organizational and networking skills. These will be key to attaining that future vision.

My current environment revolves around a lot of academic things. This will have to be tweaked eventually to better suit the change of setting after school. For networking, adding a LinkedIn account could definitely be a positive step, but just looking for other networking sites and tools will not only help in the search for a starting position but will also be invaluable down the line as well.

Habits is the final thing. I really want to work on getting out and volunteering more. This helps build that network, gives real experience, and should give me a better idea of what exactly I want to do. There just doesn't seem like a lot of time to do this right now, so working on creating that time is something I have to seriously consider.

I can see where my PLE is now, but just thinking about the future makes me realise how much it will have to evolve down the line. I think a lot of the change will be natural, but some will also require some determination and concentrated effort on my part.

Finally, the word cloud. I'm a straight forward thinker, with a linear approach to learning. You might go as far as saying that I lack creativity. So an activity like this usually has me scratching my head. But what I thought was kind of cool was the fact that despite only having the major words, you got a sense of the main point of the piece of writing. Only the main concepts are needed to get a basic comprehension of what the writer is trying to convey. So that was interesting.

van Bolhuis, M. (CC) 2015.

I guess I'll end on this point. I found this week to be more structured in how we had to construct the blog post. I'm hoping that there will be more flexibility in the weeks to come! But I guess we'll see next week. 

- Matt

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