My Personal Learning Environment

This course has been an eye-opener to me in many areas, as I did not consider myself very tech-savvy and would prefer the conventional pick-up-the-phone to speak or a face-to-face communication.

As the weeks progressed however, there were so many interesting tools that were introduced. Yes, some I had heard before, like Facebook and Twitter, but did not find any need to be a part of, until it became necessary to sign up if I wanted a pass in this course. Although it has mainly been social networking sites, but I can now see a lot of potential in how these tools can be used in the e-classroom situation, sharing of ideas in an informal way, outside the classroom, yet is very much still a form or learning. And of course to have so many ex-students asking to be added as friends on Facebook was an added bonus!

I have no doubt that learning is continuous and the PLE is more a set of tools to support this learning. I am glad to have been given this opportunity to be exposed to the various tools and approaches and am no longer phobic signing up for a new tool or software application. I will definitely continue developing and learning even though this course is coming to an end.

Here's some of the software in my PLE so far:
Word processing : Microsoft Office Tools
Email: Intranet and internet service providers, Gmail, Yahoo
Diary/Blog: Blogger
Social Networking sites: Facebook, Twitter
Photo sharing: Flickr
Web browser: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox
Bookmark sharing service: Delicious.com
Podcast: Solidcasts.com + Audacity
Search engines: Google, Yahoo
and of course (ideally) to tie it all together: RSS, Google Reader

RSS and Aggregation

I am enjoying the New Literacy course more and more by the week!
I was pleasantly surprised that we were asked to join Facebook (in week 9) and use the RSS feeds (in week 10) when I had already done both from week 3 of this New Literacy course without realising I would be needing them later in the course. The problem of having gone ahead too early was having to now look back at week 3 or so and try to unscramble forgotten passwords and logins in Facebook, Google Reader, etc.

Posting my Facebook link

I was very excited to quickly post my Facebook link onto the Moodle forum when this week's assignment was posted. However, it took me a very long time as I was not able to find my own Facebook address, for some strange reason!
Anyway, after some sweating it out, I finally got the correct link, and in the process, I guess I learnt a thing or two more about Facebook and its applications. So there is always a silver lining to every cloud!

This is my Facebook link:
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mabel_Tan/649896251

Twitter lingo

Now I am officially a Twitterer by joining the Twitterverse. I will mind my mannners when I tweet; I will try not to mistweet, and not overdo twittering or become a Twitterrhea!

Twitter

I've just signed up an account with twitter/mabel0 (0 as in zero) !

The Flood

There was a burst pipe in the Lab one floor up from my office over the weekend, and by the time it was discovered, my office was flooded with about 3 inches of water! I am so thankful that my CPU could still work after some kind soul helped use a hair dryer to blow dry the wet parts otherwise...