The document discusses how to create a personal learning environment using emerging technologies to gather, organize, utilize, and present information for professional development. It recommends building a personal learning network on social networks and forums to gather resources from experts, and using tools like RSS feeds, social bookmarking sites, Evernote, and Google Docs to organize resources and notes. The document also provides suggestions for sharing what you've learned through blogging, wikis, and online presentation tools.

1. Creating Your Personal Learning Environment using Emerging Technologies
Monday, November 8, 2010 ILCCO Fall Webinar Series
Brandy Thatcher, Instructional Media Developer (bthatcher@icc.edu) Illinois Central College
Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a system that helps a learner take control of and
manage their own learning.
Personal or Professional Learning Network (PLN) is the group of other individuals that you
share ideas, information and resources related to your profession or a specific topic.
Everyone needs a way to Gather Resources, Organize, Utilize, and Present information for their own
professional development.
Gather Resources – There are great resources available on the web for any profession. In fact there
are so many resources that trying to gather and evaluate all of them is impossible.
PLN – Personal Learning Network – build your own network. Connect with other experts in
your profession. Let them review and filter resources and send you only the best. There are
many technologies to get connected, try several and stick with a few that fit your needs best:
o Twitter – get up to date resources from the experts. Their websites or blogs often
contain a twitter link.
o Social Networks – there are tons of networks that connect professionals.
 Linked-in http://www.linkedin.com/ - professional network, make
connections with others you know and get introduced to other they know and
participate in topic specific groups.
 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ - many education groups have created
fan pages. You can “Like” these pages with your personal account (they do
not see or access your personal profile).
 Ning: http://www.ning.com/ - social networking platform. Several
educational networks are on ning. You can create your own free networks for
education: http://about.ning.com/pearsonsponsorship/.
o Forums – many experts use forums, get many quick responses to your questions.
Blogs – a lot of experts post to their own personal blog. Almost always includes an RSS feed.
o Find other great blogs by looking at the blog roll of expert blogs you currently visit.
Websites – many organizations and companies maintain websites with up to date
information. You can often “follow” them with twitter to get real-time information.
Online/ Virtual Events – there are many free webinars and online conferences happening all
the time.
Organize – Now you have lots of resources coming to you, but having them at your fingertips in an
organized manner is what makes the resources useful. RSS is one of the main keys to organization
Social bookmarking is a method for to organize, store, manage, search and share website urls in an
online account that is connected to your personal username and password.
Delicious - http://www.delicious.com/ - popular choice for social bookmarking. Create an
account, install the Firefox add-on, so you can click a button to add a website, add your own
descriptions/ notes for each url and add tags to organize your urls. You can share any tag by sending
someone to your url http://www.delicious.com/username/tag.
There are many social bookmarking sites: http://www.diigo.com/ - http://www.stumbleupon.com/ -
http://edtags.org/

2. Creating Your Personal Learning Environment using Emerging Technologies
Monday, November 8, 2010 ILCCO Fall Webinar Series
Brandy Thatcher, Instructional Media Developer (bthatcher@icc.edu) Illinois Central College
RSS – (Really Simple Syndication) – You subscribe to these resources and get the information
pushed to you, rather than you physically visiting each url.
iGoogle: www.google.com/ig - a free product of your Google account, a customized or personal
Google search page. I use Google as my home page in my browser, with www.google.com set as
my homepage, I just log in to my google account in the upper right corner and my igoogle page
displays. I customize this page with rss feeds (boxes on the page that connect to my favorite blogs
and sites and pull in the latest headlines and descriptions).
Netvibes: http://www.netvibes.com/ - another personalized start page. You can make each
tab public or private.
Online Note Taking
Evernote: http://www.evernote.com/ - create an account, capture website content, urls, type
notes in word processor, create multiple notebooks. Access it online, with a desktop app,
and/ or mobile phone apps.
Google Docs: free product available through your google account. You can create docs
online with a word processor. Use it to collect resources and notes, share the doc with other
to view or collaborate on.
- What you do with the information is what counts.
Use Twitter and Social Bookmarking to share your best resources.
Blogging – if you are really motivated you could create a blog.
Wiki – set-up a wiki for other colleagues or for your students.
Create and Build – use the resources in combination with all of the free web 2.0
tools to build instructional materials.
Take advantage of tools to make your resources more useful.
o Delicious Firefox add-on gives you a toolbar button that bring up your
bookmarks by tags with a search box in the left panel of your browser.
o Use twitter tools like tweetdeck to stream all of your “tweets” to your
desktop and enable you to post from your desktop.
Present - Share what you’ve learned to help other grow.
Blog – create your own blog to share with others what you’ve learned. o
https://www.blogger.com/, http://wordpress.com/, http://edublogs.org/
Wiki – you can also use your wiki to share your discoveries and resources with
others.
Online Presentation Tools – create online presentations that can be used in your blogs
and wikis. - http://www.authorstream.com/, http://www.slideshare.net/,
http://www.voicethread.com/, http://www.prezi.com/