wesleyp's blog

It was great to review the PLE’s of fellow classmates. I learned a lot about methods others use, and I got to see a lot of similarities, which was reassuring. I also found it interesting to see the same software used by myself and others who are just getting started in the program, and our classmates who are well over a year into the program. It was evident that we will continue to build our PLE’s over time, but it also shows how important it is to get organized early.

I am a PC user, which limited some of the options I have, but I do hope to be a MAC user in the near future when I can afford one. I was very intrigued by the Spaces and Time Machine tools that Aaron demonstrated. I also may consider Drop Box, which both Frank and Aaron use.

Ian & Rachel both showed how in-depth Google Reader can get, so I want to continue to use that and learn more about sorting my feeds and developing a better organization method within Google Reader.

I liked how Ian utilized YouTube to post his video, and as much as I visit YouTube, I’ve only ever posted a couple videos and they were class projects. I hope to use it more in the future.

I enjoyed seeing both Ian and Rachel use TweetDeck. I have used it in the past, but chose to demonstrate CoTweet as I was hoping none of the classmates had seen it yet.

Google Chrome is a browser that I saw in multiple videos, and I may consider giving it a shot again in the future. I used it when it was first released, and I ended up back at FireFox.

Ian demonstrated StumbleUpon, which I’ve visited, but never created an account. I will definitely look into using that in the future as a resource.

As for final thoughts, I am very happy with my PLE, and while I know it will always be changing and evolving, it is nice to see that I am using a lot of tools that my classmates are using. It is reassuring that my methods are also useful to others, and I hope to continue sharing the tools and resources that I use with others to help them organize their “digital lives” and develop their personal learning environments. I will be checking out some of the tools shared by my classmates in the near future (well, the PC and web-based ones at least).