Personal Learning Environment, second servings.

I went through the Internet and read many of other people’s blog about personal learning environment, and I have to be honest that I am a little overwhelmed about these blogs.

However, I have found a couple of blogs that are quite interesting. For example I went to Michelle Martin’s “Bamboo Project,” in her blog; she identifies personal learning environment as a very important tool of understanding our experiences in the world that we live in regarding our education. According to her, 75 to 80% of on-the-job training is being done informally; and because of the growth and widespread of web tools, and the usage of Internet anyone can develop their own personal learning environment. As for Clive Shepherd, to him personal learning environment is not all about the use of the Internet and other Web tools, but it also includes his family, friends, coworkers, books, magazines and newspapers and things that he learn from school and work.

Different people can have different personal meanings of what personal learning environment can be and what they mean to them. One might say that the use of the Internet to have different access to different educational materials, in itself is what personal learning environment means; others might say that personal learning environment involves different people around us that teaches us and educate us.

Scott Wilson’s article mention that with all the technologies that we have in this era, education from the present time to the future will be presented by the use of the technologies that we have now, and that it will in the near future, replaces the function of a teacher. However, I believe that these will not be in our future at anytime soon, especially many of us young or old still like to have interaction with their teachers, mentors or educators. I don’t think that teachers, mentors and educators will be replaced by PLE, however; teachers, mentors and educators will be using PLE side-by-side to teach anyone and everyone and educate them for what they want to be educated for.

In the field of IMD, it is best for us to learn everything from our educators and then learn from PLE, this way we all benefit from both. After all, if we do not have educators, were are we going to get the information that we needed from? Some one has to start something and write about it.

I remember when I was in the military police and working for Navy criminal investigative services, I was taught about rules and regulations regarding military and civilian laws. However, after class is done, I wanted to learn more about rules and laws that I had to start looking for information somewhere else. Because the instructor is not available all the time because of the military duty that he had to perform, I decided that I need to look for information somewhere else. Aside going to do local police department and reading the Uniform Code of Military Justice, I chose to look for information on the internet on other the military website. So as you can see, personal learning environment doesn’t have to be resources that are available to you materially, but it can also be other materials from other resource. The presence of educators, mentors or teachers still is an important matter, because they are as important as other resources that we have or available to us on the Internet.

The Wales Wide Web.

Hey guys, sorry for the late posting, my Vista crashed totally.

First of all, referring to personal learning environment; in regards to a formal learning… in a life long learning process, one must continually organize and improve their education by sharpening their skills. The adoption and implementation of new technologies in the workplace and educational place, and the increasing use of computers and other devices to enhance education and skills that we have, will continually brings us more closer to the future of global thinking.

In informal learning, we are faced to learn throughout our lives different things so that we can make ourselves better and smarter. The process of learning is an ongoing process in which it is as important for us to keep our minds sharp and open-minded as it is important for us to keep our knife sharp at all-time. It is important for us to invest in informal learning be it may in the corporate world or in our personal life; because learning in an informal way will give us a way to manage our world, and if we invest in our children’s education and learning, it will make their future much more brighter.

All of us have different styles of learning and different intelligences. Because of the different ways that we learn, we all have different qualifications, different outcomes from learning and we all have different competencies. It is suggested for everyone to have general education and skills that can branch to different level of understanding in which later can be use to go to any specialized skill.

The growing use of internet connectivity and the development wireless networks as well as the widespread use of broadband connectivity in every country in the world, will result in the ease access of materials to be used in personal learning environment. Previously people acquired education in schools and technical schools with the use of textbook, with the widespread use of broadband connectivity in a global scale and the affordability of computers and handheld device and portable computers, anyone in the future can access any information to be used in educating themselves.

A recipe for learning web design.

I remember when I was younger I learn a couple of computer programming languages. First one I can think of was Turbo Pascal, and then there was Windows 3.X. Though I was not very knowledgeable, I learned quite a bit.

Then came the era of the Dotcom boom, where the internet was widely spread and there was many languages that was used to make a web browser and many things. I knew not many of them but one of the first thing I learn was Visual Basic, which is a programming language developed from Microsoft to be use in their GUI (Graphical User Interface). And sadly enough, when I learned about this there was many other programming languages that had already been developed and competes with Visual Basic, such as C#, C++, Java, and Java Script.

I am ashamed to say that when I learned about Visual Basic, that I was already behind in many programming languages. However, reading from the article “Recipe for Learning Web Design,” I know that I am not too late in trying to educate my self. What I learn form reading this article was that learning about web design is almost the same as learning how to bake a cake. You learn how to read the recipe first, then you learn how to make the the batter and then how to bake the cake itself. Learning how to read the recipe is like learning how to read programming languages, learning how to make the batter is like learning how to make the web pages it self, and then the applications is the step by step of how you decorate your cake or create your web page or design your web.

I know that it is a bad comparison to do so, but that is how I look at it from my point of view. However, just learning something that doesn’t mean that it is going to stay that way. In the world of culinary arts, there will be other people who want to have something more than just a cake, they might wants some donuts, or other pastries. The same with the world in web design and development. Today some one might want just a regular web page some days later some one else want something different in the world of designing web pages and the development of the web. So, in a short I have to say that it is within my best interest or anyone else’s to learn as much as they can and keep on top of the game, since the world is changing and people’s taste for something different occurs on a daily basis.

My MI from Surfaquarium.com

This I believe describes me to a point. I hope anyone who reads this can encourage me and help me better myself.

Section 1 – Naturalist Strength : 40

Section 2 – Musical Strength : 50

Section 3 – Logical Strength : 50

Section 4 – Existential Strength : 50

Section 5 – Interpersonal Strength : 80

Section 6 – Kinesthetic Strength : 60

Section 7 – Verbal Strength : 80

Section 8 – Intrapersonal Strength: 90

Section 9 – Visual Strength : 70

Web 2.0

It seems only yesterday that I learn about the usage of computers. I remember when I was a child that I used to play computer games on a computer that are low on peripheral specifications, processors that are in Megahertz compared to processors today that are in Gigahertz or even Terrahertz. The use of internet was unfamiliar to me, though at that time the dotcom era was booming, only to find out later that it has busted, time passed while many countries in South East Asia and Northern Asia scatters to try to regain profits from what can be called the Asian Stock Market crash that was caused by the bust of the dotcom era.

It is all because the business of the applying internet and speculations of how to make profit and “pushing or forcing” the customers to use the service on a fee based service contract. Some of these companies had withstand the test of time and the dotcom bust and came out as a better service and leading the world into the era of networking and personal connection to the internet and web.

Tim O’Reilly take the initiative to take on the issue regarding the web as the tool of our future in his debate from what was the origin of the web in web 1.0 and compares it to what most people would and he himself considers as web 2.0. Many of the services that was in web 1.0 help the spur and spread what it is now web 2.0.

What had started the era of the internet and websites in the 90’s known as the dotcom era, now has evolved to a more sophisticated services that has served millions or even perhaps billions of people to use the internet in a way that revolutionized the whole prospect of the internet becoming what it is now known. Back then many internet companies uses many ways to get customers to use their service, such as getting them to sign a contract, pop ups, software installations that includes other softwares that are to some people a hassle to have on their computers. The evolution of the search engine from a fee based service for providers with advertisements that targets the user with pop ups or subscription to their website, to a free service based on the what we now called ad banner, suggestions to where businesses make money from what the customer is more likely to buy.

Of course the article was opinions of Tim O’Reilly and those who agrees with him on what web 2.0 is; however, the best thing is that opinions can be countered by other opinions who think that O’Reilly is simply getting the whole issue to late to where that we are simply more further ahead than web 2.0 or simply that the evolution of the internet is stagnant and that we are still on web 1.0 with a better user interface.

If you see or experience what the internet was back then in the dotcom era and now in what is called web 2.0, the difference are quite amazing. People use to connect to eachother with e-mails and that they use search engine that was more of a broadside search and file sharing was more of a p2p network and a community, compared to today where people share ideas on p2p network as a global community, search engines that shows what others are enjoying instead of forcing advertisement on the user and that “tagging” a file in a host server for others to enjoy. Simply these ideas has revolutionize the way user interface of the internet and the web has grown, from a small minded community that being forced fed with information to a global community where they are free to share informations e.g blogs, pictures, videos and many more.

I learn from this article that technology is ever evolving and changing as humans are to evolution and globalizations. One thing is for sure that the future is going to be filled with many variations of inventions and the changing of time will take us to anoter step of global connectivity. However, will this became the start of us losing our identity as individual and the beginning of us becoming a world citizen?

Please be advise that this blog is opinion based. If anyone think that I am wrong or some one had been offended with my blog, I deeply apoligize for the inconvenience.

 Daniel W A.K.A Jansen.