I currently use Facebook as my primary means of learning. It is mostly used as a source of science news from sources like Scientific American, Science Alert!, EurekAlert!, etc. LinkedIn I use in a similar way and am a member of several science groups. When I have a specific topic I am curious about Google is always my first stop. It is a very important tool for advancing my understanding. All my instructors at UW Stout are very important in my PLE. They are my primary means of learning about online teaching - a very important aspect of helping me deliver good science instruction to my online students.
The areas I am exploring and need to add to my PLE are mostly related to online teaching. Edutopia is a great resource for information about education, and Merlot II has some really good activities for classes that can help me create solid learning activities focused on higher levels of learning according to Bloom's taxonomy. I became a member of Research Gate after I completed my dissertation and have found some interesting information on there, but I need to spend more time with it. I have also tried blogging, on my own website, DissectingScience.com, and on my friend's website. I really like it, but I need to develop what I want to blog about more. Coming from an academic background my writing often includes a lot of citations, which are time consuming to gather and can limit how much I blog.
The Learning Revolution looks like a great resource for teachers that I should explore more. Twitter has also been repeatedly mentioned in education classes as being a good resource for information, as well as a great tool to use in class to share information. I think I would like to use it to help expand my education on teaching. This will be particularly important after I've completed the online teaching graduate certificate and don't have education professors as easily accessible. It may also be useful for up to date information from scientists on their research. I could have students pick a scientist to follow on Twitter at the beginning of a course and then have them give us updates on what the scientist is doing and how their research is going every few weeks. Making research more real and exciting for my students in Introductory Biology can be critical for helping them really absorb the material. I think that would help bring science to life for them!
I chose to represent my PLE as a Coggle mind map because I think it clearly displays how I use each tool and what sources are used within each tool. Coggle was is fun to use too, and with a new clipping tool, Clipular, it was really easy to put together. I had no idea I could do something like this so easily!
