Personal Learning Environment

  Creating a PLE or personal learning environment involves steps that enable us to look at our current abilities and plan for our future goals and how we will achieve them. Before continuing on through this blog I would encourage anyone unfamiliar or needing a refresher on what a PLE is to take a look at the following link:

https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf

  The first aspect of PLE is of course personal, represented by the P in the acronym. In this blog, we are supposed to envision our self in five to ten years time and compare that to our current situation. As a fourth year student with just over one year remaining in my undergraduate degree, my goal involves being in the working world for a few years by that stage of my life. Once I get my degree I may choose to get my Masters degree in some aspect of business whether it is accounting or something else. After completing that if that is my path I would write my exams to become a designated accountant. Hopefully in five to ten years I will have achieved this goal and have a couple years of experience in public accounting. I also want to know within the next ten years the career path that I will like to follow based on my education and experience. Currently I am still completing my undergraduate and deciding if I want to go for my Masters or follow the more conventional route of becoming a licensed accountant and go through the test for my designation. I am in the co-op program so I am also getting some experience in different aspects of accounting, which will help me choose my career path in the future.

  The L in PLE represents learning, meaning the skills and knowledge required to meet future goals. Accounting is a large area of study and most people specialize in a certain area in order to have a greater depth of knowledge. Through the next few years I will have to continue to study the basics of accounting through formal education, work experience and preparation for the CPA testing. My knowledge of the rules of Canadian businesses as well as tax treatments would be a good place to start expanding my knowledge, and if a certain area peaks my interest, I can follow that path.

  Environment is the third aspect of our PLE. In order to achieve success, I must control my environment to the best of my ability so it can be a useful tool for my growth. An important aspect of one's environment in the business world is the connections that they make with other professionals, superiors, co-workers as well as clients. One of the most important ways of improving my environment is by increasing my network of people that can help develop my skills. This will help me perform better in the work world, but also when studying for the exams to become certified. Another crucial factor of creating an ideal environment is reducing distractions and being able to focus my attention appropriately. This will improve as I discover new ways to deal with distractions and overcome them.

  The final aspect of creating an effective PLE is by changing habits. It is important to create good habits such as being timely and well organized. My superiors at Grant Thornton LLP have told me that I do a great job of budgeting time and getting all my work done on time, which is a product of improving my time management and organizational habits. Equally important is eliminating the bad habits that plague our ability to perform. I have been improving my timeliness by trying not to procrastinate, but I will need to continue to do this to reach my goals. Having a better schedule and forcing myself into some type of routine will help me stop this problem, which is why it is a goal of mine this semester.

  As an illustration of my current PLE environment, I have created a diagram of some of the programs that I use on a regular basis. I created this diagram on Gliffy:

Wassink, A. (CC) 2014

  The above diagram allowed me to categorize the various applications that I use regularly into three unique groups. On the bottom-left are the methods that I use to communicate with peers, friends and anyone else I have a connection with through applications like Twitter, Email and Sakai, etc. The bottom-right shows applications that are used for various tasks that make daily activities easier such as iTunes, Adobe and Calendar, etc. The applications on the top are creative programs that allow me to produce music or word documents and examples of these are GarageBand, Microsoft Office, etc. The Google Docs and Blogger symbols are both attached to the "Connect" and "Create" aspects of the diagram because they both allow me to create and share my own ideas, but also allow interaction by others, making them unique programs.

  The final requirement of this week's session was to create a "Wordle" which is basically a jumble of words that I posted in my last blog illustrated in a creative fashion.

Wassink, A. (CC) 2014

  After adding the words from last week's post, I played around with the layout of the Wordle before deciding on the layout that you see in the above image. I thought that the group of words behind "digital" looked somewhat like a running shoe, which I thought was appropriate as it related to the discussion from last week on creating a digital footprint.