Reflection about “The part 1”

In the first question; the topics that have been most important and interesting for me in this course are: Collaborative learning, self-regulated learning and understanding how teachers learn at work. With these activities I learned and improved better my own Self-regulated learning and deepen how work in collaborative learning with other people? also understanding in a good way the relationship between Self-regulated Learning and Collaborative Learning to obtain in the present and the future my objectives and goals in the learning and my own knowledge.
For me is very important understanding; How teachers learn at work? Is very important this point because the teachers are the most important people in shaping and teaching education for students. Since with this the students will have a better future both in their life and in their professional development. The teachers must have vision, motivation, understanding, practice, reflection, community to achieve these objectives in their students. Sadly many times the teachers don’t have these points and educational systems don’t work adequately.

In the second question; the implementation was good and complete. The articles and lectures were interesting and clearly reflect the ideas and knowledge of the topics covered completely in this subject. But sometimes in the articles some terms were hard to understand, but it serves like new experience and knowledge for me. With the study circles and the exams, we learned and understood in a good way the collaborative learning and self-regulated learning. Also I enjoyed the study circles because is good experience for me, and the teachers explained and deepen the topics adequately.

In the third question; I have good expectations and motivation about this part, because is very interesting and important collaborating with other researchers, teachers, students and universities (Collaborative learning) to obtain and improve my expertise, new knowledge and improving my own knowledge in my studies and other areas in general. Obviously, I think this task will be complicated but we will have to find adequately the best forms and best options to obtain good results.

Affordance

Affordance is an action possibility available in the environment to an individual, independent of the individual’s ability to perceive this possibility (McGrenere and Ho, 2000).
In general, we can say that there are two different ways of defining the term. The original definition, introduced by psychologist James J. Gibson in his “Theory of Affordances” in 1977, describes all possible actions that are physically possible. The second definition is a refinement of the previous one, which defines the term as the possibilities of action that the user is aware of to perform. In 1988, Donald Norman used the term Affordances in his book “The Design of Everyday Things”. According to Norman an affordance is the design aspect of an object which suggests how the object should be used, a visual clue to its function and use.
Basically the affordances are the action possibilities in an environment in relationship to the action abilities of individuals. This can be independent of knowledge, experience, culture and the abilities to perceive and act of individual.
The affordances are as benefits that an object provides a user and it is able to know at the moment of perception. For example, in certain contexts and situations, there are individuals who are able to uncover a bottle cap with a key. This ability developed by certain individuals, is part of the affordances that they perceive that object (the keys). The benefits someone observes in an object may be irrelevant and confusing to another.
Sometimes we need a tool that we have at hand and turn to substitutes. Then we use a knife as a screwdriver or a shoe as a hammer
In the case on the Intro course, I choose as tool that I have used in the course the “WordPress Blog”. I can mention about the use of the Blog as a tool very complete in different aspects and scenarios. This tool has applications which serve to develop and improve my abilities and forms of learning in this course, for example I can interact with other students, teachers and general people around the world to obtain all type of information and knowledge in this field and other fields of knowledge to complete my learning. This tool is very easy to use and programming on the open source blogging software available (blog services). Almost everything is free in this platform. My conclusion is: I will use this tool in the future in different applications and courses. This platform is friendly and support different processes very well.

My Personal Learning Environment (PLE).

Nowadays is difficult to imagine the life without the technology, and particularly the use of Internet has increased to such an extent that for some people being without access to Internet is unimaginable. The Internet has changed completely the habits of many people; with this technology we can obtain a huge amount of information with different contents, applications and systems.

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is an environment that allows implementing formal and informal education using social media. The growing trend of new technologies as new social forms, techniques of interaction and interactivity are the frames that give rise to the PLEs, these allow integrating and providing access to web resources and services.

PLE in Informal Education: This system allows to group information from different sources, makes it possible, first, to collect additional content, and the second, putting together a collection of content own of student interest, and the level of the desired depth, thus allowing also to create evidence of areas of interest and a portfolio of content collected and generated.
PLE in Formal Education: There is also the possibility to study content structures in a more traditional, for example, you can apply a content delivery sequence generated by the educator in a group them into subjects that are delivered to specific groups of students. These students formally incorporated can keep track of their participation and they can be evaluated, also the communication can be made through instances closed. No doubt that the adoptions of PLE at the institutions offer a number of opportunities and benefits to institutions of formal education.

A PLE may be composed of one or more subsystems and may be a desktop or can be composed of one or more web services. Basically the PLE is a set of virtual environments (e.g. Web page, Electronic Portfolio, Blogs, Facebook, Social bookmarking and RSS Feed) although they have different purposes, each connected to the other creating a powerful network of knowledge. Network that allows be very close of the latest local and global events, access new sources of information to manage knowledge and communicate instantly with the social networks.

My conclusion in this topic is very simple; the technology and specially the computer systems are present in all areas of knowledge, and use these technologies as tool in the education is a topic that deserves more attention both in society and as individuals. The PLE is a complete tool, which we can work with a multidisciplinary approach and in different fields with the objective of redefine our methods of teaching and learning. Also is very important to use in correct way the technology through different platforms and systems and the PLE is good option for this.