World history/Common links/PLE

Personal Learning Environment

For this course you may like to create a personal learning journal to store all your course notes and reflections on your learning.

A learning journal can be as simple as a word processed document, or a blog if you are comfortable using that technology. This is not intended to be a technology challenge so use the technology you are comfortable with. If you wish you can use a document and a blog. If you use a blog this can be open (visible to the world) or semi-private (shareable with those you choose). There may be times when you definitely don't want your journal entry to "leak" out to the world and in those cases we recommend that you use a word processed document.

Keeping a word processed learning journal

This is probably the easiest solution unless you are familiar with blogging. Simply create a word processing document, and begin!

Keeping a blog learning journal

You can use any blog which has the capabilities to tag or label posts. Most OERu learners use Wordpress or Blogger. If you would like to use an existing blog you use, we will harvest posts which are tagged or labelled using the course tag. However, you may prefer to set up a new dedicated learning journal blog.

Your blog posts for this course do not have to be visible to the world (unless you want them to be). Here's how you control their visibility in Wordpress and Blogger (look half way down the page).

Hosting your own learning journal blog

If you have your own web hosting you are welcome to set up your own learning journal blog.

Overview of the steps to set up your learning journal blog

Actions	Additional resources
Create a blog account	Create account on Wordpress.com or Create account on Blogger.com
Configure your blog	Customise preferences (including settings for comments) and personalise the layout of your blog: Help resources for Blogger Help resources for Wordpress
Register your blog url	If you are happy to share your learning journal blog with other students register your blog url on the course site by clicking on the user icon () in the site menu and filling out the url for your course blog. Tips: Be sure to submit the url for the published view of your blog post and not the url used for editing. Remember to tag or label your post using the course tag.