Comparing PLE's- How are we alike and different?

As I began my journey this summer, I was not sure where I would be at the end. I knew I would learn a lot, but I never knew how much information I would be walking away with. When I first received my Chromebook on the first day of class, I was so confused, I never thought I would get the hang of it. I kept reading through everything asking myself what did you get yourself into? Now being three classes in, I can not believe where I have come. I created a mind map of my learning and my own Personal Learning Environment (PLE) in Coggle. You can see this below:

Looking at my PLE, I realize that I am in a totally different place " digitally" than I was six weeks ago. My four main strands of my PLE are Chromebooks, Google Docs (with Google+ being a huge part of that), Blogging, and Co-workers. The reason that I chose these as my main ideas is that I believe this is where everything I learned this summer was based from.  

• The Chromebook gave me a chance to learn a new technology that was completely tied to Google and Google+. I was forced to learn all about a new site and its developments, such a using hangouts for a screencast! Without this Chromebook, I may not have learned some of the new things that I did this summer.
• Google Docs is a new found experience for me. I had heard of it before, but had never used it. Many teachers at my school use Google Docs, but I had never personally used it. I enjoyed working collaboratively with others through Google Docs. Within this I was able to play around with Google+ (my new social media place). I was able to join communities and groups and keep in touch with classmates through the IT&DML group.
• I had never blogged before. Now, I think I might blog all the time. It is definitely a nice way to release thoughts. I used my blog to reflect, share and comment on work from classmates.
• Lastly, I plan to share all of what I learned with colleagues when school begins. I want to collaborate during professional development and team meetings and bring what I have learned to them.

Before I had created my own PLE, I had browsed my classmates to help give me ideas. Afterwards, I realized that many of our mind maps look very similar. We may have different aspects as our "core" initiatives, but for the most part, the same ideas are placed into our PLE in some way, shape, or form.

I took a look at my PLE in relation to a few of my classmates. When I looked at their main ideas in relation to my main ideas, I felt like I was almost looking in a mirror. Even though each of us broke down our PLE in a different way, the main aspects of our PLE's were very similar. We all had something about the IT&DML program on our PLE. To me this means that we find this program to be an important part of our journey. I also noticed that we all had some kind of social media on our PLE. Whether it was blogging, Google+, twitter, or another site, we all mentioned social media as a way to share our ideas with one another. Another similarity I also saw was the fact that we all wanted to take something from this program and share it with our colleagues. Whether it was discussing at team meetings, department meetings, professional development, or using new technologies within the schools, we all made sure to include the collaboration with our colleagues at our schools to be a big part of our PLE's.
As I saw how similar my PLE was to so many of my classmates, I realized that we are all in a similar place. We are learning new and important ideas that we want to share with each other and colleagues at our school. Although we may differ in the actual outlay of the PLE, in the end, many of the ideas that we have are shared and probably will be throughout the duration of this program. I look forward to all of the new ideas I will learn in the future semesters and I hope to expand my PLE even more.