# Introducing Personal Teaching Environment for Nontraditional Teaching Methods
## 3 Personal Teaching Environment  
In this section and its subsections, we present the findings of research question 1 as follows: First, we define the concept of PTE. Second, we illustrate its framework. Third, we describe PTE components.  
Personal Teaching Environment (PTE) is a concept regarding the scenario on which teachers teach in a technological personalized environment. PTEs facilitate teachers' reach to students' Personal Learning Environments (PLEs), making it easier to access students' favorite tools and data sources, observe students learning progress, and give immediate feedback. PTE can be defined as a set of tools, connections, activities, and data sources that each teacher regularly uses in their teaching [19]. The teacher has complete control over the tools and content of owned PTE, which is not limited to a certain course or educational institution and can expand and develop throughout the course of the teacher's profession.  
Besides allowing teachers to connect to students' PLEs, it makes the teacher communicate with other teachers and access other data sources in order to achieve different educational objectives. We cannot say that PTE is a tool or platform, but rather a concept to organize various tools that serve educational purposes. The PTE is unique for each teacher, and it continuously changes according to the teacher's needs and experiences. Each teacher chooses their preferred tools and connects them to collect, create, organize, process, share information with students and peers, and manage their knowledge. The cumulative effect of the tools, information, connections, data sources, and the knowledge created is what creates the PTE.  
Figure 3 gives an overview of the proposed framework of the PTE and how it could work. As shown, a PTE includes: (i) a set of tools that a teacher can utilize or design based on his/her individual needs; (ii) connections and activities that each teacher can use to teach, connect, ask, share, or interact with other people; (iii) data sources that can be used in material preparation, monitoring, or enhancing professional knowledge and skills; and (iv) teaching methods that can be used to deliver the objectives of the course.  
Tools are linked to connections and activities as well as data sources. In practice, teachers can connect with people or collect data from databases using thousands of online tools. YouTube, for example, can be utilized in a variety of ways, such as a database for educational videos, a tool for developing and releasing educational videos, a source for  
Figure 2: Process of paper search and selection.  
connections, and so on. However, this does not make it a viable PTE since it lacks several capabilities that teachers require to complete their other tasks. There are two major aspects that affect the success of current supporting approaches for teaching. The first one is the information and communication skills teachers need to have to perform their work (e.g., planning, preparing lessons, and assessments). The second one is teachers' abilities to guide students by defining and applying the needed pedagogical criteria and relevant knowledge [20].