Personal Learning Network: Defined

Prior to the start of this class, I had heard the term PLN before, but only had a vague notion of what it meant. I understood the idea of grouping all your resources together for convenient monitoring and access, but hadn't taken the time to do it, or so I thought.

It turns out that my iGoogle page was already the first step. I had set one up basically to monitor my Gmail account, since it is not one I use for anything except on-line subscriptions, including Facebook. I wanted a shortcut for seeing if there was any "action" on my Facebook page without having to log into Facebook every time, then having large amounts of time sucked from my life as I started playing around, procrastinating on all the other mom stuff I needed to be doing. There is also a CNN feed that I liked looking at because I don't get a daily newspaper, and it was a way to see what was happening globally.

For this class, I added the RSS feed function to the page, which I didn't have before, and also added this blog in Blogger. I have to admit that now that I've done this, I can't imagine not having the feeds. Even after this class is done, I can choose to continue following people's progress and ideas, or find new paths to information. I really like Joyce Valenza for practical applications, and I still like David Jake's blog for the philosophical. Meredith Farkas is another person whose perspective I've come to value. At the risk of sounding brown-nosy, I really appreciate the resources that Eileen posts, and I wish her D2L pages were available after the class ends as I end up forwarding them to people who would find them relevant.

While I added Twitter to my RSS feed online, I have to say that I probably won't use this tool regularly. I don't need information 24/7 in 140 character bites, but I do appreciate having access to information when I want it.

Helping people to develop a PLN like mine would be easy in a school environment if the home page were automatically set to iGoogle. Ours, however, is set to the school's homepage, so the iGoogle page would have to be a bookmark, I'm guessing. Any other thoughts on how to do this?

Using Del.icio.us

Even though I had already used Delicious prior to the start of the class, this is the first time I really looked at

some of the options available besides just "bookmarking. I enjoyed looking at the links by others in this class,

both via Delicious and Twitter. I looked at my tag cloud and did try a tag bundle, but my collection isn't really huge yet, so it didn't look much different than the random booksmarks I have already, since most of them have to do with tech integration. I tended to annotate those links I didn't think were self-explanatory in the title, or if I wanted to draw special attention to them in some way because I could see a good purpose for their use. Most of my bookmarks are annotated, because I like to use them myself to see if something will be of interest to me.

I did try to do a tag subscription so I could find users who had similar interests, but the disadvantage I found was that I could only have one tag per subscription. For example, I tried web2.0 and elementary and education, but the subscription only search for web2.0. I also wish you could search by a person's name, rather than by user name--if you don't know what the user name is, there isn't a way to find it, at least that I could see.

The use of Delicious would make sense in a class where you wanted students to share resources amongst themselves,

or, similar to what you did in this class, use a unique tag to group all the bookmarks together. A teacher could share bookmarks with students this way also.

Wanna see some cool web2.0 stuff?

I posted this to Twitter, but I thought this Kansas-based school made good use of a tech grant to jump start the types of projects and tools they showcase on this website: http://www.4teachers.org/

Also, I found a wiki on Classroom 2.0 for Voicethread projects--it actually gave me the idea for the unit project for this class:classroom2dot0 - Voicethread

My plan is to keep editing and adding to this post over the next day or so. Right now, it is late, and I am too tired to do more.

Twitter so far . . .

I am following the people in my class this week, but I also am now following Steven Johnson, who wrote the TIME magazine article on Twitter last month, and Joyce Valenza, because her name keeps popping up every time I find something on Web 2.0 tools. Mo Willems was a good person to follow for entertainment:)

My impressions thus far is that Twitter is a great tool for professional development if you are following the right people. Eileen and Joyce are both good people to follow because their tweets are almost all about resource sharing. I enjoy reading the social commentary of Mo Willems, and my next goal is to look for David Sedaris on Twitter--I'm wondering how much irony can be packed into 140 characters!

I can see where a person would be disappointed if a person you were following suddenly deviated from expectations. For example, if Joyce started telling me about her favorite brand of morning coffee and going into political commentary, I would stop following her because that is not information I would want from her. This situation happened to me with the WhiteHouse Twitterfeed --I followed initially to get updates on upcoming political agenda items, and I seem to be getting more updates on the White House dog and the fact that Obama is throwing out the first pitch for the MLB All-Star game.

We'll see how it goes over the next week . . . .

Don't get all Twitter-pated . . . . .

I've had a Twitter account for a few months as a follower of official WhiteHouse tweetings....I still can't believe they are twittering from the White House . . . . or maybe that's just what they're calling it now:)

This week, however, is the first time I actually posted anything to Twitter. I did notice I a had a few followers of my nothingness, which was pretty entertaining, actually...."Let's follow this chick . . . she hasn't said anything," making me wonder how many other people watched Forrest Gump.

I've learned some things about replies and the confusion that are hashtags. I will have to see what kinds of good stuff I can retweet for class. I liked Amy's Mo Willems tweet, because I like Mo Willems.

Virtual NECC

While it isn't possible to truly replicate an IRL (in real life) experience, the Virtual NECCers group in the NECC Ning tried to point you there. I joined this discussion group which was made up of people and groups who provided links to "live" content via audio, webinars, or archived presentations. It was a helpful way to navigate what was otherwise a fairly overwhelming ning.

Wikispaces!

As a result of reading the Annette Lamb link that Amy posted from the NECC Ning, I joined Wikispaces, which provides free, private wikis to k12 educators. Not only was there a wiki here which followed NECC, but I also found and joined this one: WebTools4u2use - Why WebTools? (Web 2.0), which has a video posted to it by Joyce Valenza:) Small world!

This wiki has archived "stuff" from this year's NECC conference, and many of the names are beginning to look familiar. If you go here, be sure to check out the archived Panel Discussion: "Is There a Place for Media Specialists Who Don't Know Social Media?" - The Future of Education It's offered as audio only or on Elluminate.

Learn Central & Classroom 2.0

Both of these tools (nings) functioned in a similar manner, but the user experience is slightly different in them. Learn Central is newer, and I don't know if it's because of this fact, but when I joined the group Connecting Classrooms, I got a very quick response to my query from Steve Hargadon, the site founder. Connecting Classrooms is focused on exploring the possibilities of Fire & Ice, an online resource which seems to operate much like a vRoom in Elluminate.

In Classroom 2.0, I joined and am following the discussion on iPod Touch Schoolwide Implementation - Classroom 2.0 This discussion is very relevant to our district as our middle school begins to explore Touch use in curriculum this year. I forwarded this on to our middle school LMS and principal in the hopes that they would find it as interesting as I did. Classroom 2.0, as a tool, seemed to be set up as discussions or forums rather than groups, but I didn't have any difficulty finding what I was interested in. I could see both of these tools being valuable to the professional development of any classroom teacher--lots of topics dealt specifically with technology integration and curriculum.

Looking for a new way to make music?

Check out this Youtube video of a music demonstration via ipod touch and iphone. Great way to integrate these into music curriculum and create shared music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjx5_-SPhk0

Diigo vs. Delicious

I don't know that one offers big advantages over the other, but I am not an expert in utilizing these to their full potential, either. I think social bookmarking is useful, but for things that I really want to stay current on, I would use an RSS feed first. I like the ability to expand my access to favorite places outside of one machine. Using social bookmarking tools also teaches students the importance of tagging and developing appropriate keywords. This aspect of bookmarking reminds me of a MARC record: without the right keywords in the record, no one will find the resource!

How a blog might be used in a classroom

First, to use any kind of open blog, it would be necessary to work in a district that allowed access to this type of tool. Most firewalls employed by school districts won't allow their use.

Our district has, however, had some success with Moodle, which allows students to work collaboratively in an "in-school" environment from home. English and social studies, in particular, seem to lend themselves to the types of discussion made easy in a blog. A blog could also be useful for staff team planning, particularly in situations where there is not a common prep time to allow for it face-to-face. A wiki could be useful here, as well.

Some blogs I like . . . . .

Part of the requirement for my class is that I find and subscribe to two other blogs that are of personal interest. So, being a good product of the Google generation, I added two to this page over on the left.

The first one I picked off the "Top 50 Librarian Blogs"--I liked what the author, Meredith Farkas, had to say. Her topics were relevant, and the personal anecdotes were interesting. The blog was also well-written, which, if you are going to be a professional book geek, should count for something.

The second blog I added to my list was one by David Jakes, whom I've seen at WEMTA and with whom I've been very impressed. He always has tons of technology stuff on his site, and since he works with educators, he knows the stuff that will be useful to most teachers. I also like his philosophical posts--they tend to generate discussion on his site.

Wow, two posts in one day--I'm not sure if that makes me dedicated or just a sad little person.

Thoughts on Technology for Collaboration and Learning

Even though it is 7:15 a.m., and the only thoughts I have right now are of the caffeinated variety, I've set some goals for what I want to do in my current (and last) library media grad class.

First, the obvious--pass.

Second, I'd like to get a better understanding of how some tools, like this blog, can be used to help younger students find greater academic achievement and engagement. It's a no-brainer to figure out why middle school/high school students are attracted to social networking tools. Texting is the modern version of note-passing. However, elementary students lack keyboarding skills, and many of the tools used by older students may not be appropriate to the learning goals of elementary-aged kids.

Finally, I want to continue to explore new tools and new thoughts on how to best integrate all these cool options into student learning. Because learning is still the goal. I think.