When you have so much on your plate,
how does one keep up with all that she has to accomplish? This week was one of
those types of weeks for me. We started back to school…whew, do I have to say
anymore when I tell you I’m the tech person at my school? On top of that, my
husband’s family was preparing for the funeral of my in-laws. During the funeral,
my husband was not feeling…shorten version…he’s in the hospital right now.
This is a Social media class right?
Well, this story is related. You see I did something I’ve never done before. I
couldn’t sleep last night and I was extremely emotional. It was late and I
couldn’t call anyone at that hour. I decided to go on Facebook to check on my
friends’ posts. I then decided to write a post about my day and my husband and
my feelings were included. I thought that writing it on there would help me
release some of my emotions so I could go to sleep. It worked. I didn’t wait to
see responses. I went to bed right after that and woke up refreshed to continue
to work on this week’s assignments. It’s a one task at a time for me…this week
and every week.
Here’s the summary that Nick and I
worked on for Part 2 of our final:
A Learning Network for You…Seek, Sense, Share
Annette
Ahuna and Nick Alexander
Here’s
a link to our Prezi
presentation.
PLNs versus SNs
The differences between professional learning networks (PLN)
and Social Networks (SN) are subtle yet important. Social media is defined as “forms of
electronic communication through which users create online communities to share
information, ideas, personal messages and other content” (
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social%20media). Social networks can be further narrowed down
to an online community. Online
communities generally have a higher quality, continuity and degree of commitment
in the relationships between members. (NetSmart, p.162). In short, members of
an online community care about one another.
According to edudemic.com (
http://www.edudemic.com/2012/10/build-personal-learning-network/), personal learning networks
are “systems that help learners take control of and manage their own
learning”. A personal learning network
allows you to organize resources and materials, learn about current trends, as
well as network and be a part of a community of learners. The PLN is a place to learn from community
members and resources as well as the ability to contribute to other people’s
learning.
Using a culinary context, imagine you are making a pizza. Your ingredients, toppings, crust, etc., are
your social media tools. You evaluate
which stores have the best ingredients, and then you buy some ingredients from
Safeway and some from Foodland. Once you
combine the ingredients and cook it up, you have a pizza, which is your
personal learning network which you consume.
A Look at PLNs
After learning what a PLN was, we both realized that we
each have a PLN of our own. We didn’t realize that this is what it was called.
Because of our interests, we naturally look for environments that ignite and
fuel these interests. Nick’s PLN includes forums, Facebook groups, Twitter
feeds as well as online publications that help him to gain an understanding of
new trends and best practices in the audiovisual field. Annette’s PLN includes
teacher blogs, a ning called Elementary Technology Teachers, Twitter feeds and
Facebook groups that involve elementary education or educational technology.
And within both our PLNs, we are both members of the Tech Cadre. The Tech Cadre
is a Department of Education mail group where members are involved in
technology at the school or department that they work at. Since we are both
Technology Coordinators at our schools, we network amongst our peers by sharing
resources, posting questions and answers, and even giving away
equipment/supplies from time to time.
Having a PLN is very important for educators. PLNs allow
them to connect with others in the fields that they are intrinsically
interested in. Within PLNs, they learn, share lessons and ideas, and keep up
with current trends and best practices in education or the area of interest.
Instead of “one size fits all” professional development (PD) classes, educators
can choose the environments they want to learn from and include these places in
their PLNs. Because they choose, they engage themselves in the areas they are
passionate about. Having a choice makes educators want to learn and continue
their learning thus developing themselves as professionals.
Organizing Tools for PLNs
LiveBinders is a free online tool where
users can organize their digital life.
In a LiveBinder, users can create a visual portfolio containing
websites, documents and media. All of
the content can be annotated and placed in different tabs for easy
sorting. Each LiveBinder can be shared
with students, colleagues and administrators, along with the general
public. With LiveBinders, users can also
collaboratively build a binder for things like presentations, teaming and
evaluations.
Organize and Share
with LiveBinders - This resource covers: What The Heck Is LiveBinders, Getting Started,
Navigating, Livebinder It Tool, and Challenges of using LiveBinder. It shares
videos, screenshots and resources such as An Educators Guide to Twitter and
iPads in Schools. Rating 5
Diigo is a social bookmarking tool which
allows users to share internet resources with others. In Diigo, users can tag bookmarks, follow
other people’s bookmarks, and search popular bookmarks. Within Diigo, users can also perform screen
captures and use sticky notes to comment on resources. Diigo is a cross platform software with
Android and iOS apps available.
12 reasons why teachers should use Diigo -
This resource takes readers through 12 different, and effective uses for
Diigo. From tagging to multi-platform
operation to highlighting, this article demonstrates the capabilities of Diigo
in education. Rating: 5
Comparing the Features
|
LiveBinders
|
Diigo
|
Cost
|
Free (premium available)
|
Free (premium available)
|
Content Stored
|
Any
|
Bookmarks, screenshots
|
Sharing
|
Public/Private
|
Public/Private
|
Platforms
|
Windows, Mac, iOS, Android
|
Windows, Mac, iOS, Android
|
Other
|
Blog Integration
|
Blog Integration
|
Collaboration
|
Multi-User
|
Multi-User
|
|
|
|
References
Attwell, G. (2007). Personal Learning
Environments-the future of eLearning? eLearning Papers, 2(1), 1–8.
Gilbert, E., Bakhshi, S., Chang, S., & Terveen,
L. (2013). I need to try this?: a statistical overview of pinterest. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2427–2436). Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2481336
Lieberman, A. (1995) Practices that support teacher development: Transforming conceptions of
professional learning.
Rheingold, H. (2012). Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. MIT
Press. 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142.
