Students Building their Personal Learning Networks

21st century learning is all about teachers and students being connected people and resources around the world. 

This is often discussed in teacher education classes but how often is it really experienced?  Do students' assignments include challenges that encourage them to find and contact practicing teachers or subject experts as part of the learning process?

Unfortunately, the answer is usually "No."

We teach the required Intro to Technology course for preservice teachers at the University of Northern Iowa.  This course, Educational Technology and Design, is designed to engage the students in learning about learning with the support of technology.

We introduce the concept of Personal Learning Networks (PLN) to our students and challenge them to find and connect with other educators, authors, and experts around the world. We have them draw a map of their PLN at the beginning of the semester and then a post-map at the end where they depict how their PLN has grown and reflect on the process. 

Here is a link to the assignment that we use. 

Building Our PLN through Twitter

Last week I was introducing this assignment to my students. We were discussing why it is useful to be connected to other educators as well as how we might do that.  I pointed out that if we wanted to connect with 2nd grade teachers, we could just search on the #2ndchat hashtag on Twitter and we would have a collection of tweets for those teachers.  We could use the same process to connect with 4th grade teachers (#4thchat) or 8th grade teachers (#8thchat).  (There are hundreds of other educational hashtags - you can find them here.)

Anyway - I suggested that we do a search on #2ndchat to find some 2nd grade teachers. We found scores of tweets from the primary grade teachers. Most of them were sharing
their strategies, experiences and fears about school starting. We scrolled through and found a posting with some interesting photos of a teacher's classroom (See tweet image above.)

I suggested that we send a tweet to this teacher. Many of my students (freshman to senior undergrads) said thought that making such a connection was a little creepy. I pointed out that the reason that teachers post things on Twitter is so that others can benefit from them and these teachers would be interested in talking with other teachers.

While in class I sent a tweet to this teacher, Hannah Hartman, to begin a conversation.

This kicked off an interesting conversation with Hannah Hartman from San Francisco that lasted over the Labor Day weekend. We even had another 2nd grade teacher, Shawn Reed, from Vallejo, California get into the discussion. Here are the tweets:

The day before I was going to meet with my students again, I asked @teacherhartman if she would be interested in Skyping with my students for 5 minutes on Wednesday. Hannah was excited about the opportunity and we decided to Skype at 8 AM (her time) and 10 AM (our time).

Unfortunately, some things came up with her 2nd grade students so we had to cancel the session but we plan to connect our classes in the near future.

Here are the classes that are engaged in this process (photos posted with permission):

Twitter IS a great way to build your Professional/Personal Learning Network. Find some interesting tweets and send a tweet directly to their authors . . . you will be glad that you did.

How have you been building your PLN?

Share your experiences with building your PLN in the comments section.

Using Social Media to Enhance Your Professional/Personal Development

What a GREAT webinar we held today!!!

This was our opportunity to contribute to the  University of Northern Iowa Hot Topics in Education webinar series. Robin Galloway and I are gave this webinar on May 26, 2011 from 3:30 - 4:30.

Here's the Link to the actual hour-long webinar that you will be able to watch through Adobe Connect (You don't need Adobe Connect to watch this, however):
 
Using Social Media to Enhance Your Personal/Professional Development 

This webinar was our opportunity to explore how today's professionals need to take responsibility for their professional development. We introduced a variety of ways that people can facilitate their own professional/personal development by getting involved in educational learning communities. Some existing online communities were cited and then we shared some tools they can use to create/enhance their own personal learning networks.

Here are some of the resources:

Using Social Media to Enhance Your Personal/Professional Development View more presentations from Leigh Zeitz

Distributed-Learning Communities as a Model for Educating Teachers (Dede) 

Online Education Communities
Classroom 2.0 - An active education community with over 56,000 members.
1:1 Laptop Schools - An education community dedicated to connecting and inspiring educators in 1:1 schools.

Twitter
Twitter for Teachers - Terrific intro video to show how teachers can use Twitter.
Twibes - Search Twitter Groups that fit your interest.
Listorius - Lists of twitter-ers who are sorted by areas of interest. Great place to find people to follow.
How to Use Twitter to Grow Your PLN | Edutopia  - Lists of educationally focused twitter chats.
#edchat   .    #edchat website - An active Twitter chat list.
Tweetchat - This site helps you get involved in Twitter chats.

Blogging
Cited blogs:
Dr. Z Reflects - Blogging for understanding about ed tech, learning and life (Leigh Zeitz)
Cool Cat Teacher - Vicki Davis shares her life and ideas about teaching and learning.
2 Cents - David Warlick pontificates about social media, education and learning.
Angela Maiers - Angela shares her ideas and experiences about working with teachers and students.
Blogging Resources - Resource page on Dr. Z's ActiveWeb20 wiki.

Social Bookmarking
Diigo - Bookmark, share, highlight and notate your favorite places on the web
Delicious - Another bookmarking site.
Social Bookmarking in Plain English - Explained in simple terms.
Social Bookmarking Resources - Resource page on Dr. Z's ActiveWeb20 wiki.

Virtual Events
TED Talks - Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.
Hot Topics in Education: Professional Development Webinars -
K-12 Online Conference - Online conference where presenters submit 20 minute presentations that can be watched anytime. This site has 5 years of videos.
Flat Classroom Conference - Website for the Flat Classroom Conference in Beijing this past February.

Organizing Your PLN
iGoogle in Plain English - 50 second intro to iGoogle
RSS in Plain English - Real Simple Syndication explained in simple terms.
PLN Resources - Resource page on Dr. Z's ActiveWeb20 wiki.

The webinar was attended by a number of teacher, students and life coaches from multiple states.
Please keep in touch with Robin and myself:

• Robin Galloway, galloway@uni.edu Twitter: rgalloway  www.uni.edu/galloway
• Leigh Zeitz, zeitz@uni.edu  Twitter: zeitz   drzreflects.com

What additional sources to you suggest? Add them to our learning community through the comment section below.

Z

Using Social Media to Create Your PLN at ISTE 2010 (Updated)

Here is a link to the CoverItLive backchannel discussion that we had in our ISTE Workshop. It will take you to Lois Lindell's blog.

We had an interesting workshop. 10 people attended. There were 3 IT people who were there to learn more about what their teachers were interested in doing.  I loved their perspectives. They said that their students and teachers were involved in social media and they wanted to learn more about the topic so that they could make more informed decisions.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about strategies for IT personnel and teachers to "Play Well Together." I will cover my ideas and observations in a later posting.

Anywho, Our workshop covered a great deal of topics. We began with an introduction into Personal Learning Networks and then reviewed a number of tools to use for developing their PLNs. Here is the wiki for our presentation.


DIIGO: We began with introducing Diigo. Most of the attendees had background in Delicious.com, but we wanted them to learn about the additional features that are offered in Diigo.  We had them download toolbars and then go on a Tagging Spree. They enjoyed how they could bookmark a site, tag it and write a description. It got really exciting to see the additional things we could do with Diigo. We could:

• Twitter the posting;
• Add it to a list (which could then be rearranged, shared and used as an RSS feed); and
• Sent to a group.

What's REALLY exciting is how the list can be viewed in a live webslide show.

RSS: We did something new here. We introduced RSS feed using Diigo and then explained what it did. This is the opposite of what we usually do, but I think that it worked.

iGoogle: We used iGoogle as the RSS Organizer (We decided to use the term, Organizer, instead of Aggregator.) Began with some videos of interviewed quotes from some of my students about how they see PLNs changing the way that their students do research.

Lois shared how to she uses Diigo to follow the journal research on specific topics. I love her process and she has some useful ideas about how to organize your search into an RSS feed that you can flod into  your iGoogle Page.

Finally, Lois and I tried something new which worked quite well.  We decided to "shut up" about half way through. We suggested that the participants should find things that were interesting to them and then let them work on their own. It went quite well, but we felt like third wheels.  I guess that is just part of the process of facilitating student-centered learning.

Using Social Media to Create Your PLN at ISTE 2010

View more presentations from zeitz.

What have you found to be a useful form of Social Media to support your PLN?

Cover It Live discussion for Dr. Z's "Creating a PLN" presentation at WEMTA

Begin by visiting our Presentation Wiki. It is filled with links for PLNs.

Here is a link to the CoverItLive online conversation that we will have during our presentation Using Web 2.0 Tools to Create Your PLN.

Below is the session window for the discussion that will be held during Dr. Z's presentation. You just need to click on the circle in the center of the window and it should open a window where you can enter your name and then enter your comments.

Begin by saying "Hello" to everyone and your city of origin.
Good luck. If you have any problems, turn to your neighbor. Together you can figure it out.

Z

P.S. The presentation will begin at 10:15 but the discussion will officially begin at 10:00 AM

TWITTER FEEDS: We have enabled this discussion to capture Twitter feeds with the HashTags:
#wemta
#wemtapln

As you may know, wemta are the initials for this conference "Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association". Include either of these in your twitter postings and they should appear here.

Back Channel for "Using Web 2.0 Tools to Create Your Own PLN" for ITEC

Today we will hold a workshop on creating your own PLNs. Lois Lindell (my co-presenter) and I thought that it would be an interesting experience to have a backchannel running during the workshop. This could be a place where the learners could share links to gadgets or widgets or other interesting information resources. It would also be a good place for questions and ideas to be shared.




The CoverItLive back channel (chat room) will be live between 3:00 and 5:30 CDT on Sunday, October 11.   Join us if even if you aren't in the workshop.  Maybe you can share some good resources for our PLNs.