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Vanessa Vaile

Weaving a Personal Web: Using online technologies to create customized, connected, and ... - 0 views

  • Abstract: This paper explores how personal web technologies (PWTs) can be used by learners and the relationship between PWTs and connectivist learning principles. Descriptions and applications of several technologies including social bookmarking tools, personal publishing platforms, and aggregators are also included. With these tools, individuals can create and manage personal learning environments (PLEs) and personal learning networks (PLNs), which have the potential to become powerful resources for academic, professional, and personal development.
  • This paper explores personal web technologies (PWTs) and their learning applications.
  • Connectivism and the need for continuous learning In today’s world, learning needs extend far beyond the culmination of a training session or degree program. Working adults must continually update their skills and behaviours to conform to the constantly changing demands of the workplace (Lewis & Romiszowski, 1996). In times of rapid change, it is not always prudent or possible to offer formal training for each individual’s every need, and some needs may best be addressed by the individual him/herself. Using freely available personal web technologies, employees can create a personal learning environment (PLE) to manage their own learning resources; whether these are wikis, news feeds, podcasts, or people.
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  • Overview of Personal Web Technologies
  • Visualization of a web-based Personal Learning Environment
  • PWTs allow learners to expand their capacity for knowledge by connecting to external resources (other people, online databases, reference sites, etc.). If individuals can sufficiently develop their ability to find, organize, and manage these connections, their available knowledge does not have to be limited by the confines of their own skulls.
  • To navigate the Internet more efficiently, individuals can assemble a virtual toolbox from an ever-growing list of free, and often open-source, technologies to aid in aggregating, organizing, and publishing information online.
  • Social Bookmarking and Research Tools Social bookmarking and research tools allow users to save web pages, articles, and other media (usually to an online storage location) and organize them in personally meaningful ways.
  • Tools that are geared more towards social bookmarking (e.g., Delicious, Diigo, and Twine) place greater emphasis on features that allow users to easily share their bookmarks with friends, colleagues, or the public
  • Tools that are geared more towards academic research, such as Zotero or Connotea, include bibliographic features, such as citation generators and reference list management.
  • Personal Publishing Tools A variety of free and user-friendly tools are available to publish oneself on the Internet. Iskold (2007) sees the range of personal publishing options as a continuum, ranging from content-focused, formal blog posts to socially-focused, informal messages posted on social networking sites, with micro-blogging falling somewhere in the middle.
  • blogging offer learners the opportunity to explore topics in depth and reflect, while the speed and simplicity of micro-blogging lends itself more towards posing questions and collaborative brainstorming
  • more than online diaries.
  • individualized content management system that publishes, organizes, and archives
  • easy to go beyond basic text and incorporate other media, such as photographs, videos, and audio
  • Micro-blogs,
  • 'follow' other members to receive a stream of their posts
  • allow them to easily "ask and answer questions
  • Aggregators Individuals who follow multiple blogs and/or regularly visit news or media sites may find juggling the disparate streams of information overwhelming.
  • tools filter online information and collect articles, media, and conversations customized to the user's needs
  • Metagators, also called portals or start pages, can aggregate feeds, social networks, and widgets to create a central, personalized location for an individual's Internet usage
  • Two of the most popular metagators are Netvibes and iGoogle
  • Widgets are small, adaptable, programmable, web-based gadgets that can be embedded into a variety of sites or used on mobile phones or desktops
  • Using Personal Web Technologies to Create PLEs and PLNs
  • PWTs can be combined by the individual to make a personal learning environment (PLE) and to create and manage a personal learning network (PLN). Due to the fact that they are user-created, there is no exact definition of a PLE
  • In general, a PLE is the sum of websites and technologies that an individual makes use of to learn. PLEs may range in complexity from a single blog to an inter-connected web of social bookmarking tools, personal publishing platforms, search engines, social networks, aggregators, etc.
  • Users can create an online PLN of colleagues and friends from around the world by joining social networking sites, following and commenting on relevant blogs, sharing resources on a social bookmarking site, or by using a micro-blogging platform.
  • Learning Applications of PWTs Because these are open-source, free, adaptable, and user-friendly, PWTs can be of great value to teachers, trainers, and students. However, there is a catch: PWTs may clash with traditional, linear, teacher-centered instruction
  • critical media and information literacy skills, so that students can effectively navigate the online maze and avoid being fooled by false or misleading information.
  • Five Potential Disadvantages of Using PWTs for Learning Although personal web technologies have the potential to support all types of learning, they also have potential disadvantages, ranging from distractions to security concerns.
  • Connection Addiction.
  • Work Interrupted.
  • Popularity Contests.
  • Echo Chambers.
  • Privacy and Security Concerns.
  • Conclusions When learners adopt personal web technologies, it enables and requires them to discard their roles as passive consumers of information and to take on new roles. To successfully use PWTs, learners must become editors who critically question content and sources, librarians who organize and archive resources, and also creators who add their voice to the online chorus by engaging in discussions, collaborating on projects, and contributing their own ideas and media
  • he true quality and effectiveness of a PLE or PLN depends on the learner him/herself
Vanessa Vaile

Top Topic Trackers (Updated List) - 0 views

  • leading topic-tracking tools on the Web.
  • Feed and/or Email Services
  • These are services that output RSS and/or other formats, such as email notification. We think this type of topic feed tool is the most flexible
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  • particularly when it outputs RSS.
  • Social Filter
  • Destination Services
  • don't output RSS or emails for topic searches.
  • filtering or grouping of the feeds inside an RSS reader
  • People Curated
  • Community Curated
  • Topic-focused blogs (such as ReadWriteWeb!) are great for tracking topics
  • light blogging service
  • easy way for individuals or small groups of people to curate information on a given topic
  • "topic hubs" for bloggers.
  • Aggregators / Portals
  • aggregate, or group, news and other stories around a specific topic
  • Market Intelligence
  • professional brand management services
Vanessa Vaile

How This Course Works | Critical Literacies Online Course Blog - 0 views

    • Vanessa Vaile
       
      critical literacies similar to multiliteracies but not as multi
  • This type of course is called a ‘connectivist’ course and is based on four major types of activity: 1. Aggregate
  • wide variety of things to read, watch or play with
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  • PICK AND CHOOSE content that looks interesting to you and is appropriate for you
  • 2. Remix Once you’ve read or watched or listened to some content, your next step is to keep track of that somewhere. How you do this will be up to you.
  • Here are some suggestions: - create a blog
  • - create an account with del.icio.us and create a new entry for each piece of content you access. You can access del.icio.us at http://del.icio.us
  • take part in a Moodle discussion.
  • - tweet about the item in Twitter. If you have a Twitter account, post something about the content you’ve accessed.
  • - anything else: you can use any other service on the internet – Flickr, Second Life, Yahoo Groups, Facebook, YouTube, anything! use your existing accounts if you want or create a new one especially for this course. The choice is completely yours.
  • 3. Repurpose
  • We don’t want you simply to repeat what other people have said. We want you to create something of your own. This is probably the hardest part of the process.
  • What materials? Why, the materials you have aggregated and remixed online.
  • What thoughts? What understanding? Well – that is the subject of this course. This whole course will be about how to read or watch, understand, and work with the content other people create, and how to create your own new understanding and knowledge out of them.
  • the critical literacies we will describe in this course are the TOOLS you will use to create your own content.
  • 4. Feed Forward
  • you don’t have to share. You can work completely in private, not showing anything to anybody. Sharing is and will always be YOUR CHOICE.
  • Critical Literacies 2010, the course about thinking
  • How this Course Works Critical Literacies is an unusual course. It does not consist of a body of content you are supposed to remember. Rather, the learning in the course results from the activities you undertake, and will be different for each person. In addition, this course is not conducted in a single place or environment. It is distributed across the web.
Vanessa Vaile

The eXtended Web and the Personal Learning Environment « Plearn Blog - 0 views

  • developments in their relation to Personal Learning Environments as several people over the past months have asked me why I think there is a need to develop a Personal Learning Environment at all.
  • Applications and aggregators of information are freely available and people can take their pick of their preferred ones and create their own network
  • easy it is for conglomerates to take over the development of tools and applications
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  • three issues that I find important in this respect.
  • 1. Intelligent data connections are one exciting option for PLE development and networked learning,
  • Recommender systems of information, resources, critical friends and experts could form part of the access options
  • the challenges of an open online networked environment for learning.
  • The reality, however, is different and research is available to show that not all adult learners are able to critically assess what they find online and might prefer to receive guidance
  • difficult it is for anybody to reach and access a deep level of information by using search engines
  • need for critical literacies while learning informally on networks
  • Learning in my view is not synonymous with accessing information, and requires a level of reflection, analysis, perhaps also of problem solving, creativity and interaction
  • 3. Access to technology
  • trends in access and digital divides
  • reasons for their non-participation. Some are related to age and socio-economic group, but some are also related to relevance, confidence and skills set.
  • people least likely to use the Internet are also the least likely to participate in adult education.
  • could PLEs that would provide help with Internet use and might be used on mobile devices be the answer to making the Internet relevant
  • What components would be needed?
  • 1. A personal profiler that would collect and store personal information.
  • 2. An information and resource aggregator to collect information and resources.
  • 3. Editors and publishers enabling people to produce and publish artifacts to aid the learning and interest of others
  • 4. Helper applications that would provide the pedagogical backbone of the PLE and make connections with other internet services to help the learner make sense of information, applications and resources.
  • 5. Services of the learners choice.
  • 6. Recommenders of information and resources.
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    although not specifically stated, this is also about gate keeping and controlling / monitoring information flow
jennifer verschoor

Multiliteracies EVO session :: crowdstatus.com - 0 views

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    Example of Aggregation
Vanessa Vaile

A special report on managing information: Data, data everywhere | The Economist - 3 views

  • the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.
  • also creating a host of new problems
  • the proliferation of data is making them increasingly inaccessible
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  • Scientists and computer engineers have coined a new term for the phenomenon: “big data”.
  • Epistemologically speaking, information is made up of a collection of data and knowledge is made up of different strands of information. But this special report uses “data” and “information” interchangeably because, as it will argue, the two are increasingly difficult to tell apart.
  • business of information management
  • Chief information officers (CIOs)
  • statistician and storyteller/artist
  • many reasons for the information explosion
  • technology
  • digitising lots of information that was previously unavailable
  • access to far more powerful tools
  • many more people who interact with information
  • shift from information scarcity to surfeit has broad effects
  • “Data exhaust”
  • in aggregate the data can also be mined
  • In a world of big data the correlations surface almost by themselves.
  • The way that information is managed touches all areas of life. At the turn of the 20th century new flows of information through channels such as the telegraph and telephone supported mass production. Today the availability of abundant data enables companies to cater to small niche markets anywhere in the world.
Vanessa Vaile

Google News Adds Personalized Story Tracking - 0 views

  • Want to track a hot story being covered by multiple news outlets?
  • story clusters
  • fully customized news tracker.
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  • automatic summary technologies
  • There are a wide variety of ways that news could be served up to people in the future.
  • syndication and subscription approach
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    fully customized news tracker ~ could be used to track key phrases as well as stories as they appear in news
Vanessa Vaile

Digital Office Hours - 0 views

  • Instant messaging (IM) services like AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, or Windows Live Messenger make it possible for you to chat in real-time with friends, colleagues, and students.
  • But do you really want to have all of these different tools open at once? Probably not. In order to cut down on applications or screens that you have open on your desktop, you can use an IM aggregrator.
  • Digsby allows you not only to manage all of your IM streams, but also works as an email manager for web-based mail and as an interface for social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook
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  • Google Talk chatback badges. The badge is a short snippet of HTML that I can plug into any of my course-related websites, and the result is that anyone who visits the website can click on the chatbox to start a conversation with me–(1) whether they have a Google Talk account or not or (2) whether or not they know my IM account name.
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