Group items tagged

A comprehensive listing of social networks used in educational environments. It includes links to topic areas that may be of use to teachers in this course. For example- art.

Glori- This is a really cool page!! I just scrolled through it and looked at some of the links. It is so helpful that people work so hard to create these "compilation sites" for those of us that have such limited time to do hours of surfing on the net to find sites we need to use for school, work, etc. Super cool!! Thanks!

How helpful! I love how these sites are divided into sections of what we are interested in. I will come back to this page several times during the next year. Thanks for finding this!

As a teacher of English to non-natives I was curious to see if there were any existing social networks for language learners. I found this one, called KanTalk, that uses Skype to allow people to connect and practice their English. Users can select a topic and they will be directed to a page with a relevant video clip from YouTube, a few discussion questions, a short reading text and a few vocabulary words. When they are ready to practice speaking, they can choose a partner from a list of registered users and invite them to chat on Skype. If the partner accepts, the two can then use the discussion questions as prompts for a conversation. The users can also record themselves speaking and listen to/comment on other learners recordings. Learners can form and join groups based on interests, culture, exams or any other criteria they choose. KanTalk seems to be a clever way to add a social network framework to an existing technology for educational purposes

Very interesting concept, I love how the platform makes learning connections not only through its portal but by utilizing Skype. I heard today that there are more people that have Skype accounts than gmail accounts. I'm using Skype a lot more in my work lately, how about you?

That is a very cool site an idea! I may have to check that one out because I am moving to Germany soon, maybe our family could benefit from this site to learn German!

This article describes what social networking is and why teachers should use it in schools. It brings up a lot of good questions about how social networking can be used in the classroom. The article also addresses a lot of the issues involved in bringing this type of technology into the classroom.

Check out http://academia.edu/

I am now a member and follower! Looks like a great place to network and find jobs.

Visit this presentation website to learn how educators can use Web 2.0 tools to communicate and collaborate with peers and learn about some of the newest tools teachers are using to support their own professional learning goals. Contains links to a number of PLN resources.

You have to check out this YouTube video of a 7th grade student giving a tour of her personal learning environment. The project was conducted as part of dissertation research implementing the use of networked learning and construction of personal learning environments in a 7th grade life science class.

I am quite humbled by this girl. Wow!

That was a great example of how good students can become at using new tools to construct and organize learning. I am impressed with both the student and the teacher. The teacher must be very dedicated and organized. The student claims that the class is basically paperless. I have never heard of the note taking program she referenced, and I think that can be helpful for me in this masters program! I also have never seen the digital poster application she used. The best part of this video is that it is proof that educational technology is being used well is some classrooms.

This is a really good blog on how to start developing your own PLN. The blog suggests 5 steps to follow to get started and offers some websites to visit. At the end, the blogger provides additional resources if needed.

I really like this blog that you found. The clip has some great inside on PLN. My favorite part of this blog is that the steps to get started on developing a PLN are simple yet detailed enough to make sense and there are several resources listed.

I really like this blog because he talks about how much a personal learning network can help teachers. It gives very simple steps on how to begin a personal learning network and a boat load of resources to use.

This publication is an overview of research on student use of social networking tools by the National School Boards Association in July 2007. While the recommendations to school districts about using social networking were generally positive and generic, two sets of statistics were surprising. The first dealt with the almost universal use of social networking tools by teenage students. 96% of students with internet access have used some form of social networking tool. 21% said they post comments on discussion boards every day. The second set of statistics tried to allay the concerns about student safety while using social networking tools. Only 0.08% of students have reported committing the cardinal sin on online behavior: meeting someone they met online without their parents permission.

This article was useful to me because I have recently started to use Twitter in my own classroom as a way to get information out to other teachers as well as a tool for me to find other resources. The questions that this article presented for me are how many teachers out there use Twitter? I am constantly trying to find data to support my use, just in case the principal gets a nasty email or phone call about it. I have had nothing but positive thoughts from parents on the use of Twitter, but that could change is the wrong person found out. I have actually became a little more at ease since reading this article. I now have a good resource to finding other links on Twitter and this is something that I can show my principal to support the use of Twitter.

Keefe, This article was useful because it demystified the Personal Learning Network (PLN) usefulness for educational purposes. Some of the questions that the article prompted for me was how to utilize Twitter. I especially enjoyed reading about how Twitter was used for professional research networking. I feel that short tweets can lead to ground breaking theories that have not been presented on the internet. I also noted that there were 38 blog posts for this article. Thanks for sharing your insights. Brenda Janot

Andy Carvin is the host of this PBS blog that covers everything from the extent to which teachers are obligated to police the social networks to a student nearly being expelled for administering a facebook study group for his college course. The posts were thought provoking as were some of the responses.

There is a neat video in this blog that explains a PLN's in a really simple way. Very creative and informative.

Abigail- I like this simple, concise definition of a PLN- "the entire collection of people with whom you engage and exchange information, usually online." Also, the description at the end of a video regarding the role of the instructor in this type of learning- "learning architect, modeler, learning concierge (I especially like this one!), network sherpa" etc.

Abigail, I am a big fan of the Keep it Simple concept. I do not think that social learning is complicated, in fact I think it allows students to individuate and respond to questions more easily than in a classroom setting. The instructor is an important facilitator in this process because they can structure the learning to meet the needs of the learner and class. Thanks for sharing your post. Brenda

This article was written by one of co-authors of the article Eric posted Personal Learning Environments: Challenging the dominant design of educational systems. The key points of this article is that a PLE is made up of more than just software. While it has tools - these could be considered more of problem solvers or strategies. Some of the typical problems that these tools solve are discourse monitoring, micropattern spotting, creating and mixing media and indicating presence of other participants in your personal learning network. In comparison with an LMS which can be static this environment actually can function as an ecosystem. While I have already started on my PLE in bubbl.us, this article is making me rethink how I categorized according to tools. Perhaps, I should be thinking more about how the social network is functioning and what tools best fit the culture of the social network. How do members of the network choose to solve their problems or implement their strategies for their own PLEs?

Hmm very interesting Kae! I would love to see you take a stab at categorizing your PLE in this way, and see what you're able to come up with in the analysis. I noticed that Jamey (I think!) categorized her PLE by purpose (social, learning, entertainment, etc.), and this seemed to provide a useful sorting mechanism, as well, especially when you overlay the SNKC color coding on top. You could see where she spent her time contributing, lurking, etc. You might find some good insights using your approach, as well. Good luck!

I just learned two valuable lessons…one write your work outside of the textboxes and save it because your computer may freeze and you'll lose your work…how many times have I told my online students this, yet I did the same mistake?! Secondly, develop a system of finding the same resource over again. Perhaps save it in your favorites or copy and paste the link somewhere… I spent 15 minutes trying to refind my resource. Grrr. Back to the purpose of this post...This video link provided a summary of how teachers can use a PLN such as Twitter to "stream" information for use in their classrooms. You can take what you like or let the information float by knowing that more information always comes down the stream. It provides a simple visual example of using PLN. Much of the information contained in the video has already been stated throughout our Diigo group, but I chose it because I liked how it summarized PLNs. I actually used my newly established Twitter account to find this resource. I typed "Personal Learning Networks" into the search field , scanned through the posts that were in English, found one with "teachers" in the title, which is my interest and reviewed the resource posted. I liked the resource and felt I should share it with my Boise peers. From this point, I can read further into the topic by clicking on related links or I can explore the person's profile that provided the link to get to know the source. However, I chose to take the information and move on in the interest of time. Perfect!

I love this video! I posted an article about Twitter before I watched this video, now I have even more information I can bring back to my principal to support the use of Twitter. Thanks for posting this!

I like the link. I like how descriptive it is, and it gives an interesting introduction. In my last class, (522) I did a web cast presentation on how to use twitter effectively for teaching purposes. This video validates a lot of my research on the use of twitter in education. There are so many cool social media outlets, I wonder what the next "biggest thing" will be? The presenter's English accent threw me at first, but then I envied his brogue.