Project: What My PLN Means To Me

Sep 232009
 

Next week Thursday I’m giving a presentation at a teaching & learning conference. The theme of my talk is “You are not alone”. And I’d love your help in explaining the use of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) for an educator – whether you’re a teacher, librarian, manager or educational technologist.

This is the first year we’re combining our annual e-learning conference eFest with the recently established teaching & learning conference. One of the themes is the changing role of the teacher in the 21st century and us ed techies are eager to show that e-learning is all about teaching & learning, just with technology & access to the web. Of course this can be daunting, overwhelming, scary, uncomfortable, risky…. So we want to let educators new to these exciting possibilities, know that they’re not alone. That others have gone before them and are willing to help. Besides introducing the audience to various existing communities of practice out there (like Classroom2.0), I also want to introduce the Personal Learning Network concept to them.

Now I was going to introduce the PLN concept with the classic tweet-out (“Please say hi to my audience…”) and I’ll probably still do this. However, I’d like them to hear a little more from you than 140 characters. So inspired by Alan Levine’s Amazing Stories of Openness, but on a much smaller scale, this is an advanced tweet-out from me.

I’m asking you to answer the question: “What does my PLN mean to me?” and share your thoughts in a short video/animation/slidecast, about 2-3 minutes. If you work in education, I’d love to hear from you – teachers, librarians, educational technologists and managers. Feel free to answer as you will. However if you get stuck, here are some suggestions to include:

  • Who you are, where you are & what you do
  • How your PLN has affected your own learning?
  • How your PLN has affected your practice?
  • Something really neat you learned through your PLN recently
  • Which tools you use in your PLN?
  • How you use technology in your teaching or educational practice
  • How you’re adapting your teaching or practice for the 21st century?
  • Your most ‘fruitful’ connection made through your PLN
  • Any words of encouragement for educators new to this 21st century, ‘techie’ way of teaching & learning

After you’ve posted your video/animation/slidecast somewhere on the web, please also embed it on the What My PLN Means – wiki here. And send me (@catspyjamasnz) a tweet to let me know – include the hashtag #mypln. That way I can thank you. Hopefully this project will go beyond my presentation, and provide us all with some additional evidence of the usefulness of a PLN for an educator.

Thanks for your help, PLN!

Update: only fair that I go first. Here’s my video about what my PLN means to me.

The PLE as a subset of the PLN

Aug 252009
 

At the end of last year, Alec Couros led an interesting Twitter conversation about the definition of a PLN. Or a PLE. Are they interchangeable?

I was pulled into the conversation via @bookjewel, as she re-plurked Alec’s questions on Plurk. Somehow her question crystallized my thinking, and rather than responding in 140 characters, I quickly fired up PowerPoint and used its SmartArt (I’m a big fan) to create a visualization of the relationship I see between the PLE and the PLN. Alec then kindly included my graphic in his blog post. And as of this posting, it had been viewed 742 times, which makes it my most shared artefact on the web by quite a stretch. As I’ve never blogged it (it’s only ever existed on Flickr) I thought I would post it here, to re-start my own thinking about PLNs where it left off, in December 2008.

PLE as subset of PLN

I’ve split up the technological connections (in the PLE) from the inter-personal connections (in the PLN). I think of the PLE, the environment, as the ‘hardware’ of the PLN. The PLE can exist as interrelated links, feeds and profiles on a myriad of sites, but it is nothing without the encompassing PLN of the person, their personal connections with others and their interchange of ideas to make meaning of it.

Those were my initial thoughts back then. I’m hoping to do more work on PLNs soon, by running a pilot project implementing PLNs as a staff development tool for teachers.

Citing & Archiving #opened09 Tweets

Aug 182009
 

The leading thinkers on Open Education gathered in Vancouver last week for the OpenEd09 conference.  It was a sight & sound to behold – an open storm. Ustreams, Flickr pics and a Twitter avalanche, meant many of us around the world felt part of the event, as virtual attendees. (I got up at 4am in New Zealand on Saturday, to watch the Friday keynote at 9am Vancouver time.)

Social media are such an extension of conferences and events. Pre-social media we used to hear from the 15-20 selected speakers at a conference. And probably about the bunions of the man you were unfortunate enough to sit down next to at lunch and were unable to ditch. Now we can hear from everyone at the conference, and select those we want to hear more from. For 6 days, the #opened09 column in my Tweetdeck dispensed precious ideas & information. I began following new people, feverishly bookmarking urls and favouriting tweets for follow-up.

my #opened09 fav tweets in Tweetdeck

my #opened09 fav tweets in Tweetdeck

And that’s where I hit a snag – the tweets.

1. My favourite tweets don’t make much sense without the context of the other tweets. And unfortunately, the Twitter search is ephemeral and will not let you retrieve those later. It’ll let you set extensive date parameters, but these don’t give you the desired results.  This was a harsh lesson from  the EDUCAUSE Australasia conference in Perth this year, which was one of the first well-tweeted events I attended. We lost a lot of witty and valuable tweets…

2. And a more academic problem -  some #opened09 tweets are such gems, I’ll likely want to quote and re-quote them. How do I give credit where credit is due and correctly reference a tweet?

But then I came across Gunther Eysenbach How to cite twitter, how to cite tweets, how to archive tweets which solves both problems. In it he gives a detailed how-to of the WebCite service which not only gives you the correct reference for a website, but perhaps more importantly, also creates a permanent archive for that site. And it works for tweets too.

So I can reference and archive Scott Leslie’s individual tweet like this:

A favourite opened09 tweet by Scott Leslie

A favourite opened09 tweet by Scott Leslie

Leslie, Scott. Twitter / Scott Leslie: are you supposed to get ch… . 2009-08-18. URL:http://twitter.com/sleslie/statuses/3310928225. Accessed: 2009-08-18. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5j7I0nnKZ)

or the entire Twitter stream for the #opened09 hashtag like this:

[Multiple Authors]. #opened09 – Twitter Search. . 2009-08-18. URL:http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23opened09. Accessed: 2009-08-18. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5j79icRhc)

These archived tweets are now static at WebCite so they can be referred to and retrieved. Of course, that was 2 hours ago. The #opened09-ers go on. Even as I’ve been writing this post, the Twitter search tab is showing 7 new results ‘since you started searching’…

7 Habits of Highly Effective Online Discussion Participants

Aug 252008
 

I’m just starting up a new session of my Online Facilitation course and came across this resource I created over a year ago. Thought I’d share it with you all.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Online Discussion Participants

1. Use the subject line
2. Quote the other participants
3. Check in (nearly) every day
4. Use highlighting & lists for easy reading
5. Use links
6. Use Right Mouse Click
7. Post in the right place

Picture by Flickr user DailyPic

1. Use the subject line
Be descriptive in your subject line. It should be an accurate summary of your post. If you are replying to someone else’s post, also adjust the subject line. “Re: Topic 1” tells others nothing new, but “Re: Topic 1 / My thought” does.

2. Quote the other participants
Quote the particular phrase or part of the post that you are responding to by saying for example: John posted: “Bla-di-blah” and I agree with him because…
By saying only “I agree with John”, you will make the other participants browse through 50 of John’s posts to find out what you are agreeing with.

3. Check in (nearly) every day
It is a good habit to check into the online discussion on a regular basis, particularly if a discussion is only designed to run for a couple of days. For instance, at the beginning and end of a working day, 15 minutes each time. This will help you keep up with what’s happening online. Log in only once a week and you may end up with a MMM (Multiple Message Mountain).

4. Use highlighting & lists for easy reading
You’ve probably experienced that reading from a screen is more tiring and difficult than reading from paper. Spare yourself and your fellow participants the headache, and highlight key phrases & keywords by making them bold. If you are making a number of points, then order them in a list. This will make it easier for others to scan your messages.

5. Use links
You will undoubtedly run across a web page, blog post or article that you want to share with others. Avoid copying and pasting entire sections into your post. Quite apart from the copyright issues, it seems unfair to add to your fellow participants reading load. Instead quote or paraphrase the pertinent parts, relate why you think it is significant or useful and include a link to the original resource.

6. Use Right Mouse Click
If someone has included a link in their post, click on the link with your right mouse button and select the option Open Link in New Window. This will open the link in a new browser window and give you continued access to the discussion forum in the existing window. In newer internet browsers, you can choose to Open Link in New Tab.

7. Post in the right place
Make sure that the forum or discussion thread you are posting to, is the correct place for your post. If it is a social enquiry, it should go in the Social Forum, if it is a request for help, the Help Forum. If it is a reply but the messages have gone a bit off-topic, you may want to start a new topic.

Trans-Tasman Tokbox

Feb 252008
 

JoMcLeay just blogged about our Trans-Tasman collaboration this evening. Much happier experience for the Aussies than for Amanda S and myself on the Kiwi side. By Twitter invitation from Sue Tap aka sujokat, we played with Tokbox, a free online videoconferencing system, which doesn’t require an account for those invited, just gives you a url to share. Should be easy-peasy.

Unfortunately it kept echoing, even with echo regulation on, sometimes hearing yourself back a minute and a half later. And the others’ volumes kept alternating between crystal clear and deathly whispers. Predictably bad when people were talking at the same time. We concurred that Tokbox could really use a chat function, to exchange advice about improving settings when sound is off. Now we were polluting the twitter-stream (sorry tweets). As the Aussies were chatting happily, Amanda and I left early.

Simon B said”different – random strangers on a video call”. To me being on Tokbox tonight was reminiscent of when you were 11 and your parents took you to an acquaintance’s house on a Saturday evening. You’d be introduced to their children and expected to just get on with it. Like then, there were some initial moments of just staring at each other. Then a little bit of shy laughter, followed by more staring. But once you discovered your shared interest (Lego back then, now Ed Tech – still playing with toys) the ice was broken and you felt totally comfortable with the others, to the point that you were happy to make a fool of yourself.

Lo-tech note for high-tech communication

Very lo-tech communication

I’d be up for trying out some more tools across the Tasman. Tools Tuesday anyone?

How it feels to be a Twitku Champ

Feb 232008
 

Only just found out (start of the academic year down under and swamped with course requests & staff support, I’ve been blocking out blogosphere and the twitterverse) but absolutely thrilled to be named Twitku champ. Twitku is one of my favourite Twitter projects and aching to show it to our teachers as I think it could be a neat in-class project for our ESOL students.

All that is a long-winded way of saying:

thanx/@twitku/575 xj

Sensible Stalking

Jan 272008
 

Peter Rock questions Twitter’s worth as a tool and Alec Couros invited us to chip in. So here’s my 2c.

Twitter is what you make it through sensible stalking. Who you are following and who is following you is critical to the quality of your Twitter experience.

Choose people who are exploring your field of interest (Wenger’s domain?) and pertinent thoughts, tools & technologies will come flying at you at the speed of light. You’ll make new contacts through them and hear just-in-time when events (webcasts, live conferences, or f2f conferences) are happening. It’s even possible to attend F2F conferences vicariously, as the edutwitterers discovered with this weekend’s Educon2.0. Additionally your followers are an informed peer group that can provide insightful answers to your questions.

But stalk sensibly, or end up reading a lot of “what i’m having for breakfast” tweets.

To find out who is tweeting about your interests, use a Twitter search engine like Terraminds.

Tools/Sites/Extensions I use

Jan 202008
 

A little late but I decided to join the TechCrunch exercise.

This is a list of tools, sites and extensions I currently use two or more times per week. And next year around this time (and if I remember) I’ll post another list and compare the two. It should make an interesting experiment.

The network is real or what Will Richardson is to me

Jan 152008
 

What Will Richardson is to me:

  • 3 Months ago – the author of a book I’ve read many times and a blog that I follow weekly. So disappointed I didn’t get to meet him in person when he was in New Zealand in 2006. Will never get that chance again.
  • 1 Month ago (post-Twitter) – a fellow Twitterer whose daily tweets on ed tech are always interesting. I now also know what his kids are up to.
  • Today – someone I’ve collaborated with on a wiki.

Tomorrow Will is presenting to a large group of teachers and wants them to “walk away understanding the power of connections that can reach far beyond the classroom.” To this end he has asked his network to chip in and leave their best tip on a wiki. Read about it on Weblogg-ed and leave your bit.

The Really Really Short YackPack Quest

Jan 082008
 
  • 17.36 – Added a YackPack to my PBwiki sidebar a while back, but doesn’t seem to be working as it should. Any suggestions, fellow work group members?
  • 17.38 – Oh wait, just saw that I can click to talk, but can also click to go to a YackPack WalkieTalkie web channelexternal link page that was ‘automagically’ created.
  • 17.39 – Wonder who’s online to trial this. Ah, J. in Canada is on Skype…
  • 17.44 – J. and I yacking away on the Walkie Talkie page. Bit of an echo on her side, she says my sound is clear. Little number in right bottom corner let’s you know how many people are viewing the YackPack button and could be potential yackers. Works like a WalkieTalkie which I used to love as a kid.
  • 17.46 – J. and I now also yacking away on my PBWiki Sidebar. This stuff is too easy!!!

PBwikiexternal link offers YackPack as free plug-in, no messing around with code, just click the Insert Plugin button when you Edit page. Great for working together on a wiki. You can see when your collaborators are online and yack with them. I have added a Recent visitors plug-in as well, so I can see not only how many but who’s online.

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