Dissection: What's a PLN?

Have you heard this term - PLN? Personal Learning Network. It's becomming a mainstream word in the field of education. Skip Via, an Instructional Technology professor at the University of Alaska, has createda nice 5 minute video that thoroughly explains the purpose of a PLN, what a PLN is, and he outlines exactly the tools he uses to make his PLN. Watch the video and then scroll down afterwards and I will describe how I make my PLN.



So Skip did a great job of disssecting his PLN and showing us the components. I'll do the same for you here. At the heart of my PLN are 2 aggregating tools for bringing information to me, 3 communication tools for interacting with my colleagues and 3 archiving tools for saving information. They are:

Aggregators

1. Pageflakes. I use this to aggregage RRS feeds for my favourite blogs and news feeds. I set it as my Firefox homepage; therefore, I have one stop shopping of all my news everytime I open up Forefox. It's all there for me and I no longer go out to look for it.(I've written about Pageflakes a few times before.)

2. TweetDeck. It's my Twitter client. I have a dual display computer system and the background of one monitor is full-screen Tweetdeck. I try to follow as many isntructional designers and educators as I can, I also filter out for useful hastags like *edtech and #elearning. The result is that my Tweetdeck is constantly filled with a steady stream of great tidbits of topics that interest me.

Communication

3. My primary email client (Thunderbird). Email is a must.

4. Facebook. Facebook is my secondary email client and a great way to keep tabs on what my colleagues are doing.

5. Meebo. An instant messenger client that aggregates all my instant messenger accounts into a one-stop-shop for MSN, GTalk, YahooMessenger, (even facebook chat), etc. So chatting live with any of my colleagues is easy.

Archiving

6. Delicious social bookmarking. Saves my bookmarks and makes them available anywhere I go (library, friend's house, work, home, iPhone, etc.)

7. Evernote. It's just flat out fantastic for saving anything on the web and for taking notes. All my notes are available to me everywhere including my iPhone.

8. Blogger. I write this blog, eLearning Acupuncture, as a way of archiving my thoughts and at the same time giving back to my PLN.

What does your PLN look like? Share its components with us by writting a comment below.

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How do I learn to teach online?

For some teachers, there are misconceptions about the process of teaching online. Some think teaching an online course is exactly the same as teaching in the classroom. Well, as a practitioner of both types of teaching I can attest that they are significantly different processes. So if you have never had the opportunity to be a student in an online course or have never had a mentor who can teach how to teach online then where do you gain the knowledge and skills?

There are few different answers to this question. You could go to school to learn this material. That’s what I did. However, if you don’t have the time to invest in that route, luckily there are many resources your can read that will help you develop and improve your skills. Today I came across one particularly good one. It is the Online Handbook for the University of Colorado Denver and it is available freely online.

It has four major sections: 1) trends and issues in online learning, 2) examples technology in action in online courses, 3) a brief overview of 25 emerging e-Learning tools that you can use in your teaching, and 4) additional resources for the online teacher.

This document is fantastic. It covers a wide breadth of topics from instructional design, multimedia, Web 2.0 tools, social networking, blogs, twitter, collaborative work online and has a significant amount of material on how to effectively use online discussion in your course.

If you are new or experienced in teaching online, this will be valuable reading. There is something in here for everyone.

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Technology Training Videos for Teachers

Let’s face it, whether you are a teacher, instructional designer, teaching assistant or multimedia developer, the sheer amount of new tools being released on the Internet makes it difficult to stay up to date with what’s new and what can apply best to your specific discipline. So instead of wasting hours randomly searching for new things when you have a spare moment (or clipping Dell coupons), I would suggest you consult regularly with Russell Stannard. He runs a great site called teachertrainingvideos.com. Already he has a multitude of great videos that I have sampled, including videos on topics like:

• JING-Fantastic Screencasting Tool
• Easy podcasting
• Introduction to Moodle
• Make on-line surveys
• Downloading from YouTube
• How to use Blogger
• All about Delicious
• Photoshop basics

All free for you to use. Russell Stannard is a principal lecturer in Multimedia/ICT at the University of Westminster in London England and his academic focus is on English language teaching. He has taken the time to create several videos outlining tools and websites that are specifically useful to English language teaching, such as:

• Amazing 3D dialogue builder
• Best ELT sites 2008
• Best pronunciation Sites
• Great dictation site
• Voicethread presentation tool
• Review of the best ELT podcasts

So overall he provides a fantastic repository of short videos that can help you in your research for useful tools in your teaching related practice. You can keep up to date with Russell’s new material by either subscribing to his email newsletter on his website or following him on twitter.

If you find any of these resources especially useful, let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Twitterfall - letting the web work for you

Why reinvent the wheel? If you need to use the Internet to do research on a particular topic, you can leverage other people’s research efforts using social media tools (i.e. the stuff of Web 2.0). There are several social media tools that can help you. One example is Twitterfall. It’s a free web service that taps into the proverbial ’river of data’ generated by the Twitter data stream and fishes out for you messages that fit a custom search that you create. Ok, so before you jump up and down and say to me that you are anti-Twitter, that you don’t have a Twitter account and that you don’t want anymore so-called ‘tools’ that consume more hours of your day to manage, etc, I would ask you to just continue reading this posting (*grin*). Twitterfall allows you to tap into the Twitter data stream without having a Twitter account. Yup. No Twitter account is needed. So if you are anti-Twitter then you can still use Twitterfall without any problem. So here’s what it does.
Twitterfall displays the latest 'tweets', or message postings, from the millions of Twitter users. So if you are researching the subject of education for example, and you want to see what people are saying right now about it, then you can go to Twitterfall and setup a custom search for the word ‘education’ and watch the results unfold before your eyes.

Try it. Here’s a couple of tips. When you first visit Twitterfall, it will default to displaying recent tweets on the Top 10 recent topic trends on Twitter. So immediately a stream of messages will come down on your screen. If you are not interested in these Top 10 trends, then you can easily configure Twitterfall to stop displaying these tweets by mousing over the ‘All Terms’ phrase at the top if the ‘Trends’ box and un-checking the box beside ‘All Terms’. That will end the flow of messages on the screen. Next configure Twitterfall to display tweets on the subjects that you are researching. On the left hand side of the page, find the ‘Custom’ box. At the bottom of the ‘Custom’ box is a search field with an Add button. Type keywords into the search box that you want to monitor such as ‘education’, ‘edtech’, or ‘technology’ and click the checkboxes beside each. Now ‘tweets’ will be displayed on the screen that follows your custom search. By watching the Twitterfall stream for a few minutes you will undoubtedly find some interesting links, resources and opinions on the subjects you are interested in.

On the Twitterfall website they have a link to a short 4 minute tutorial showing some additional Twitterfall features.

Let us know your impression of Twitterfall by leaving a comment below.

Image credit.

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Web 2.0 can knock your socks off!

I participated in a great online talk yesterday by James Falkofske, Director of Online Learning, St. Cloud Technical College (here's a link to James' blog). His talk was titled: Easy Steps for Expanding Desire2Learn with Web 2.0 Tools. In general, I love talks like this. There is always some little gold nugget that I can take away and use. Well, in this particular talk, I took away two:

1. A web application index that catalogs all kinds of examples of Web 2.0 tools: Go2Web20.net. If you go to that page you will see that each application indexed has a short description, is tagged with key words for searching and has a link to the site where the application resides. Go2Web20.net even has an RSS feed so that you can keep track of recently added applications. Nice! There are lots of goodies here and with the increased pace of appearance of Web 2.0 tools, the RRS feed gives you a great way to stay informed.


2. A slideshow application that will knock your socks off! Seriously. It’s called Animoto. Using the photos you provide, it will make a 30 second professional looking slideshow (with fancy transitions) and a soundtrack. It has a few ways to output the video for you – including automatic export to YouTube! Slick! It even has an iPhone App so that you can build your video on your iPhone instead of your computer. Neat. For a fee, it will let you make much longer videos. It’s a great application to add to your digital storytelling toolbox for you or for your students – the production value is high. Want to see a demo of a video I made myself using Animoto? Check it out here.
   
   Also, Animoto itself keeps a small collection of case studies showing Animoto videos being used in education to give you some ideas.

Do you have a favorite Web 2.0 app, or do you have experience with Animoto? If so, let us know by leaving a comment below.

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