I was a little concerned at the beginning of the semester that this course was going to be one that consisted merely of demonstrating interesting online tools and that would be it. Fortunately, that was just setting the stage for the majority of the course:Our own personal exploration and documenting of how we learn, and hopefully, how we learn best. So far, I can say that the exploration has been fascinating, but it is far from over. I have tweeted sporadically, but haven't really immersed myself in the experience and watched Tweets as they pour across the interface. That's my next goal is to be online when edchat posts!
I've found that I'm pretty comfortable blogging. Never anticipated that would be a problem and it hasn't been. I enjoyed reading other people's posts and commenting when I have something I feel I can contribute. I have used most of the other tools that have been introduced including Storify, Pintrest and Symbaloo. Surprisingly, I haven't used Diigo yet. I'll begin doing that this week. The reason why I haven't until now, is that there have been many complaints about Diigo in some entry courses at Ashford University, mostly concerning users being hijacked and taken to other questionable locations on the Internet. Not sure why that should happen but I hesitated to use it if it was going to give me issues, since that categories been kind of full of my life lately! : )
I've collaborated with others outside of my course using my blog, as well having shared the class project on Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind website with people at work who are interested in Pinks book. I've also used some pretty powerful social networking software outside of the programs introduced during class. Jive, is a social network networking platform that can be easily integrated into most learning management systems. At Ashford University we have internally integrated Jive as a way for people to collaborate on the whole range of issues affecting online education. I'll provide some interesting back and forth with some members in this blog below! I started the class tweeting exclusively during my nonwork hours, but now I find myself tweeting often during the day when I find something new and interesting to share. Moving a little more towards resident, am I??
PLN Checklist:
1) Check my RSS Feeds daily: I received daily RSS feeds from Kurzweilai.net and Technology Review, MIT's online newsletter covering innovations in technology. I document these findings now through e-mail (Visitor I guess!) And increasingly through Twitter and Jive.
2) Check TweetDeck at least three times per week. I have caught onto some interesting conversations by classmates using TweetDeck. My next goal is to start responding more actively.
3) Use Storify: I like to use this software when there are multiple sources referenced within a particularly interesting online article. I've added one article to my blog, and one to Jive.
4) Aggregate notes and research using OneNote: I am a huge fan of OneNote! To me it's the poor stepchild of the Microsoft Office software suite (PC only unfortunately). Evernote sounds intriguing however and the fact that it can be used in the cloud may ultimately make it more useful when collaborating with others outside of the work environment. That said, within the work environment, OneNote rules. Offices can go paperless using the software. Similar to Evernote, you can capture and archive information while searching online, pull text from graphics etc. I create shared documents where people can collaborate synchronously on the same document and more. Great stuff.
5) Use Blogger for output: it's easy to use and just for that it's great for sharing. I can't say I've made in my own however, largely because it follows my assignments and is couched in those terms, us rather than becoming a smoothly flowing narrative that potentially others outside my class might be interested in visiting. There is some topic areas that I would like to explore: Information access versus Knowledge acquisition and discussing the dividing line between them. (There was a fascinating response to my post on this topic within Jive which I will contribute below tomorrow!)
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