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| Lily The Ballerina Pig |
A few housekeeping tips before I discuss my past weeks. There is no class this Hallow's Eve. We agreed to meet on Google+ Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm. Correct me if I am wrong or there are any issues regarding this meeting. What should be completed: I expect that the Pink 6 Senses website will be completed, you will have more than one new post to discuss (and don't forget to comment on each other's posts, but some posts from the #eci831 class as well), you will have watched at least one of the EC&I classes, and that you will be ready to discuss what you have learned and shared this week. Tomorrow's EC&I 831 class is: Sharing, facilitated by Dean Shareski. It begins at 6pm PSTand lasts for an hour and a half. One thing that might be avoiding your consciousness is the weekly participation in at least one educational chat with an accompanying reflection. . .haven't seen one in awhile. I realize that it is both a challenge and a bit daunting to be responsible for your own learning. Like anything worth doing, you must take the time to cultivate your practice.
Speaking of cultivating your practice. . .
The first thing I want to discuss is our connection with Dr. Couros and his EC&I 831 Social Media and Open Education class from the University of Regina. I have been following @courosa for awhile on Twitter and when I saw what he was doing with this course, I contacted him about some possible ways to connect our classes. It took a few weeks, but he agreed to put us on his Oct 25 agenda and connect our classes. Here is the connection to their blogs. . .Here is their Twitter list. . .both of which have been shared on Twitter and the #usdedu & #eci831 hashtags. I watched the recording from the Oct 25 session about Rhizomatic Learning featuring Dave Cormier. It was a very interesting session. I loved the way Dave used blank slides to gather information from the group. Although, the overall experience would have been even more enriching if I had been in the synchronous session. I look forward to the connections that you all can make for the rest of the semester.
Last Monday, Dr. Lattimer and met with Jason and Jenni, who run the Daraja Academy, a boarding school for Keynan girls who do not have the resources to continue their education. We discussed their mobile learning grant and ways in which iPads, iPod Touches, and other mobile devices could be used in their school. It is amazing to me that mobile learning could occur in even remote areas of Keyna! I plan to keep in touch with Jason and Jenni as they begin this journal of technology integration at Daraja Academy.
Last Tuesday, I participated in the 9am #edchat: What are some specific things we can do to involve parents in the education of their children? It was a very active chat and I found myself sharing many ideas. At the end of the chat, I received a DM (direct message) from the moderators asking me to write a summary of the chat for their blog. I was honors to be asked to write the summary and hopefully, it will be published this week! I'll let you know.
Last Wednesday, I found myself struggling to get my joint doctoral program students to understand exactly what it means to cultivate a PLN. I am not a fan of prescribing what it takes to cultivate something like a PLN because it has to be something that comes naturally out of the motivation to learn new ideas and network with like educators. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, it does take time to cultivate this into a practice. I gave guidelines, group discussion, and even a video, but I wasn't seeing the results for which I was hoping. So, I decided to construct a rubric/guideline for how to cultivate a PLN. I started with the exemplary column and worked backward from their. When I finished, I tweeted a link to my work (in GoogleDocs) using the #edchat hashtag. About five minutes later, I received a message from @DataDiva, who is an expert on quality rubrics, noting that she thought I needed more positive language in the lowest column. I asked for her assistance and she first sent this link to her wiki on the important on the lowest levels. After about an hour and a half of back and forth communication, I have what is a pretty awesome guideline on how to cultivate a PLN. I put the guideline on both the EDUC 578 blog and my CSUSM/UCSD JDP blogs. On Thursday, I received a tweet from @DelaneyKirk asking if she could share my PLN guidelines in the Chronicle for Higher Ed. Two things are important here. I have been teaching for almost 15 years and I learned more about rubrics from @DataDiva in our Twitter conversation than I have in any professional development or training/readings. I eventual final product will be a valuable part of my future discussions on PLNs. The second issue is the ability to network with others on Twitter and my willingness to share my work publicly allowed my work to be shared in ways that I couldn't have imagined.
I hope this post shows you all the value of cultivating your PLN!!
Question: What have you seen as the biggest obstacle in creating/learning in your PLN?
My biggest obstacle is definitely time. In many traditional classes students are given an assignment and I traditionally will work on that assignment at night after I have finished all my grading and eating dinner. For my PLN I need to be on the computer or on my phone constantly but I feel like I'm just not giving my PLN 120%, just about 90%. I make comments and to be honest I'm reading about 25 articles that people post on twitter. If i find it interesting I re-tweet or reply to the blog, but there are many articles that I just cannot identify with or use. I have conversed with multiple people via direct chat and twitter and I really enjoy the feedback, but there are still many times in which I would like to continue a conversation, but it is stopped by the "next" twitter hot topic. If i'm not able to get online at that time, the topic is over and my opinions are lost.
ReplyDeleteI think my PLN will grow a lot more next year when my masters is completed because I'll be searching for conversation and i will have the time to communicate 120%.
Finding time to tweet is the #1 hurdle for me. I don't have a smartphone and any time I pull out my lap top my 2 year literally climbs all over it pushing buttons.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am really interesting in following English language learners teachers' chat but it occurs during my EDUC 500 course meeting and I just can't be that student that has their laptop open doing non-class related things (I hate so much when my students do that to me).
That being said, I do understand the value of creating a PLN and now that I know what one is I feel like I hear about them everywhere (Jetta syndrome, right?).
I definitely agree with Melissa. Although I put forth what little time I have with being on the Internet, I feel that I'm missing things (tweets, edchats, posts, etc.) when I'm not connected to the Internet. I feel that most of my free time is usually late at night when most of the activity is not going on because during the day, I simply cannot be on the Internet because I am at work. I've even tried tweeting during different classes, but I'm getting that feeling that my teacher is wondering why I am typing during her lecture! Also, I feel that sometimes I'm getting lost with all of the information that I'm reading online, then not giving my full attention to what is being presented in class right there! Like Melissa said, hopefully when I'm finished with my masters, I can give that extra time to REALLY cultivate my PLN, because as big as I am with technology, I think that all of these resources can be implemented in my future classroom!
ReplyDeleteOk, so I just wrote this long response (in the already limited amount of time I have to do so) and it said I wasn't signed in and re-directed me to my google page and I lost the entire comment. My post was not a happy one and now I'm even less happy. Like Ms. Davis said, I feel like my biggest constraint is time. Between two nannying jobs five days a week, classes two nights a week, and usually babysitting on the weekends, the time that I have to do class assignments is already limited enough. I think the most frustrating part about this class is the expectation that we have to be constantly connected to the internet, constantly reading articles, constantly bookmarking them, constantly tweeting, re-tweeting, dming, constantly blogging about anything and everything. And then we have to participate in chats, most of which occur while I'm either working or in class, and trying to participate in a chat while you are otherwise engaged is not an authentic way to participate. Not only doing all of this to expand our PLN, but then we have to find even more time to inform you that we have been doing it all. I understand that in order to build your PLN you have to connect, but shouldn't those connections be authentic? I feel if we're "stressed" that we aren't tweeting enough, blogging enough, etc. by your standards then we start superficially doing these things rather than authentically. My case in point is that last week I was pretty active (or so I thought) in building my PLN. I wrote a couple of blog posts, I tweeted a lot, I read and bookmarked a decent amount of articles, etc. Then you posted that "cricket" thing and I was wondering, what is enough? The things that I did were authentic, but I don't have all the time in the day to create authentic, well thought-out posts. Wouldn't you rather have authenticity versus superficiality (i.e. a genuine interest vs. just doing something because we're required)? Basically, in order to fulfill what it seems to be your requirements, I have to take my laptop with me and create superficial posts because at the same time I'm having to be the moderator between fights between the two girls I nanny for in the afternoons, or feed a baby and play with him and put him to sleep and make sure he doesn't fall and hurt himself for the family I nanny for in the mornings. The time I have to complete assignments is usually a block of time all together on the weekend, that way I can take the time and really concentrate and not only understand what I am learning but make it meaningful as well. So in summary, I feel the same way as Ms. Davis. I feel that I'm not giving the percentage that I need to in this class because I have to constantly have time for it and I just don't. The frustrating part is that I feel like I am authentically participating when I can and I really am learning, but somehow it's still not enough. I guess I have always been of the mind that quality is better than quantity and I feel that is what you have been advocating, but what we are required to do seems contradictory. Sorry that my frustration is showing through, but this is how I am truly feeling now about this class.
ReplyDeleteI also want to add (I know that I already had a very long response, sorry!) that I think it's also harder for me to cultivate my PLN as a FUTURE educator, rather than a current educator. I think the resources I'm finding and the connections are so great, but because I'm not applying them I feel like I'm not getting that full, complete connection that I would if I was applying them right away. I'm one of those people who forgets things very quickly if I'm not applying them. Ok, I promise I'm done now! Man Jeff, it seems that your question has opened a floodgate of response from me, LOL.
ReplyDeleteI think I have to agree with what has been posted. It's time. And I know that is not the answer I should be giving, nor is it something I should use as a crutch especially after innovation week and our discussion last class. As we said, we are all victims of constantly being busy and using our time to do everything and anything. Basically letting our lives be consumed by work and school. Edchats on twitter that I would like to participate in conflict with other commitments. Cultivation requires me to be attached to my laptop and the internet, something which I for so long have steered away from. So ultimately what I am having the greatest challenge with is consistency. I need to find a way in which I can consistently spend time cultivating on daily basis rather than through a chunk of time here and there.
ReplyDeleteI think that my biggest hurdle is similar to others, which is finding the time. I love all the tools that we have learned but I really don't have the time to participate in everyone daily. I have used many of the tools that we have learned to help me in my classroom right now. I love that I now know where to go to find information to help me. Before this class I would try to find information but it would take a long time to figure out where a good source is. So the biggest issue is time. I think twitter is the hardest tool for me to use because I feel that it takes the most effort and energy to keep up with. The other tools I can do more on my free time and when I am available. I have so many schedule issues as it is that I don't have the ability to find a period of time to follow the certain chats that occur. So I am still trying my best in doing the twitter thing but it is still something I'm trying to get used to!
ReplyDelete