I've just seen the PLENK Daily and my blog is at the top of the blogroll! Very exciting.
Well today was the Year 12's Formal assembly so I went and watched some presentations and baby photos for a bit. However because so many of our students deciding that the holidays have started two or three days ago, I had very little responsibilities. So I spent the majority of the day exploring all the different web based tools around to see if I could solve one of my problems with managing the volume of material I'm trying to wade through.
What I wanted to do was to achieve electronically what I'm used to doing with pen and paper. With the week 1 reading list for PLENK, I foolishly printed some of the papers of and then USED A PEN (oh the nostalgia) to highlight the parts of the text that I felt were relevant. However, having done this, what I really wanted to do was start collecting all my notes together centrally so I could come up with some sort of summary of my reading for the first week. This meant re-typing all the notes that I'd just printed off the web in the first place!! A little counter-productive (not to mention a waste of paper!) I believe tools like Diigo and Evernote can actually do this. I was quite impressed with diigo although our DER laptops are a bit frustrating in that it's impossible to install any of the helpful little applications and add-ons for IE that would help improve productivity. I hit a road bump this evening when the diigolet (which I could install) decided it didn't like PDF files. The page just kept closing. So i'm no closer to solving the problem YET! There is a way, I've just got to find it.
Anyway, the shear number of utilities available on the web is quite staggering. I compiled a list of the tools I have already found or used here. But my list is short and I know I've barely exposed the tip of the iceberg.
For those not living in NSW, the state government have funded laptops for all Year 9 students for the last two years. I feel that they are are proving to be somewhat of a white elephant at the moment, at least for our school. I feel that Year 9 is too late. Our Year 7's arrive at high school expecting something new, but have more change and uncertainty and more sterile classrooms than they are used to. If hey had the notebooks, we might be able to kick start a new learning journey for them. However, Year 9 are quite jaded and mostly use the laptops for games, iTunes and movies. Or trying to hack their way past the the DET's net-nanny! I have found it very difficult to inspire them, which is why I'm so keen on the PLENK course. I hope that the idea of a PLE will help them see that their education could be a liberating and inspiring activity as opposed to the gaol-sentence that they seem to think it is.
23 September, 2010
PLENK - Too much information...
There is so much information to absorb in this course. I thought last night that I may just have to resign myself to working through everything more slowly than the offical course allows and hoping that the Moodle and resources will still be open after the ten weeks are up. The downside is that most of the important discussion points will probably be over. I'll be tagging comments on but everyone else will have moved on. This flies in the face of the idea that I am part of a network of people who are learning together.
Lindsay Jordan has made a nice post about how to effectively manage the overload of information and I hope that some of her pointers will help me deal with the information overload.
I suppose I should be attempting to answer the questions I posed in my first post.
Lindsay Jordan has made a nice post about how to effectively manage the overload of information and I hope that some of her pointers will help me deal with the information overload.
I suppose I should be attempting to answer the questions I posed in my first post.
- How applicable do people see this in high school or primary school settings?
- How do people envisage assessment occurring?
- Would assessment be a case of submitting pieces of work, or would it be a case of gradually developing and quantifying the respect of your peers as you progress from novice toward expert in your particular interest area
21 September, 2010
20 September, 2010
Are Personal Learning Networks a modern entity?
Hi there. This will be a short post as I've spent all night trying to work out how to use Adobe's Contribute to edit my blog only to figure out that it is much easier to do it online. Maybe I'll figure that out at some point in the future.
Well I'm enjoying what I'm reading so far. The "7 things you should know..." peaked my interest immediately. The idea that an individual creates their own network of peers, experts and resources in order to follow their own particular interest is fascinating.
I wonder for how long they have actually been occurring outside of formal education. It seems to me that an individual would probably have developed a PLN as they try and learn about any undertaking. I try to paint every so often and I get better at it by asking people for suggestions or criticism about what I do. The people I ask are students, art teachers, my peers, my sister (who is a graphic designer), and others. I have books of my own and borrow from the local libraries as well. I have occasionally used the web to find forums or watch videos.
My point is that PLN's have probably always existed in some form or another for as long as people have tried to improve their skills by developing a network of experts, peers and resources. The addition of technology into this mix has just broadened the distance between the individual nodes of the network. I can ask my sister in the UK just as easily as one of the art teachers in my school. The Internet wasn't available 100 years ago, but the ability to network certainly was.
From that point of view, maybe the idea that PLN's are an effective tool for education won't be that hard a sell. The issue would be to show how this potentially open-ended and unstructured system would lend itself to the assessment of required outcomes for students.
.....added later (found comment in similar vein in discussion on Moodle)
Some questions:
How applicable do people see this in high school or primary school settings?
How do people envisage assessment occurring?
Would assessment be a case of submitting pieces of work, or would it be a case of gradually developing and quantifying the respect of your peers as you progress from novice toward expert in your particular interest area?
Well I'm enjoying what I'm reading so far. The "7 things you should know..." peaked my interest immediately. The idea that an individual creates their own network of peers, experts and resources in order to follow their own particular interest is fascinating.
I wonder for how long they have actually been occurring outside of formal education. It seems to me that an individual would probably have developed a PLN as they try and learn about any undertaking. I try to paint every so often and I get better at it by asking people for suggestions or criticism about what I do. The people I ask are students, art teachers, my peers, my sister (who is a graphic designer), and others. I have books of my own and borrow from the local libraries as well. I have occasionally used the web to find forums or watch videos.
My point is that PLN's have probably always existed in some form or another for as long as people have tried to improve their skills by developing a network of experts, peers and resources. The addition of technology into this mix has just broadened the distance between the individual nodes of the network. I can ask my sister in the UK just as easily as one of the art teachers in my school. The Internet wasn't available 100 years ago, but the ability to network certainly was.
From that point of view, maybe the idea that PLN's are an effective tool for education won't be that hard a sell. The issue would be to show how this potentially open-ended and unstructured system would lend itself to the assessment of required outcomes for students.
.....added later (found comment in similar vein in discussion on Moodle)
Some questions:
How applicable do people see this in high school or primary school settings?
How do people envisage assessment occurring?
Would assessment be a case of submitting pieces of work, or would it be a case of gradually developing and quantifying the respect of your peers as you progress from novice toward expert in your particular interest area?
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