PLNs – Personal Learning Networks

Dave Warlick has written some interesting posts about his personal learning network and he elaborates also on the technologies and tools he uses along the way. This is an exerpt from one such post:

“Somewhere between 22 and 59 virtual attendees, the chat conversation became more of a focus point for me, as lurkers were commenting less about where they were from (PA, TX, SC, Perth, Shanghai) and more about the topics of Steve’s presentation, each shining a slightly different light on the idea, each giving me a different way of looking at it. A sudden small and fragile network was becoming a temporary branch of my Personal Learning Network.”

Author: Dave Warlick, 2cent Worth Blog, 9th April 2008

Full article available >here.

Twitter – the basics explained in plain English

Want to know more about Twitter? Produced as a TeacherTube test, Mark Oehlert has posted this little video on his e-Clippings Blog. It’s short and sweet with great paper-based tactile animation.

See the video here.

Broadcast Learning: The Power of Network Learning

“What if you could broadcast learning at will via the Internet to a world of learners? How would that change your conception of learning? What if you could interact with people, not only face to face in your workshop, but also halfway around the world? What if your workshop participants could participate in a conversation with those virtual participants, all of them discussing the broadcast learning going on? Pretty exciting, no?

I still remember my first exposure to broadcast learning technologies now available via the Internet. The power of pro-sumers, individuals who create as well as consume…but instead we might call them “prolearners,” as Vicki Davis suggests — learners who not only are docile consumers of knowledge, but also active creators of it.

FlashMeeting screenshot with Paul Harrington in the foreground.

My adventure began quite simply one day at work. On October 11, 2007, I had the opportunity to “sit-in” on Vicki Davis’ UStream session on Wikis. The session was announced via Twitter, an instant messaging tool that allows you to follow what hundreds of others — in my case, educators — are doing. Someone shared the link and I was off to see this new broadcast learning technology. It was a lot of fun listening in on that workshop. I got a real sense of being there, even though the only person I could see was Vicki. Sometimes she was on screen, sometimes she wasn’t. I also had fun tracking the backchannel conversation going on; the backchannel was a conversation about Vicki’s presentation available via Twitter.”

Copyright © 2008 Education WorldAuthor: Miguel Guhlin, Education World®, 14th March 2008

Full article available here.

CUE 2008 Workshop Wikis

Though I missed the EduBloggercCon-West on March 5th (to help Eva with Clark – and to get some writing done), I was thrilled to spend most of the past weekend presenting at the 2008 CUE conference in Palm Springs. Below are links to the wikis for each workshop or sesison that I lead. Each wiki includes the session agenda, hotlinks to anything I mentioned, and any slides, videos, or handouts I shared. Please feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions or feedback.

Author: Mark Wagner, Educational Technology and Life Blog, 10th March 2008

Full article available here.