Learning Gems

Last month on Twitter I had to ask what ‘PLN’ meant…I felt like a real twit doing so and said as much in a tweet. I was inundated with people who A, answered my question, a PLN is a personal learning network, and B, insisted there was no such thing as a silly question. Such responses have typified my experiences since.

For me, so far, my PLN provides (mainly) access to information of interest to me as an educator. I join the Nings they suggest, click on the links they recommend, read their blogs and wikis and follow them on plurk and twitter. Because their interests are similar to mine (education; technology; learning) I usually find their recommendations worth pursuing.

One week with my PLN

Last week my experiences were particularly varied and rich. I ‘spoke’ to people attending the NECC conference in San Antonio. One educator, catzpyjamasnz, used plurk to live blog several sessions. She also provided links to a glogster poster on elearning which caused me to revisit this cool tool for another look.

Later, I caught up with the concluding keynote address, thanks to coolcatteacher’s live blogging, and discovered further sites of interest:

http://www.mamamedia.com/ a site for children to learn “technological fluency” via games and other engaging activities. I also found another project to watch, The World Wide Workshop: http://www.worldwideworkshop.org/ . It is committed to developing open source social media technology to enhance learning. I subscribed to the newsletter.

There was a real sense of learning excitement associated with these ‘events’. Although I didn’t feel like I was actually there, I did feel involved in the learning.

New Discoveries:

My PLN also steered me in the direction of these sites. Links I have stored away for future reference and which will help improve my teaching and learning:

Web 2.0 fun stuff: http://www.go2web20.net/ I love these sorts of lists and this one is a very thorough and reliable source of web2.0 tools. Soon, I will explore each one in turn and sign up for those that look useful.

As a twitter user I was also interested to hear about, http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/ a tool that promises to improve the current functionality of twitter (a timely beta given the current appeal of plurk!)

Games: I discovered a new video game of interest at http://fas.org/immuneattack/ and also learned how to play ‘Set Puzzle’ http://www.setgame.com/puzzle/set.htm thanks to one of my plurk buddies. (Educational gaming is a particular passion of mine). Another game I learned about via plurk was scrabulous http://www.scrabulous.com/ . I played my first game last week and loved it!

Like-minded online colleagues

Being able to communicate online with people who share my ideas and interests is a huge bonus. They are usually experiencing a similar journey and can advise me. For example, this week a PLN ‘colleague’ sent me clear instructions on how to embed Youtube in PowerPoint via email after a discussion on plurk. Also during the week my PLN offered me advice on a blog makeover, discussed the educational uses of plurk and participated in a storytelling exercise.

I have mentioned in a previous post how useful I find the links provided by oz/nz educators group on diigo. Last week I revisited a comic generator site I discovered via this group: http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ and made a comic strip:

While many people ask their PLNs for specific information I find I get a huge response when I simply talk about a project I’m planning or an idea. People are keen to share their knowledge and experience. Recently I mentioned I was planning a teacher session on using wikis and blogs and got 3 immediate responses from a twitter pal who included some great links:

http://del.icio.us/rosefirerising/web2.0+students

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

http://del.icio.us/rosefirerising/web2.0+teaching+wikis

Each of these discoveries will impact on my personal learning in some way. I guess the best part about each of them is that they occurred around my family and work life. PLNs are Learning Gems…I highly recommend you build one of your own soon!

I’ve written before about this fantastic project. With the release of Inanimate Alice Episode 4 ‘Hometown’ I am even more convinced that this type of multimedia story is the future of e-reading.

iStori.es

The new episode comes with its own education pack and news of an authoring tool, iStori.es, which is previewed by Alice in this episode. It looks like a fantastic tool to encourage multimedia storytelling, something that students seem to prefer to the more traditional method. I will probably look at ordering it for my school next year.

Learning Opportunities

The learning potential of these stories is enormous…not only do they encourage reluctant readers, they also open the door for so many learning opportunities. Activities that immediately spring to mind after my first reading of episode 4 are:

• Students could use Google Earth to map and highlight features in their own neighborhoods. (Alice explains her new life via a map with clickable points that help to advance the story.) A focus on historical buildings and/or geographical features would instantly lead this activity into History and Geography units.
• Students could easily use their own photographs to put together a photostory of their own, complete with music and words. This would, hopefully, lead to all sorts of discussion points about how music and visuals help to create atmosphere and advance a story.
• General ‘Exploration’ activities: Hints that all is not well in Alice’s current life; possible futures for the family; the importance of Brad; evidence of Alice’s ‘teenagehood’…

Teacher feedback

As an English teacher and Teacher-Librarian I love educational resources which take a ‘new’ approach and which I know will also engage students. I am always looking for something exciting and different so Inanimate Alice is perfect for me. (If it involves technology and reading it’s always a winner!) I passed the resource onto several other teachers, both primary and secondary, and they loved it too. The primary teachers were very impressed and raved about the education pack in particular.

My very first post on this blog highlighted the need for teacher-librarians to stop being the invisible quiet achievers in schools.  It is my view that we are too often ‘overlooked’ because other teachers, parents and leaders aren’t always aware of the vital contributions we make during all stages of the learning process.  We provide ideas, advice, troubleshooting, resources, information and enthusiasm (to name a few).  Moreover, these are often based on our unique perspective of the whole school curriculum; a perspective that gives us valuable insights into teaching and learning processes and educational programs within the school.

Teacher-librarians, as lifelong learners, stay up-to-date with emerging trends and are often first to hear about new learning tools, educational shifts and exciting texts.  It is also a vital part of our role to pass this information on to others.  Which brings me to the point of this blog post …

I pass on a lot of material to staff and I’m still trying to work out whether the following incident is a good or bad development.  I started passing around a teacher magazine with a lot of valuable material in it. Before I started at the school this particular magazine was simply fodder for the recycling bins.  No-one ever picked it up or read it!   At first I only passed on copies to teachers I thought might do something with it, (that is, read it!).  Recently I received extra copies and started passing it on to every teacher. 

Well, today someone cut out an interesting article about libraries and ICT from this magazine and pigeonholed me (no name attached) No doubt this person believes they have helped me out by passing on a crucial piece of ’library’ information.  What they don’t know and will probably never know is that I was the person who passed this information on to them in the first place!  Also, the article, which I had read, was about an Australian teacher-librarian, Judy O’Connell, a wonderful blogger whose blog, Hey Jude I also read regularly! (We also recently became friends on Second Life!)

Is this a positive sign?  It means that teachers are finally starting to read and learn from this valuable resource.  Essentially, I achieved my goal.  OR… is it a negative sign?  Teachers continue to be unaware of how these valuable learning gems reach them and I remain invisible (and perhaps another teacher-librarian position disappears somewhere in the world?)

Discovered Animoto yesterday…signed up, uploaded images of book covers and created a very cool video clip in less than 10 minutes. I can imagine it being used for all sorts of learning activities. Some that immediately spring to mind are:

• A visual reflection on a text’s themes (particularly useful for musical and visual learners)
• A pictorial essay
• Creative ‘writing’ (digital storytelling, poetry)
• Student Presentations (great for advertising projects etc)
• Adding ‘cred’ to teacher presentations.

I get very excited when I discover a ‘learning gem’ with so much classroom potential. Let’s face it, anything with the potential to engage and revive ’sluggish’ students is worth a look.