Your favorite PLN tools

[Sharon Betts]

What are your favorite personal learning networking tools? How do you use them?
I love Ning (needless to say)

Twitter is invaluable for resources, networking and staying up to date on events.

Still trying to decide the best social bookmarking tool for me.
Used to use del.icio.us - moved to buzka for teacher resources and now am on the diigo bandwagon.
What are you finding useful?

[Mark Carls]

Good post. I use Twitter (mcarls) almost everyday (many schools out here block it). It is a great jumping off point for me. I am still building a network, though, so I don't go there to have my questions answered (yet), but do check out what other educators are posting.
I do use del.icio.us (mcarls) as well and that is a great resource for me, I even check there before Google or Clusty now. Haven't gotten into Diigo, but it has a big buzz on Twitter.

[Sharon Betts]

I just started to follow you Mark. Wonder if everyone will begin to follow newlearning? If so, we can do quick communications that way - just @newlearning.
I had completely forgotten about Clusty. Sharon

[Missi]

Del.icio.us was my first tool, and I still love it. I have joined several Diigo groups and enjoy adding to my list and sharing nuggets that way. I am addicted to my RSS feeds right now and need to find a balance as it consumes sooo much time (but I learn so much by peeking in everyone's head!). I only lurker on twitter and haven't caught on to its usefulness. Sometimes I feel more like a groupie than a member there.

[Sharon Betts]

Oh yes, a digital groupie (think we should coin that one). I, too, was a huge Del.icio.us fan, but am finding Diigo to be more robust and better for personal PD. Have you checked out Buzka as a way to share resources with students? RSS feeds can get out of control - I never seem to find the time to review them.

[Marcel]

I am starting towards preferring Ning type sites. Community places that collate sourced information. netvibes is also very good for that. The dispersive and multi-tool nature of the Internet can make it difficult to track. I wonder if we have gone down a too-decentralised path. I recognise that many people thrive on this, and yet I think it suite those who
have time
have the motivation
have the technical skills
This is not everyone. I am starting to use Twitter and at this stage I see a lot of useless info being put on there. I don;t care that someone is doing something in their garden. Again for those with a lot of time and who can scan/read quickly that might be fine, but doing a full-time teaching job and having quality family time are higher on the list of priorities.
So again is there value in more centralised and collectively collated sites/communities? These places are where the 'good oil' is placed, and the loads of dross can be filtered out.

I am not saying anyone should move away from them, but maybe feed back into communcal places. In one sense Twitter makes connections and enhances collaboration, but could it also be perceived to limit it, in the sense that unless you follow that person on Twitter you could miss out on the great link; what if that person had placed that important piece of information on a communal site? Would it just get lost amidst the build up? Or could a person with a particualr focus have a greater chance of finding that useful link by doing a search on the site? I also perceive a similar problem with blogs, I don;t see that a chronological system of storing articles as very conducive to finding information (if you hadn't been RSSing from them at the time), TAG clouds and folder creations are not universally used yet, and the fact they are increasing indicates chronology is not a very open and connective model.

Then again, maybe I am just not using tools such as delicious and twitter efficiently. :-)

[Sharon Betts]

I think of Twitter as one of the top applications in my Personal Learning Network. I believe it is all in the network - those you chose to follow. I also find it useful to organize the incoming tweets using a tool like tweetdeck. There are other tools that will save all the links being tweeted by a group and store them (the name has escaped me). Other tools allow you to search previous tweets, like Summize http://tweetburner.com is a very good tool to track how many people click a link you’ve shared on twitter. Very useful to see what your followers like!
Finally, if someone just posts more "useless - to me" information, they are removed from my "follows".

Del.icio.us - I use it mainly for research by depending on the knowledge of the masses. I have also seen it used very successfully by a team of teachers with similar goals.

[Roland O'Daniel]

Marcel, I don't disagree with you, in fact I'm struggling with Twitter myself. I agree with everything that Sharon says, also. It's very important to develop the community if Twitter is to be effective. I haven't been able to develop my community as well as I would like yet, because am not able to find the value added for me to this point, which keeps me from using it integrally. BUT I keep going back to it not because I think it is the right tool for me, but because others think it's the right tool for them. I have to agree with David Warlick when he says that most of us over 30 (and I would say over 25) don't get the social network thing like the youngest generations do.

OK, I don't get it; I acknowledge that, then why try? This is for me the reason I keep trying to go back to Twitter. I need to understand the perspective of my students better. I need to "learn" more about the process so I can use it better in my teaching. Does that make sense? I keep going back because if I don't then I'm missing it (not the 'great' stuff that's happening on twitter), the opportunity to continue to be a lifelong learner, to model for my students what that means, to make some connection to their perspective, to be able to utilize a new tool in my classroom that will continue to engage students more effectively. That's why I keep trying Twitter and that's why I'm following you on Twitter and that's why I'm following Sharon on Twitter.

[Sharon Betts]

Great - I started to follow you when I got your Tweet. I also know that the best way for you to see the value of this is to begin to follow some educators you admire - and some you don't know, but would like to learn more about.

I just tweeted this to you: @rodaniel nice to see you on twitter - take a look at who I follow and pick a few - soon you will have a fabulous network

Go to my twitter page - click on some of the people that I follow and follow them - soon, you will be emersed in fabulous micro-conversations about everything education.

http://www.twitter.com/sharonbetts

[Roland O'Daniel]

Yes, I added twitter to my Igoogle page! I really am working on it. I look at my daughters (four teenagers, with oldest 19 living on her own) and how connected they are. I know it's a developmental issue because they have a 'need' to be connected to their friends much more than I do (my family are my most important friends), but it's the modality that I am trying to stay up with. I'll never have all the tools mastered, but I hope to continually be in the ball park during my career.
Again, thanks for the help (hey I think that makes you part of my PLN)

[Sharon Betts]

Wondering how your personal PD is going through your addition of twitter. I don't believe I added you to my list of followees - Sharon

[Roland O'Daniel]

It's interesting. I am using it more than I thought I would, and it has produced several valuable resources:
- Howard Rheingold- great source of social media information and nuggets of ideas.
- kept me in touch with a couple of colleagues that I value their input more closely
- allowed me to follow Lance Armstrong on his comeback trail (HUGE cycling and Lance fan, been riding competitively since I was 14- OK not riding competively now except against my brother and a couple of freinds)
- allowed me to find a couple of other resources- you, Steve Sokolo, and a couple others

But I'm not getting as much as I was hoping. It takes time to cultivate so I'm not giving up and I'll look at some of these issues below with my reflection. I'm just not getting the back and forth I was hoping for, but I'm not producing a lot of content for consumption. I'm focused on producing content for work and school and that is limiting where I would like to focus my output. (I have been asked to take on a different role for the upcoming year and to focus on technology integration/development for the organization with a reduction in my workload so that I can accomplish that- I was asked to take on that role last year, but my workload increased and it was not a very functional attempt)

My reflections:
-I don't post regularly (I would say regularly is 2-3 x daily). I definitely don't think I will ever be as 'productive' as Sheranski or Courosa.
- I'm not networking outside of twitter with people who are using it as a resource, which isn't helping me find added value at this time. With the two people that I work with on projects that are using it, I am finding value, so I can see how it could function, but at this time I'm not there with my PLN.
- I'm not, in general, producing good content for consumption and I think that is a critical component. This is an interesting issue, because it's something that I'm struggling with overall. I'm not a classroom teacher, don't work for a district, nor a university and am not able to incorporate as much technology into my work as I would like because so many of the partners that we work with (needy school districts across the state of KY) aren't prepared for this kind of work. When I was in my classroom, I was doing more than I am now (four years later) because it was me, the tech guy at school, and my students- no limiting factors. Now, I work with districts that have different rules, different expectations, and different goals- some districts aren't ready for this kind of instruction, yet. I work with teachers in different projects who are at different levels and many aren't ready or aren't interested in adding this kind of work to their repertoire, yet. This comment is bigger than twitter, but is central to my thinking about twitter and cutting edge web 2.0 tools.
(more on this below when I discuss tools that i am adding to the work that we do)
- the balance of work, home and social networking. I am trying to compartmentalize a little because of family and school constraints and it is an interesting dynamic to add a tool that is more invasive in many ways. Still thinking about that answer.
-I do think some of the uses that include sharing tags, resources, and information about professional learning will keep me plugging away.

Tools other than twitter that I am using extensively with my work (and hence are central to my PLN at this time):
- web conferencing for providing PD to teachers across the state, or to cut down on travel. This has been difficult because of such a wide variety of end users (some struggle to read email), different schools with different technology and phone resources (if we do a web conference with Webex- our client at this time- we have to decide VoIP or teleconference and if we are working with nine teachers in one school then we have to go with VoIP because they don't have 9 outside lines because webex doesn't support dual usage. Putting nine teachers in one room for an online web conference is a recipe for disaster.)
- interactive video conferencing PD and developing interactive strategies to deliver content that is beyond sit and get and incorporate good pedagogy into distance PD. This is theoretical at this point as we are still installing our equipment, but is part of what I am doing.
- developing an online community around content literacy via Ning. It's interesting and is getting better, but still very infantile in

[Sharon Betts]

What a thoughtful reflection! Anyone with as much retrospection as you will become a very successful PLN member! I am also interested in your interactive video conferencing. We are getting equipment this summer and also need to develop good pedagogy around its use for teachers as well as for students.