Week 5 – Learning From You

After reading some of my classmates posts I like the casual communication styles that they use and their clever play on words.  These types of posts are fun to read.  I can get a better feel of their personality, and about how they are feeling about certain issues.

Using images in posts is also an effective way to communicate and engage the readers.  Still other classmates organize their blogs with beautiful themes and well-structured navigation menu to help the readers connect with them.  And those thought provoking titles grabbed my interest right away.  I learned some tips on how to write posts from reading yours.  Thank you!

Ohhh I forgot to include an image….

source:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/33018107/Honey-and-Mumford-learning-styles

Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)

A personal learning networks (PLNs) is a network created through using social networking tools such as Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Facebook, Ning, Google+, Delicious, and others.  PLNs provide a means for us to connect with other professionals throughout the world to build a collaborative community where everyone sharing ideas and provide support.  Numerous websites post information about developing a PLN and according to http://suewaters.wikispaces.com/ the top five suggestions for creating a PLN are creating a Twitter Account, create a blog, subscribe to blogs, use social bookmarking tools (Delicious or Diigo), and join Ning community.  I would add starting a Facebook to that list due to the fact that Facebook currently has the most users throughout the world. This Wiki current has 115 members and was established in 2011.  Sue Waters is also the editor of the  http:/theedublogger.com/ and facilitates e-learning professional development workshops.  Would rank this source a 4.

Some blog sites such as theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/ by Lisa Nielsen provides helpful tips for starting a personal education blog.  Currently Lisa has 14,310 people following her blog.  She is an established blogger, educator, author, and serves as the director of digital literacy and citizenship. I would rank this source as a 5.

The two personal learning networks I decided to explore are Delicious and LiveBinders Community in Google+.  Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that is available on the web and on mobile devices.  The idea behind Delicious is for users to bookmark and tag their Internet researches to share  other users.  Some useful tools in Delicious is the Discover, Network, Related Tags, and Remember tools.  Delicious is a good social networking tools to share research with other users.  It is also a good tool for organizing and archiving all your bookmarks.

I also joined the LiveBinders Community in Google+ and will try to join my first Google Hangout session with this community this week.  LiveBinders allows the users to create numerous binders and share them on the Internet.  You can also copy binders from other users.  A LiveBinder is a collection of all the webpages (websites) that pertains to a subject of interest.  For example their is an iPads in Schools LiveBinder that provides numerous websites (webpages) about iPads in school (http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=26195).  As of now I am one of 16 members in the LiveBinders Community.  This Google+ community shares ideas about how to create LiveBinders and how to network and troubleshoot.  I look forward to contributing and exploring these two social media to enhance my PLN.

“Collective Intelligence: When All of Us Can Be Smarter Than Any of Us”

After completing three team projects for ETEC 642, I think back about the effectiveness of our team work.  According to Himmelman’s taxonomy the four levels of public collaboration are networking, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration – collaboration being the most effective in group activities.  Collaboration occurs when the group shares common goals, risks, resources, responsibilities, and rewards.  I would also add respect as another component to collaboration.

Our team worked well when all members embrace these components.  We respect the opinions and ideas of others, we share the same goals, risks, and rewards.  Our team’s goal is to complete the class assignment and the reward is personal learning and/or project grade.  We provided resources to the group to enhance the group’s knowledge and understanding, and by doing this we strengthen our group’s “collective intelligence”.

A break down of team work occurs when a group member(s) does not embrace one or more of these components?  Let me express my feeling about poor team work  through this image.

Feel free to use this image that I modified

We all need to work together!  I was fortunate to have an overall positive collaborating experience with my teams.

Final Project Part 1 Summary

In my recent Google Form survey I asked 18 of my co-workers and friends about their social media usage.  I was not surprise to find that 35% use Facebook 23% use Instagram and 18% use Linkedin.   Facebook and Linkedin were also reported as the preferred social media platform used by marketers in the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael Steizner, and the Teaching, Learning, and Sharing: How Today’s Higher Education Faculty Use Social Media by Mike Moran.  Both reports were compiled by experts in the field of marketing and education.  According to my survey the top three reasons for using social media are to stay in touch with friend (39%), make professional connections (16%), and promote events (16%).  Here are a couple of comments from my respondents “My current employer found me through Linkedin.”, “Facebook is a great way to share photos, plan parties, and keep in touch with long distance friends.” Clearly social media is a widely used tool and learning how to use it effectively will enrich our personal and professional life.

ETEC 642 Week 3 Commenting On Classmates Blog Posts

Hi Berna,

After reading your blog post about social media & social cause I can’t help but feel the same way you do.  Connecting with people to create positive change is great, but the problem is the overload of information and solicitation that we all get on a daily basis.  I too have signed one online gun control petition and shortly after that I get emails about all kinds of petitions.  We cannot attend to every events in the world nor do we want to.  I am still finding ways to effectively use social media to stay connected.  I enjoyed reading your post and got to know you a little better via About.me

Berna’s Blog Post

ETEC 642 Week 2 Reflection (Facebook vs Google+)

After completing our team assignment number one I learned a lot about all the features of Facebook and Google+.  Our team, Kuuipo and Peter, downloaded both Facebook and Google Hangout apps to test out all the features.  We did most of our collaboration on Google Hangout and was very impressed with the easy of use and the ability to stay in constant communication to get our group work done.  Learning how to collaborate effectively and choosing the appropriate media to do so is an important 21st century skill I want to teach my students.  I would like to help my students learn how to use social media not only for personal use but for educational use as well.  Thank you Kuuipo and Peter for all the Google Hangout time together during our group project.

ETEC 642 first post

Hi Everyone,

My name is Marie Sack.  I am currently teaching Middle School Technology at an all girls private school in Oahu.  I am also married with two beautiful daughters Mai(15) and Mia (9).  I look forward to learning and sharing ideas in our ETEC 642 social media for education class.  I would like to learn how social media can be used in education and in personal networking.