PLN Ning

It turns out LinkedIn wasn't as useless as I thought! I was approved for the Science Math Primary/Secondary Education group, and I've been getting the occasional email about discussions in the group. Nothing exciting, except I saw a link for the "PLN ning" on the right side of the page. "Great!" I thought, "I can use that for Thing 6!" I figured it had something to do with math and science.



Only sort of.



After following a few links and reading some blogs, I learned that PLN stands for "personal learning network". (I've also learned I need to bookmark those pages as soon as I find them. Otherwise, I can't find them again!) The idea, as I understand it, is to take day-to-day responsibility for our professional development. Don't wait for the traditional workshops to become available, don't sit in a classroom or a conference room collecting handouts, don't go home and try to implement some new idea without on-going support. Instead, connect to people through Web 2.0 tools, go to those workshops when they are available and connect with the people there, spend some time each day or week learning about new practices or old practices you weren't aware of. Let people who live far away from you support you as you try new things in your classroom.



It sounds great!



The tough part is learning to use the Web 2.0 tools. I'm slowly finding my way around the PLN ning, trying to figure out how to get the best use out of it. I've joined the PLN newbies group on the ning, so I should be able to ask questions there, once I figure out what questions I need to ask! I can see the use of having a blog on the PLN ning, since there are 5,816 members right there. It's a good way to get followers for your blog! But since I already have this one, I will be using this ning to find blogs I want to follow. I'll list "Hammy's Weblet" in my profile, and maybe someone will use thing ning to find my blog!

ReturNING to the scene of the crime (Thing 6)

I'm back! After about 4 months, I have returned to the 23 Things for Web 2.0. I'm proud of myself. Usually I'd just let a project go after this much time off, but it's my "I need to do something productive!" part of the day, and I need something to do. So I start looking through my bookmarks and links, and there it is, the little button that says "23 Things". Brilliant! Now I don't have to resort to cleaning!

Looking back, I see I'm on Thing 6 - Nings. The Ning.com page has changed since I last looked at it. But I can still search for "math", and get a nice list of nings to look at.
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Aaand 100 nings later, I have yet to find one to join. I'd estimate that I actually clicked on 15 links to nings that seemed relevant to me, but that's because only (~)15 of those 100 listed so far have had titles or descriptions that were relevant. This is frustrating. Several of these nings have titles and descriptions that make them sound open and interesting, but they are all much smaller and for a very specific group of people. For example, Mathematics Professional Learning Community is actually a class at ASU. Others haven't been touched since early 2009. Grrr.

I'm going to keep looking, but I feel that I can answer some of the questions about nings without actually joining one. The majority of the nings I've looked at had a relatively small number of members, I'd say between 8 and 30. Then again, I keep finding nings that are designed for small groups that actually meet in real life - college classes, teachers from one area doing professional development, etc. I did see several high school teacher-created nings for the students in their classes. One had a tab for students to post notes from class. I loved that, because the student who did most of the posting took pictures of the notes in her notebook and posted the pictures. My students could do that by taking a "screen shot" of their OneNote notebook. It would be so much cleaner and clearer!

Unfortunately, the classroom ning that looked the most interesting required you to sign-up before you could really look around the ning. "Bravo!" to the teacher for being conscious of his students' safety, but "Boo!" for not getting to see how it worked!

(Wow, spell check does not like the word "ning"!)

An Apology and Explanation

My apologies for disappearing from my explorations into Web 2.0, and abandoning those of you reading. My only excuse is that this past quarter is my busiest and most stressful of the year, given the courses I must prep for and the additional responsibilities that come up during our third quarter in our high school. Learning about each new item of our 23 things is very time consuming for me, something I didn't really expect. I'm pretty good with computers and new software, I thought I'd pick up on each new Thing quickly. Instead, I would spend several hours just reading and looking and clicking around, and then I'd spend another hour or two trying to write a coherent blog post about all the things I'd found and thought about. Spending my evenings on the new Things meant I wasn't spending my evenings grading papers or designing lessons for my students or organizing the trip I'll be chaperoning next week. So I prioritized, and the 23 things went on the back burner. Fortunately, this is the culminating week for the quarter, so I should soon be able to return to exploring the tools that are out there.

That does get me thinking though. Is it just because I'm a young teacher that I'm finding it hard to balance between my personal and professional development and the responsibilities I have at school? Or is this a struggle I'll continue to have all along? It feels short sighted to be setting aside the development for the more immediate classroom work, but I need to get the immediate stuff done now.

Anyone have any advice for this youngster?

LinkedIn

My sister asked me to join LinkedIn over a year ago, and, to be honest, I really didn't see the point. It was always seemed like it was meant more for people who work for big companies, where who you know helps you get ahead. Even in the videos on the Thing 5 page, all they talk about is growing Susan's business; how she can hire more help and find more investors. My position as a teacher is not one where I hire people or go looking for people to donate money. That's probably why Education is such an underrepresented field in the network. We think, "That's not directed at us." (Or maybe it's because we can't post lesson plans and worksheets for other people to use...)

For me, at the moment, the value of being part of LinkedIn is to provide a link for someone else to find what they're looking for. A large chunk of my connections are people who are working for engineering or software companies (a side effect of going to an engineering college). Now, this might change as I gain contacts in the field of education that I can't go find in person. I waiting for approval to join the Science Math Primary/Secondary Education group, which I think is likely to gain me some outside Education contacts.

I also think that I'm missing a lot of the value of this networking site, because I'm still trying to find my way around the site. There are times when I look at the page and feel at a loss of what to do. Unlike Facebook, where I can play around a lot more. Part of that is Facebook is a social site, where as LinkedIn is a professional one. I feel a lot more freedom in what I post on one compared to what I post on the other.

Maybe I just need to spend more time playing around with LinkedIn. I have been on Facebook for years...

A Comment on Commenting

I've enjoyed looking around at some of your blogs, my fellow 23's. Some of you are so good at writing, I feel intimidated. Others are more tentative about blogging - good for you for giving it a go!

I have to admit, I didn't leave comments on every "23 Things" blog I read. Sometimes, I just can't think of something worthwhile to say. I know it feels great to see that someone has commented, and even better to see that several people have commented; especially if they get a meaningful discussion or debate going. It builds a sense of community and connectedness. But I feel there's a bit of a let-down when the comments are of the "Just saying hi!" variety. I know that I hate scrolling past all of the "I love this author! I love this artist!" one line comments on my favorite web-comics. The comments that share other readers' interpretations or predictions are the most valuable to me. Because of this experience, I'm actually pretty hesitant to leave a comment unless I feel pretty strongly about something in the post.

Even when I am going to leave a comment, it takes me a while to write it. I often feel a pressure to make sure it's witty or profound; a pressure I'm pretty sure is self-imposed. Those are the comments I like to read best, so that's what I try to leave. Does anyone else feel like that when writing a comment or a post? That your comment will be valued more if it's clever?

I also struggle with brevity. (She says in paragraph 3.) If I feel strongly about something, it's easy to write a novel on it. (Though it occurs to me that the best idea would be to write a blog post in response, then leave a summary comment that links to it...) I tend toward wordiness in general. I talk a lot, and that translates into my writing. I think my scientific and mathematical training are also to blame - "express your ideas fully and clearly". (I think I missed the day when they taught us to do it concisely!)

Anyway, if I don't leave a comment, it's not because I don't like your blog. It probably means I like it enough not to clog your comments with unnecessary blatherings.

I have a somewhat related question. If I were to create a blog with my students, one where they do most of the writing, how do I get the blogging community to take notice, read and affirm my students' blogs through comments quickly? One thought is to have them leave comments on other blogs, so that readers there can follow the trail back to our blog. Are there other ways? I believe that thoughtful comments affirm that your thoughts and words are worthwhile, and build an interest in continuing to share those thoughts and words. I wouldn't want to wait till the end of a term for that to happen for my students. The blog would become unwanted work with no rewards.

One last quick note: If you want to insert a link in a comment (which doesn't have all of the handy-dandy editing buttons), check out this post by Rosidah Abidin.

"A writer needs 3 THINGS..."

"...experience, observation and imagination; any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others." -- William Faulkner

I wanted to use a quote by Einstein, but this one seemed to fit both the title requirement and the topic of this post.

I think it best to start with a list of the blog posts I read. I'm sure it was more than 5, but I'll list them to be sure. (And so you have a point of reference for later on.)

1. Bud the Teacher's "What's 'Print'?"
2. Betchablog: "The Myth of the Digital Native"
3. dy/dan (Mr. Meyer): "Why I don't Assign Homework"
4. CoolCatTeacher: "Spies Like Us"
5. Extreme Biology: "09.09.09 Homework: Observations and Inferences"
6. Students 2.0: "Teaching Brevity"
7. Andy Carvin / Learning NOW: "An Open Letter About Cyberbullying"
8. Pair-A-Dimes (David Truss): "Students, Information and Schools"
9. Wandering Ink: "How to Prevent Another Leonardo Da Vinci"

Yup. More than 5. I liked the reading part of the assignment. Can you tell?

Several of these blogs remind me of magazine articles or certain newspaper articles. Not the formalized, reporting the news articles, but more like op-ed columns. )Though I supposed they could be considered editorials, since we're looking at self-published blogs.) They're personal opinions, but usually well written and well argued. I'd say that #1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 all fall under this category. And in some ways, so does #7. Andy Carvin's post is almost a "Letter to the Editor", aside from it appearing on his blog, and not in "Wired" magazine.

The big difference between these blogs and magazine articles is the hyperlinks. I often found myself pausing in the middle of reading the post to follow a link to a related website or blog post. In fact, I sometimes found myself hopping from post to website to article to website, without actually fully reading any of the pages. I had to make an effort not to follow the links right away, but instead right click and open them in a new tab, so that I could go read the related sites once I finished with the first one. It's amazing how quickly the amount of reading you intended to do grows!

For example, I really enjoyed reading Dan Meyer's blog, starting with his "Why I don't assign homework", then following his links to read about the software he uses to help keep himself organized, how he analyzes his use of classroom time, and his ideas on how assessment should be handled in a mathematics classroom. I had 4 or 5 tabs of his blog posts open at one time. (And now, so might you!)

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Anyone else thinking of Dr. Seuss?

Now that I have my blog up and running (Thing 2), it's time to talk about what I'm looking forward learning in this project (based on Thing 1).

I'm still not entirely clear on what Web 2.0 is. The YouTube video interesting to watch, but I don't think it does a good idea of explaining. I want to know more about xml. I've used the built-in web editor in Firefox, but it coded in html. Have the browsers updated their editors to code in xml? Are there other programs that do that? Are they considered Web 2.0 tools?

*Edit* From our meeting today, Web 2.0 is being defined as any tools or applications that are for collaboration; as opposed to the Web 1.0, where we were passively reading. Now I have a new question: are forums part of Web 2.0 or Web 1.0? It seems like almost everything I've heard described as Web 2.0 is quite a bit fancier than just a forum.


I'm looking forward to learning more about and working with RSS feeds, embedding video and Flickr. I've kept a blog for my family for a few years now, but I'm always looking for ways to make it better and more interesting to look at.

Here's to an interesting few months!