Personal Learning Network (PLN)

Raindrop.io tag: onidpln

Learning Objectives

1. Watch the two introductory videos and reflect on the nuances between the various terms PLN, PLE, and PLC.
2. Read the two assigned readings and post a tweet referencing your takeaways.
3. Create a visual representation of your Personal Learning Environment and share it with the class in Slack, Twitter, or as a blog post.
4. Write and publish a blog post reflecting on the nature of your own learning and your PLE, including the image of your PLE and referencing readings.
5. Establish a Twitter account and complete your public profile.
6. Establish a Raindrop.io account and join the ED431 class (invite will be sent).
7. Share two or more resources on a topic of your choice to the ED431 collection in Raindrop.io with the tag #onidpln
8. Send five or more tweets with the tag #onidpln
9. Engage with peers in the cohort and professionals outside of the course by replying to or quoting tweets, commenting on blog posts, or writing blog posts of your own.

Readings

Cormier, D. (2011, Nov 5) Rhizomatic Learning — Why we teach? [Blog Post]. Retrieved from  https://davecormier.com/edblog/2011/11/05/rhizomatic-learning-why-learn/

LaSota, D. (n.d.) Personal Learning Environments: An organizational and practice based concept for evaluating and improving the way individuals learn. Retrieved from https://iteachu.uaf.edu/personal-learning-environments/

• The video on this page is a little long but it is a thorough overview of the PLE and should be useful for those who are new to these terms.

Optional Reading:

Laakkonen, I. (2015). Doing what we teach: promoting digital literacies for professional development through personal learning environments and participation. In J. Jalkanen, E. Jokinen, & P. Taalas (Eds.), Voices of pedagogical development — Expanding, enhancing and exploring higher education language learning (pp. 171-195). Dublin: Research-publishing.net.

Moss, J. (2012, June 5) Personal learning environment: what does yours look like? Retrieved from: https://iteachu.uaf.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/623/2012/06/TT-PLE.pdf

Instructions

1. We are going to establish and make use of accounts on Twitter, a public microblogging service, and Raindrop.io, a social bookmarking service. These will be destinations for us to gather and share information.
2. We are going to create visual representations of our PLNs. You will do this once at the very beginning of the semester, and reflect upon the continued relevance or accuracy of that representation again at the end of the semester. You will find that the nature of your PLN will change over time, as well as your perspectives on what counts as part of it.  In the process of using these tools in this class, you will be asked to think about your larger PLN and the elements that comprise it. The process of many of the assignments in the class will result in the discover of tools (some new to all of us, some new to you) that may enhance your PLN.
3. We are going to reflect on our own PLNs and the concept in general by posting at least five tweets, at least one blog post, and at least two outside readings to Raindrop.io

Establish Accounts

Manage Your Presence

Being on Twitter necessitates an additional step. That is the provision and creation of your own online presence.

Choose a good photo of yourself. There a number of ways you can take this. Some don’t like to have a very prominent profile picture. As an educator and someone who is representing their real self as a professional in a public forum, a professional or personally flattering headshot is recommended.

Choose a representative background photo. The dimensions of this are very wide, so landscapes or designs work well. Mining an open source free photography site such as Unsplash.com can be a good way to find a snappy photo that fits. Online design tools such as Canva and Crello feature templates that will generate an appropriately sized image for this background. Adobe Spark even includes a specific Twitter header image template and instructions.

Relevant tutorials:

• Twitter Tutorial from Hoonuit.
  (Note that you must be  logged into Hoonuit  through your UA Google account in order to access the tutorials.)

Participation and Engagement: Directions for Sharing and Following

The following steps are considered in the grade for the PLN assignment, both the initial establishment and the cumulative activity building toward the final summary.

• Add text links to your Raindrop.io and Twitter accounts on your portfolio landing page. These can be in a widget or other embedded code generated by that tool.
• Follow each of your cohort’s Twitter accounts as well as accounts suggested above. You can locate these accounts on the  Cohort page.
• You should post a  minimum of four tweets per week. Retweets are great, but don’t count! Here’s what counts as a substantial, gradable tweet!
  • Highlighting a resource (link to a website, a relevant quote, book. etc.)
  • A quoted retweet from one of your Twitter follows or followers, with your quote itself sufficient enough to stand on its own.
  • A link to your blog post or assignment with a few sentences of context.
  • A thoughtful reply to a tweet. (these can be powerful and gain you followers as well as help you find new users to follow by seeing who liked or retweeted your reply.)
  • An original tweet with your profound musings on a relevant topic to this course (these are many)*.

*a tweetstorm or threaded tweet reply can only count for two of your graded tweets for the week.

Tagging Resources

Scoring Guide: Establish

Scoring Guide: Build & Document