Personal learning network power
Posted by: Richard
November222008
My personal learning network is really coming through this week. I found out about the Berkman draft literature review on internet safety and Berkeley report on informal learning of digital youth. We are preparing two evening technology events for parents. Together, these reports will help us contextualize parent concerns about their children's safety within a broader understanding of why kids value the time they spend online, especially on social network and gaming sites. Our administrators particularly appreciate the detailed, research-based studies.
One of our middle school spanish teachers proposed a session on Voicethread, in order to share teaching techniques with his language teacher colleagues. I invited Barbara Cohen, noted Voicethread enthusiast, to join us via Skype. What a great meeting that was! Barbara contributed her experiences working with a set of teachers in a different school, quickly solved some longstanding technical issues we had experienced, and picked up a few new teaching tips from us. We should include colleagues from other schools more often.
From blogs and Twitter, I sent a number of links to teacher colleagues: tech ideas for the social studies classroom, Life's archives online at Google Images, and Google Earth's ancient Rome layer.
The BAISNet community came through repeatedly. When I was looking for a way to ensure that Macs prompt for network logins using the username instead of the real name, the network sent me a command-line statement to set this as a preference. As I consider how to apply Drupal to build our next web site, BAISNet scheduled a meeting on open-source software for January. This will be great place to try out some ideas and seek development partners.
As I suddenly found myself in possession of three long videos to post online, I recalled colleagues' Twitter posts regarding Blip.tv and gave it a try. I have been so pleased with the results. Why should I necessarily evaluate a wide range of streaming video providers when others have communicated the results of their experiences (and I have a dozen other things to do this week)?
The network learns, and it knows far more than I do.
tags: twitter, bliptv, blip, networks, connectivism
One of our middle school spanish teachers proposed a session on Voicethread, in order to share teaching techniques with his language teacher colleagues. I invited Barbara Cohen, noted Voicethread enthusiast, to join us via Skype. What a great meeting that was! Barbara contributed her experiences working with a set of teachers in a different school, quickly solved some longstanding technical issues we had experienced, and picked up a few new teaching tips from us. We should include colleagues from other schools more often.
From blogs and Twitter, I sent a number of links to teacher colleagues: tech ideas for the social studies classroom, Life's archives online at Google Images, and Google Earth's ancient Rome layer.
The BAISNet community came through repeatedly. When I was looking for a way to ensure that Macs prompt for network logins using the username instead of the real name, the network sent me a command-line statement to set this as a preference. As I consider how to apply Drupal to build our next web site, BAISNet scheduled a meeting on open-source software for January. This will be great place to try out some ideas and seek development partners.
As I suddenly found myself in possession of three long videos to post online, I recalled colleagues' Twitter posts regarding Blip.tv and gave it a try. I have been so pleased with the results. Why should I necessarily evaluate a wide range of streaming video providers when others have communicated the results of their experiences (and I have a dozen other things to do this week)?
The network learns, and it knows far more than I do.
tags: twitter, bliptv, blip, networks, connectivism
Richard Kassissieh is Director of Information Technology at 
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