Personal Learning Networks

These activites must be completed by Monday, February 2, 2009. 

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This Week's Activities

 

One of the Aims of a BYU education is to develop lifelong learning and service.  Modern technology provides unparalleled opportunities for lifelong learning.  The purpose for this week's activites is to help you set up and organize resources that will allow you to pursue self-directed lifelong learning that will aid you professionally and personally.  You are going to begin building a personal learning network directed toward the goal of enhancing your Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (basically, your knowledge of effective teaching methods for using technology in your specific content area.)

 

This week you need to complete all of the activites listed below in order to fully participate in the course.  Plan to spend between 1.5 to 2 hours completing course activities this week.  If you have technical difficulties with any of the activities, wait a few minutes and try again.  If technical difficulties continue, send me an email immediately and work on something else in the meantime. 

 

• Go to the Video Blog and watch my message about Personal Learning Networks on the IP&T 286 Group blog (5 minutes).
• Comment on this week's Gospel Insights Presentation(s). Think about the message as well as the presentation of the message.  What have you learned from their presentation?  How will you apply their message in your life?  What suggestions can you offer the author for making the presentation more effective?  What ideas does their presentation give you for future presentations that you may make? (10 minutes)
• Read articles and guides (15-20 minutes)
  • Read the document on Personal Learning Networks that I have prepared for you:  PLN.pdf.
  • Read the document  socialbookmarking101.pdf by Wesley Fryer.
• Create accounts (30 minutes)
  • Google Reader (20 minutes)
    • Visit the Suggested Reading page and browse through the blog feeds that I have listed for you.  Then subscribe to at least three of the blogs using Google Reader.  You should use the Google Account that you created during the first week of class to log into Google Reader. (20 minutes)
    • If you need help using Google Reader, any of the following resources will walk you through the using Google Reader.
      • Sue Waters explains RSS feeds in the post "Are you making your life easier using RSS?" on her blog the Edublogger.  The embedded how-to videos on Sue's blog are from YouTube, so you may want to view the post when you are off-campus.
      • Alternatively, this narrated presentation by Andy Wibbels can help you learn how to use Google Reader.
      • If you prefer to just read the steps, here is a link to a pdf guide entiled "How to Use Google Reader".
  • Diigo (10 minutes)
    • Create an account at Diigo.com.  The Diigo User Guide is comprehensive and will step you through the process.  (5 minutes)
    • Add me, Kimberly McCollum, as a friend and join the group "Teaching with Technology".  (5 minutes)
• Contribute to or comment on the PLN Rubric (5 minutes)
• Collect and annotate electronic resources (25 minutes)
  • Explore the resources listed in the Index of this wiki and/or on one of the lists that I have prepared in Diigo.  Bookmark several resources that you think have the most potential for use in your classroom.  When you bookmark each resource, use the notes in Diigo to explain how you think it could be used with your future students.