Category: Social Media

Discussion, educational technology, Faculty Development, Informal Learning, Personal Learning Networks, Social Media, Twitter

Why Include Twitter in Your Personalized Learning Network (PLN)?

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Signing up for a Twitter account is one of the best things I’ve done for my professional learning. You may be thinking, no way! Especially with the negative attention given to politics on Twitter. However, we just need to be careful who our friends are – or in this case who we choose to follow. Alec Couros, educational technology and media professor and researcher at the University of Regina, Canada, explains it well in the video linked below.

Using Twitter effectively for education – with Alec Couros

In 2010, as an assignment at Arkansas Leadership Academy, I set up my Twitter account and began following educational leaders. I was skeptical at first. Then gradually I started following more and more leaders in education and educational technology, and I began to see the value in using Twitter to connect with educational leaders around the world. Currently, I’m following 2,222 educators, administrators, and researchers. I’m not much of a tweeter myself unless I’m participating in a live Twitter chat. Mostly, I’m a liker and a lurker when I have a few free minutes. I use the “like” feature to sort of bookmark things I find useful or inspiring, and I usually don’t have to lurk for long to find something valuable. This tweet says it nicely. 

Would you like to know more about Twitter for educators? Below are several articles on the topic.

Tiny Bursts of Learning

Edublog: Building Your PLN

Use of Twitter across educational settings: a review of the literature

If you are a Twitter user but haven’t tried Tweetdeck, consider trying it out. It’s great for following several hashtags at once and for participating in fast-moving live chats. 

Reference:

d_mulder (2016, October 23). Teachers on Twitter are the best. Take 5 minutes to read and reflect; what will you learn from your colleagues today? Approach Twitter with a growth mindset, think of it as “I have five minutes…what can I learn today?” [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/d_mulder/status/790298591440936960

Collaboration, Curation, Discussion, Faculty Development, Instructional Design, Social Media

Critical Thinking Activity: Digital Curation

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Image by Silvia from Pixabay

Looking for a learning experience that encourages higher-level thinking? Promotes student voice and choice? Develops media literacy? Collaborative? A digital curation project is something you might consider. 

What is Content Curation?

If you’re new to digital content curation, check out this blog post by Beth Kantor for a quick overview of the topic. Content Curation Primer 

Digital curation is more than simply generating a list of URLs. Digital curation is an opportunity to explore an area of interest while aggregating the best resources available. The resources are organized into a digital collection along with your added insight, and then they can be shared with others. Finding, vetting, and analyzing resources, adding annotations, and creating something new require higher level thinking – Bloom’s analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. For more about digital curation activities for critical thinking, see these articles by Jennifer Gonzalez and L.M. Ungerer.

Digital Curation Examples

As a grad student, I’ve had several digital curation assignments. These were the basic steps involved: 

  • Select a topic
  • Select a digital tool to house the curation
  • Locate and evaluate resources for the curation
  • Organize resources in the curation
  • Add my annotations to each resource
  • Share with the class and with the world
  • Provide feedback on others’ projects
  • Reflect on the experience with a blog post

Scoop.it! is the digital tool that I used for my first curation – a collection of resources called 3 Types of Interaction in Online Courses. I collected resources that included Student-Student, Student-Instructor, or Student Content interactions in online courses. Each resource that I included has my brief annotation and is coded with SS, SC, SI for each type of interaction.

Pearltrees is the tool that I chose for my second digital curation titled Teaching with Social Media in Higher Education. This is a collection of how instructors have used social media for teaching in higher education. Next to each resource is my brief insight. Each of these projects was shared with my classmates for feedback and shared via social media. Final reflections on the projects were shared in blog posts.

Digital Curation Tools

Documents, slides, and spreadsheets can be used for curation, value-added annotation, and sharing. In addition, there are many other free digital curation tools available. Blogs, webpages, and social media are also valuable resources for curation activities.

If you are considering digital curation as a critical thinking activity for students and are looking for more information, tools, and ideas for doing so, see the articles listed below. 

Gonzalez, J. (2017, April 15) To boost higher-order thinking, try curation.[web log] Retrieved from https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/curation/
Ungerer, L. M. (2016). Digital Curation as a Core Competency in Current Learning and Literacy: A Higher Education Perspective. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v17i5.2566

Informal Learning, Instructional Video, YouTube

YouTube: For Producers and Consumers

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Image by Thom Sibent from Pixabay

There’s a lot more to YouTube than videos of cats chasing squirrels. What a great resource for teaching and learning! Whether you want to watch videos, share videos, or curate videos that others have created, YouTube makes it easy! 

If you want to move past just searching and viewing videos, consider creating your own channel. It’s easy to do. Then you can develop playlists of videos that you create and/or playlists of videos that others have created. Use the videos in class or provide them as a resource for students or the world. As YouTuber Tyler Tarver says, “Make playlists for those you want to help.”

Here are a few YouTube channels that you might want to explore:

With all of the tools available today, creating video content is something anyone can do. Students enjoy seeing their instructors in videos, and not only can these videos provide some review or extra help for students, they can also help deepen connections with the instructor. Video is ideal for capturing a special event or conversation to share with others. No need to worry about necessarily keeping videos short either – if it is engaging, people will watch. 

A couple important things to consider when using YouTube. As a consumer, it’s important to review a video all the way through before posting in Blackboard or using in class to make sure it’s what you really want to share. On the flipside – as a producer, if you post a video to YouTube, you have three choices – private, unlisted, or public. Private videos aren’t available to anyone else. Unlisted videos aren’t available in searches, but they can be seen by others. If someone knows your channel, they can view an unlisted video. Public videos are available in searches and for anyone to see.

Blogs

The Journey Begins

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Thanks for joining me!
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For years I’ve had a classroom website, resource website, e-portfolios and e-dossiers, and a learning log/blog. I’m excited about bringing some of those artifacts together and incorporating them in my new beginning with a new website, and new blog for sharing about my learning experiences through my work as an instructional designer and as a doctoral student of educational technology.

Social Media

Social Network Learning: Final Reflection

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A year ago in June, I was attending ISTE in Denver and had the opportunity to meet a leader in education that I follow, Alice Keeler. I knew that she was taking EdTech classes at Boise State University, so I told her that I was a BSU M.E.T. grad. She asked if had taken a course from Jackie Gerstein. I said that I hadn’t, and she went on to tell me about this course and that I really should go back and take it. Needless to say, I took her advice and enrolled in this course. And now here I am at the end of the course.

This course more than met my expectations. I’ve learned so much, but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg! Each topic – PLNs, digital footprints, curation, social media case studies and teaching with social media, social media guidelines, virtual professional development, course development, video feedback, blogging – is an area where I can continue to set goals and grow and develop using the wealth of resources, ideas, and tools that I picked up in this class. (And I did save every resource using Diigo.)

Before writing this reflection, I took some time to go back and reread my past blog posts during this course. I’m thankful I have them to go back to and revisit as I begin to dig deeper into each of these areas. So many things to do and to share in my role as an instructional designer working with faculty of face-to-face and online courses, in online course development, and on my own.  I would especially enjoy facilitating a course like this or something similar in the future. Some things that I plan to do right away are continue participating in Twitter chats, consciously begin to develop a stronger social presence, and look for ways to share the things I’ve learned.

One of the most enjoyable activities in this course for me was the virtual live professional development. It was fun to participate in the webinars with others from our class, and seeing everyone participating in so many chats each time I was on Tweetdeck was great! I’m looking forward seeing classmates in future classes and chats. The format of this class really did lend itself to building a community, more so I think than many other online courses I’ve taken.

As far as blogging through the course, it has become easier for me than when I was working on my M.E.T. I really understand the purpose behind it and the value of it much better now. I’ve never considered myself a writer having always been more of a math and science person. However throughout this course, I’ve enjoyed this reflection and writing time and tried to capture the learning here to be able to come back and refer to in the future.