One of the reasons I never embraced “tweeting” was because it was not very well organized and since I don’t have a mobile device, I was missing “tweets” and other activity which left feeling like I was missing out. Tweetdeck is a free download which allows you to customize your twitter account and provide more organization to twitter feeds. The one feature which really assists me in viewing my recent activity is the ability to create lists. I set up a “PLN” list so the activity and tweets for this category are all in one area in a dashboard appearance of my twitter account. I set up tiles on my Symbaloo for both my twitter and tweetdeck so I can view my twitter feeds in either the original twitter format or in the dashboard format. I also set up a list in my twitter to follow architectural posts for another course I am taking.
A few examples of what I added to my PLN list are Googledocs which I hope to learn some tips on how to use it and I am interested in learning about googlecalendar to use it to track my families' activities. I also added Microsoft to learn shortcuts to MS Word because we will be converting to it exclusively as our word processing program soon. I am also following a guy named Tom Whitby who seems interesting. One of my connections was following Rob Mancabelli who is co–author of the book Personal Learning Networks: Using the Power of Connections to Transform Education so I began following him.
While searching for information on Pinterest, I found a great deal of information about PLNs and began looking at what others had “pinned” about it. Larry Ferlazzo posted information on how to design your PLN. What caught my attention was the image he pinned about PLNs which provided icons for various tools available to design PLNs. I downloaded Diigo which is a social bookmark and it seems similar to twitter in certain ways but different in other ways. It is stored in the cloud so you can access it from anywhere and you can share your bookmarks with others even if they are not Diigo users.
I have been accessing my LinkIn more often to keep in touch with a few of my friends from ESC and former co-workers who have moved onto other jobs. My facebook account is primarily used to “stalk” my friends and family both near and far to keep up with the events in their lives. Just this past weekend, I saw my cousin’s daughter dressed and ready to go to her senior prom in another state. It's still amazes me at how instantaneously we can be updated on anything we want to know at that moment in time..
My Google+ account was reactivated for this course and I was impressed at how much more it offers than my yahoo account which I’ve had since the time of “you’ve got mail”. I am seriously considering using my gmail as my primary personal email and my yahoo as my secondary. Good bye old friend!
I still have so much to learn and understand about Personal Learning Networks but I think I’ve found some excellent resources to help guide me along the way on adding to and maneuvering my Personal Learning Network.
REFERENCES:
Image retrieved from: https://www.viralheat.com/blog/2013/02/20/the-unique-benefits-of-social-platforms/
Rob Mancabelli's website: http://www.mancabelli.com/
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