February 23, 2014
Developing your PLN on social networks isn’t a one-week deal, so we’ll continue to expand this week on what we started with Twitter last week and learn about a helpful app or two along the way.
Monday: First, we’ll finish what we started a few weeks ago by presenting manifestos. Use extra time today to catch up on any work you are behind on.
Tuesday: Starting with paper, we’ll brainstorm some key search terms for Twitter to help you find entities to follow that will help on your pre- and post-graduation plans. I’ll show you how to search and discover folks to follow that can provide you with informative resources, not only for this class, but for planning your future. You’ll want an easy way to save articles for reference later on, perhaps for the assignment due at the end of the week. I’ll demonstrate Delicious, but you have the option of trying out a similar app called Diigo. Either of these apps save articles to your account and are then searchable by tags that you choose.
If you’re still not feeling it – the whole PLN, Personal Learning Network idea – read this Q&A with high school student Courtney Gressman (an item I saved with Delicious a few weeks ago for this week’s purposes), about her own PLN experiences.
Wednesday: Using the search methods we discussed yesterday, continue to build your PLN. Set up an account with Delicious or Diigo in the Chrome browser while you are logged in your Google account. Save any articles of interest to your Delicious/Diigo account, tagging them so they are easily retrievable.
Thursday-Friday: Choose one article you have found and write a reflection on it. I still recommend writing in Gdocs, seeking peer edits and feedback from me before posting to your blog. What made the article interesting to you? What connections can you make to it or, possibly, to other articles? Work to come up with unique thoughts of your own prompted by what’s in the article. Post to your blog with link(s) to the article(s).
Don’t forget to find time to read your classmates’ blogs. One area in which everyone scored low on was commenting on others’ blogs and responding to comments on your own blogs. We need to get conversations going. Try ending your posts by posing questions that invite conversation. And if you visit other blogs and comment, those bloggers are more likely to visit yours and comment.
Friday: Who are your Follow Friday picks for the week? Choose at least four and write up a post about why you chose each. Try to get a personal post up by the end of the week as well.
*underlined items are graded assignments