When it comes to personal learning networks, the more you give, the more you receive. It’s a topic I touched upon in a blog post last year, Effort In, Reward Out. I think so many times that people dip their toes into social learning spheres, only to find there’s no immediate payback. This is frustrating, they gruff, “Twitter is useless!” and that’s the end of that. Your ultimate goal as a valued member of a PLN should be to give and share, so that others can learn from your expertise, as you do theirs.
One of the #etmooc topics during last week’s Orientation was Introduction to Social Curation. (I really appreciate that the #etmooc Blackboard sessions are being archived!) I enjoyed learning more about social bookmarking and curation. I actually didn’t pause to consider the difference between the two terms before this webinar, I just incorrectly assumed they were one in the same.
Jeff Heil (@jheil65) led the session, and he began discussing social bookmarking and its benefits. Social bookmarking is saving websites as bookmarks in a social space such as Diigo or Delicious. Typically users tag and/or list their bookmarks to help organize their resources. (I typically do a very poor job of tagging which is one area in this realm I need to improve.) Other benefits include the ability for a tool such as Diigo to become valuable in research, as you not only have access to your own bookmarks, but those of an entire community of learners. He said, “You can tap into the community of people who are bookmarking and tagging things for intrinsic reasons.” You can then share your lists and resources with others. There are tons of groups found within the services so you can subscribe to topics of interest. For example, the #etmooc group.
With content curation, you have a topic in mind, and you amass resources that support learning more about that topic. For example, I could begin curating resources to support learning more about “the use of iPads in the primary grades.” I might use a tool such as scoop.it or paper.li to save all of those resources in one place. I can then share out the curated content to share with my network. Others who are interested in the same topics I am researching could find great benefit in my curated resources. Curation is one of the things that “user-generated learners” do. I recommend Kristen Swanson’s book on this topic. I love this quote from George Siemens and use it often in my social media presentations for administrators.
Here are my thoughts/my experiences with these topics thus far:
- As an administrator, I find a lot of value in serving as a curator of resources for my teachers, students, and colleagues. I’ve used Diigo with teachers in my school and administrative colleagues, using lists to share. Some of my teachers then led the way with their grade level colleagues and started groups to share curricular resources across the district! My administrative colleagues were able to subscribe to the list and receive daily/weekly/whatever they chose updates featuring the resources I bookmarked. A few of them actually subscribed 🙂
- Some reasons I love Diigo- I love starring items in my Google Reader feed or favoriting tweets and having the item saved right to Diigo. I love being able to access my bookmarks from any device. As someone who uses a school-issued PC (blargh) at work and a Mac and other OS devices at home, this comes in handy. I know I need to get better at organizing this information so I can make better use of the resources. (Same with Pocket). As Jeff mentioned in the webinar, there are a lot of web tools and other features such as highlighting that Diigo offers.
- I also use Delicious. For a long time, when I’d favorite resources from Zite, they would be sent to Delicious. There wasn’t an option to save them to Diigo unless I went the extra step and opened the resource in Safari and used the Diigolet tool.
- I used to have a scoop.it account and used the service a few times. This morning I tried to log in but was unsuccessful, so I think in one of my attempts at streamlining my digital footprint, scoop.it didn’t make the cut. I think I still have a paper.li account, but again, don’t use it. I have to be honest- when I see the tweets “So-and-So’s paper.li Daily is Out!” I never, ever click on them, even when I’m mentioned in them. Perhaps that is something I should change. If I’m included in a curation, chances are the other resources in that space are relevant to my learning. I think those summaries would have more appeal if I knew the topic.
- I’ve used Pinterest for educational purposes, but not as often as I use it for personal inspiration. I know many educators are drawn to its visual appeal, and a lot of my teachers have expressed that they “love” Pinterest. Someone recently tweeted this 25 of the Best Pinterest Boards In Education if you’re a Pinterest user and want to check it out!
- I used Symbaloo at school to make a handy webpage of go-to resources for students and staff. I really liked the interface and it was easy to use.
- Other resources that were mentioned in the webinar- Learnist (you can request an invite), Pearltrees (tried it, hated it), and Pinboard.
- Don’t limit yourself to these types of tools. For example, you can create a blog to communicate effortlessly with your staff (goodbye, emails!) and share resources and organize through categories and/or tags. If you’re a wiki user, you can create pages devoted to specific topics and curate information in that format. Same with Google Sites. My advice? Find what works for you!
My overall takeaway is that I do a pretty decent job of sharing and social bookmarking, but my curation could use some work. I need to be more thoughtful with my efforts.
Jeff made the point to stress, “You are what you share,” and his statement made a huge impression on me. Consider your go-to people on Twitter. Why do you make sure not to miss what they tweet? Because they share. They share resources and ideas, provide feedback, and, chances are, they share a little something about themselves. Personal connections go a long way in building a strong PLN, too.