Chapter 5 of The Connected Educator explains using digital tools for documenting and archiving learning. This section is important in learning how to build your personal learning network. The chapter begins with "social bookmarking" which categorizes, archives, and organizes content while connecting with colleagues and friends who do the same. You learn from one another and use that information to better yourself as an educator.
You will find ways to keep track of your findings on the web. One of them is Social Bookmarking. "Social bookmarking is a useful and a fun way to organize it while connecting with friends and colleagues and discovering new articles and links along the way" (pg 74). Some examples of them include Delicious, which is a popular website for bookmarking and tagging websites. Another example is Diigo. This is similar to Delicious, except with enhanced features. Both of these websites allow you to create a community of people who share research interests. In my future career as a Physician, this will be a wonderful way to further study and research cures and treatments with many skilled, passionate individuals in the same field.Another important way to build your personal learning network is blogging. "Blogs are a participatory medium where users welcome feedback and discussion" (pg 77). Many people post and discuss about experiences and ideas. You can receive partial negative feedback, but this should not stop individuals from blogging. Not everyone will agree with certain ideas or topics, as the internet can be a very sensitive place. An example of a blog is Edublog, which allows educators to communicate with students and parents. It usually provides information such as school's events, issues, celebrations, and discussion forums. More ways to utilize blogging is through podcasts, which are video or audio files. An example of it is Podmatic, a free tool to help you record, and publish web broadcasts. There was a time I wanted to understand how hard med school is, so I watch a blog of a young man and his daily life as a med student. It helped me understand how many hours I should study and even what time I should sleep, Most students made it through by school by getting a good night's sleep daily.
There are also tools for social networking to build websites such as Ning. Usually, websites can be difficult to create and time consuming. "Ning is a powerful took that allows anyone to create a specialized online social network for a few dollars a month" (pg 86). Another great tool is Classroom 2.0 for educators interested in using Web 2.0 in education. This helps you create a website by helping you with the process of selecting a name, web address, layout, color and a design theme for your network. This way as a Physician, I will be able to create a website for my office and reach out to people when owning my business.
Last but not least, learners can build their personal network by using websites such as TeacherTube. This is a neat way for teachers to share educational videos in a community other teachers. It has similar features as Youtube, except it's for educators. "The instructional videos posted on TeacherTube may allow you to expand your professional knowledge by learning from other educators or may be suggested to students to watch at home or in the classroom" (pgs 86-87). This website is usually easy to navigate and easy to use which makes it a "good website" (see my blog post "Good and Bad Websites - Gymshark vs Step Up).
The main points in building your personal learning network is to: build your own professional webpage/blog; build your online profiles through services such as Google and LinkedIn; sharing your thoughts and ideas through blogs or online articles; being professional at all times; and lastly, tracking your analytics. All of these important key points will build my future profession as a Physician.
How do you use tools to build your personal network? Will it help you in your future profession?
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